Concocted Worlds

Culture War, Class War Chapter Four:

Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures – Concocted Worlds

Drugs and Generations

Drug Effects—Cocaine, Speed

Drugs in the amphetamine class are stimulants. This includes cocaine, methamphetamine, “meth,” “crystal,” crack cocaine, “crack,” speed, amphetamine, uppers, “whites,” and so on. They repress Pain extraordinarily well.

They are euphoriants and cause one to have the feeling that one’s mental capacities are expanded. One feels that one can envision projects and outcomes precisely. So one expends oneself in organizing and preparing for great achievements, which rarely are embarked on.

Since these drugs repress Pain, creating an amped state of mind more than normally able to fend off unwanted emotional material, they repress the normally present residue of fear, with its attendant caution in the face of activities outside of one’s comfort zone requiring forethought and anticipation. One does not feel constrained by normal fears or apprehensions, so one throws oneself into new activities with reckless abandon. One feels overly confident in one’s abilities and engages in all kinds of risk-taking—financially, sexually, interpersonally, legally. These activities have one embarking on dubious schemes which rarely pan out.

Despite these negatives the corollary of this mental activity is that one’s ability to think and see more clearly on some issues is enhanced, just because one’s fears can pollute one’s perception and apprehension of things. It is enlightening to remember that Sigmund Freud, among other notables in history, experimented with cocaine. At one point, Freud was heartily endorsing its use to his colleagues; he was waxing expansively about its benefits for mental life and clarity of consciousness. Of course, he changed his position on this later. No doubt his use led him to see its face of darkness as well.

Nonetheless, concerning the positive aspects of cocaine, it can be mentally enhancing partly because of its repression of fear. For fears, as mentioned, are both of the helpful-cautionary as well as the oppressive types. Being released from the oppressiveness of fears, being freed of the constraints of “fearful thinking,” can result in seeing one’s reality more clearly. Feeling fearless can lead one to acknowledging truths and realities normally defended against—thus being therapeutic even, getting a glimpse of reality outside of one’s fears.

Being freed from normal caution, however, can lead one into reckless activites with consequences far beyond one’s ability to handle in either a normal, or drugged, state. It is no coincidence that these drugs have seen heavy usage by wartime participants—notable are their use by fighter pilots and by Vietnam warriors.

Lastly, since these stimulants repress feelings, they can lead to insensitivity toward others.  But since they can repress fear which blocks truer perception of and appreciation of others they can lead, paradoxically, to feelings of love toward others and a feeling of finally really seeing others and appreciating them for who they are, not simply in the way one has cast them (“pigeon-holed” them) to fit into one’s scripts, agendas, ego projects, or desires.

Matrix Manifesting

“Me Generation,” The Eighties, Yuppy-Kay-Yo-Kay-Yay

Matrix Manifest and The Big Lie.

The Eighties saw an epidemic of use of cocaine. This was commonly attributed to Yuppies, which is the popular term for the Young Upwardly-mobile Professional character of this era and is contrasted with the idealistic, activist, and anti–Vietnam-War Yippies (Youth International Party, whose founder and most famous member was Abbie Hoffman).

Yuppies came in at the same time as Ronald Reagan into the White House and, indeed, exemplified much of what Reagan stood for. They were seen as greedy, over-achieving, materialistic, narcissistic, and societally and environmentally insensitive careerists.

They were portrayed in film; one in particular that sought to delineate the attitudes of this character type was “Wall Street,” in which Michael Douglas plays the role of the Yuppie, portraying complete self-centeredness, insensitivity to the ways his Machiavellian strategies harms others or the environment, and driven solely by a value that “Money Is Good!”—a slogan completely the opposite of the previous generation whose attitudes were expressed in lyrics like “I don’t care too much for money; money can’t buy me love” and “Love is all you need”; who bought and lived by books with titles such as How to Live on Nothing, The Greening of America, and Back to Eden; and whose most famous slogan was “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out” (or it was sometimes said, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”—I’m not sure anyone in the generation knew which was the “proper” way to say it).

In any case, another term used for the Yuppie Generation was The “Me” Generation. Thus it was that from the late Sixties, early Seventies (the height of Vietnam-Era Youth’s influence on society and culture) to the late Seventies and most of the Eighties—within a period of a mere decade—the prevailing, media-amplified cultural values of our society swung, pendulum-like, a hundred-and-eighty degrees from where they had been.

This change had a great deal to do with the efforts of the World-War-Two Generation—in total horror at the way their sons and daughters seemed to be reversing the values they had lived, and fought, for—to “take back” society. The WWII Generation did this by putting pressure, as well-to-do alumni, on universities and colleges across America to turn their curriculums away from liberal arts and toward job-oriented curriculums, and by using their positions of power in the media to influence the flow and content of the information to be fed to the mainstream public. For example, in the early Seventies, the WWII Generation’s money and power directed the press to declare that a “conservative backlash” was occurring in America, when in fact the opposite was occurring.

But eventually their “Big Lie” tactics won out so that people began to believe and then to create what they had been repeatedly told…the opposite view having, as part of the strategy, been censored in the media.  [Footnote 1]

Thus, the Yuppies were the creation of the WWII Generation in their attempt to reverse the course of society that their own daughters and sons, as “Sixties Youth,” had put it on.

Scapegoating an Entire Generation.

Coinciding with and supporting the strategy just described, and because the World-War-Two Generation during the Eighties were still in their Triumphant Phase—a psychohistorical term meaning they were at the stage of their life in late adulthood in which they had pretty much gained control of the reins of society—they furthered their cause by managing to plant a fantasy in the collective consciousness of American culture concerning the origins of Yuppies which persists to this day. In obvious denial (again, their predominant defensive posture) of the fact that they had helped to “create” the Yuppies and so of the similarities between their own values and those of the Yuppies, as exemplified by the similarities between the (World-War-Two-era) Reagan-Bush political agenda and that of the Yuppies—who indeed helped elect Reagan and Bush—yet aware of the criticism that their very own values, taken to the Yuppie extremes, was generating in the independent press as well as the negative publicity there about the cocaine use of the Yuppies, the World-War-Two Generation saw an opportunity not only to defeat but also to “get back” at their opponents, the Sixties Generation, by ridiculing them.

In the predominant World-War-Two Generation fashion of scapegoating (the accompaniment of denial), which they had been directing from the outset at the Sixties Generation (who had of course incurred the wrath of the WWII Generation by opposing and confronting them on the Vietnam War in sometimes harsh and hostile ways), the Yuppies, with their cocaine use, were portrayed in the WWII-Generation-paid-for media as former Sixties hippies who had simply grown older but—consistent with their alleged “narcissism”—were still selfish, only now, materially so, thus the appellation, The “Me” Generation.

So the Vietnam-era or Sixties Generation began being denigrated in the press with the accusation, “The ‘Me’ Generation,” and Sixties values were also denigrated—the scapegoating of the Sixties Generation continuing—despite the fact that it was a different age group in society, the younger Yuppies, who were actually the ones triggering the attack. The hypocrisy of the charge becomes even more blatant when considering that the values of the Sixties Generation included such selfless acts as risking, sometimes incurring, violence and personal harm, jail time, and a lower standard of living for the sake of their idealistic beliefs in peace, environmental restoration and preservation, and selfless communitarian living, among others–none of which have any overlap with Yuppie careerism, consumerism, materialism, and individualistic greedy selfishness.

Despite the success in our society’s collective consciousness of the fantasy of Yuppies being former hippies—once it had been planted in the popular culture by the WWII Generation sitting comfortably in front of American society’s steering wheel—the truth is that these Yuppies were predominantly the generation that shadowed the Sixties generation, arising as youth in the aftermath of the Sixties cultural revolution. Their values become understandable, then, not only in that they were in universities during the Seventies when the “Conservative backlash” Big Lie was being promulgated and universities were cutting back funding from courses in liberal arts, philosophy, psychology, literature, politics and government, and the like and were turning themselves into career-factories dedicated to producing compliant business persons, engineers, physicians, and scientists who were not being educated to think for themselves but how to achieve and make money in a culture the World-War-Two Generation was comfortable with; but the values of the Yuppies are understandable, furthermore, in that they were the sons and daughters of a generation between the World-War-Two and Baby-Boomer Generations, who have not been identified, as far as I know, in the media at all. We might call this overlooked generation the Fifties Generation, or the Eisenhower-McCarthy Generation, or the Elvis Generation…a more cumbersome but more accurate term for them would be the War-Born Generation. [Footnote 2]

The media tends to focus on the big trends and to ignore or miss the lesser ones. The way our recent history was portrayed, you would think that just because there was a huge number of babies born in the decade and a half after World-War-Two’s end—the much discussed Baby-Boomer Generation—that there were no babies born during the War…almost as if every man in America was overseas fighting or that, when home on leave or whatever, they simply would not or could not conceive!

However, of course these ridiculous notions are not true, so there is a pre-Baby-boomer Generation who happened to be born during or shortly before and after WWII, i.e., between about 1938 and 1948. And the Yuppies were predominantly the sons and daughters of this—let us call it—Fifties Generation. Marinated in the womb with war fears and born around the time of the war, the Yuppies’ parents then had their formative adolescence and young adulthood during the Fifties

So their beliefs are rooted in the cultural soil of Fifties conservatism, Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, Eisenhower, traditional religion, belief in the economic primacy of capitalism and the evil of communism, and the early “schmaltzy” rock and roll (e.g., “Teen Angel,” “Leader of the Pack,” etc.). Their roots reaching deep into war fears–hot and cold, many would feel jealous and angry about the freedoms and openness of the generation immediately after them. They would, as well, heartily resent all the attention being showered on the much larger cohort of  Baby-Boomers.

And it is the worldview of this Fifties Generation that was passed on to their children, the Yuppies. It is no coincidence that the era of Yuppie influence (mid-Seventies through the Eighties) saw also a lengthy period of Fifties nostalgia alongside the caricaturizing and ridiculing of Sixties lifestyles, values, and beliefs. It is easy to see that the materialism the Fifties Generation members were nurtured in after World War II, as a reaction to the fear and uncertainties their parents had because of the war and The Bomb would be replicated in their children. Only the fear and uncertainty their children would try to amass wealth against was the tumult, anomie, violence, and confusion of the decade of the Sixties, the era the Yuppies would experience swirling around their roots and upsetting the stability of their nurturant years.

Manic Irrationality, Voodoo Economics

The Eighties began, significantly enough, with the death of John Lennon and the election of Ronald Reagan. Concurrent with the epidemic of cocaine use was a manic economy, massive military expenditures, and a tripling-plus of the National Debt. It is relevant to note that the huge increase in the National Debt was caused by a tax cut for the rich, which of course benefited those of the World-War-Two Generation who either inherited or earned, with a lifetime behind them, their wealth, as well as those upwardly mobile, materialistic Yuppies. The rationale for the tax cut—which was characterized by some commentators as “Robin Hood in reverse,” because it also coincided with cutbacks in social programs—was a “voodoo economics” (George H.W. Bush’s term) with a “trickle-down” theory of investment and economic growth.

This economics is based on a belief that a “dollar,” metaphorically speaking, given to a rich person will be more wisely invested, creating more jobs and wealth for everyone, than will that same “dollar” given to a middle-class or poor person. This view, however, ignored human psychology, the standard economics of marginal returns, and the common observation that, simply put, for a person with a little or a moderate amount of money, that metaphorical dollar will have more value (because it will represent a much larger increase, percentage-wise, in their financial situation) than it will for a rich person, for whom its value is only marginally related to a rather large “purse,” so to speak. Therefore, common sense tells us that “dollar” will be more conscientiously and thoughtfully spent or invested, creating more jobs and wealth for all, by the moderate-income person, who of course will attempt to maximize its benefit to him- or herself so that he or she can also rise to the ranks of the wealthy. To the moderate income person that “dollar” represents an opportunity for a rise in economic status; hence it will be invested, sweated over, and monitored intensely. In general, he or she will attempt to squeeze every possible ounce of benefit out of it, very often starting businesses of their own and thereby creating new jobs, opportunity, and wealth in the process. Whereas for the already wealthy person, that “dollar” is only a dollar alongside many others, and is only marginally relevant, reaping only marginal, or minor, returns.

Voodoo economics did not work, of course, as indicated by the tripling of the National Debt. Another important indication of the falsity of its premises was the huge expenditures of money, during the Eighties, on luxury items, like yachts, works of art, expensive cars, and so on. Art items and artifacts were being bid through the roof and the prices they were going for were making headlines in newspapers and stimulating commentaries on the tube. Along with this was the overinvestment in spurious business transactions, including “junk bonds,” soon-to-be-left-unrented commercial buildings, and unwanted real estate. Much has been said about how these manic and ill-considered business transactions led to the lengthy recession of the late Eighties and early Nineties. Along with this is the connection with the S&L scandal which was behind the plethora of boondoggles and ill-advised investment.

But there are two aspects of it that are especially relevant here for a discussion of drugs and generational cultures. They are the manic quality of the times—the go, go, go, buy, buy, buy mentality of the investing—and the obvious proof it gave to marginal returns theory, i.e., the money, given to the rich, was valued little and was mindlessly blown on trivialities—it was said that the Eighties was a huge party for the rich.

So rather than creating wealth for the wealthy, which would “trickle down” to the less well off, Reaganomics, as it was also called, turned into an unparalleled failure. It was called the largest shift of wealth in America’s history, taking it from the poor and middle class and benefiting the richest, top two percent of Americans. More than that, it led to a debt that will be adversely affecting the well-being, lifestyles, and financial pictures of several generations to come.

Going into such detail about the intricacies and results of the economic policy promulgated by the WWII Generation, in alliance with the Yuppies and their parents, the Fifties Generation, is important because of the hypocrisy it demonstrates in the charge leveled at the Baby-Boomer Generation of being a “Me” generation and of being narcissistic. Again, we see the WWII Generation’s same tendency to denial, projection, and scapegoating.

To continue, however, other elements in the Eighties cultural arena, existing alongside the epidemic of cocaine use, was the aforementioned careerism and materialism among the Yuppies (comprised primarily of the youth in their twenties and early thirties who followed behind the Vietnam-era Generation), whose mantram was to get rich, get powerful, erect and maintain “family islands” which they saw as competitive with the rest of society (quite unlike the communitarianism of the Sixties Generation), and to retire early…social and environmental problems be damned.

Other standouts of the cultural scenery of the time included a rise of mean-spiritedness, e.g., cutbacks in social programs and charities, which, as it was said, had one effect of emptying the mental hospitals into the streets. It became fashionable to sneer at and blame (often scapegoating) the more unfortunate ones of society—the poor, helpless, mentally ill, children, the powerless–making some time for that alongside of outright snickering and smugness directed at the “hippie-dippie” values and “kumbaya” visions of the generation older than them.

Generation “X”

The next generation to wander into the cultural limelight has been termed Generation X. Predominantly these are not the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation as the values of the Vietnam-era Generation included marrying late and having children late so that their children are mostly younger than and not among Generation X. This value concerning marrying or having children later in life tied in with the Sixties folks’ belief in personal freedom, but is more closely related to the hypocrisy they perceived in the marriages of their parents, those of the WWII Generation. They not only perceived their parents’ marriages as being false and loveless, they perceived themselves as being the victims of poor parenting, wherein they felt they were not understood and were not accepted for who they were or supported in what they uniquely wanted to do with their lives. Furthermore, they saw the social and global context as a negative and highly dangerous one. For one thing, having been children during the “drop and roll” and bomb-shelter, nuclear-shadow era of the Fifties, and having seen the assassination of idealistic values in the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King during their teens and young adulthood, they had great doubts about the future of the world. Though of course the Sixties Generation is noted for its idealism and for its attempts to fight these perceived dangers and injustices, underneath there has always been for them an uncertainty that success is possible, so that bringing a child into this particular dangerous and unjust social context was seen as possibly not a good thing for the child.

So it is that Generation Xers are predominantly the sons and daughters of an early segment of the Baby-Boomer Generation as well as of those less idealistic of the Vietnam-era Generation that had, more often than not, opted for the traditional route of career, home, and family and thus had started having children many years earlier than their more socially conscious counterparts. This Fallow Generation , let us call it, would conceive the children who would be called Generation X—who are noted for their apathy and lack of distinctiveness.

But keep in mind that the Fallow Generation is not a true generation in the sense that it is composed of two age groups—the early Baby-Boomers and those of the Baby-Boomers who opted for a family instead of the social activism, college education, and establishing a career before raising a family decisions of their more heralded peers. Hence Generation X’s lack of a unifying cause, value, or characteristic may have to do with their being children of parents from two different age groups and generations.

At any rate, and understandably because they are mostly not children of the idealistic Sixties youth, the drug use of Xers strayed back to the use of alcohol and cigarettes—the drugs used by their Fallow Generation parents who did not make either the cultural or drug changes of their peers. Alongside this “traditional” drug use, Generation Xers are noted for their pessimism, defeatism, and fascination with death—as, for example, in their selection of black clothes, their tendency to ripped jeans, tattoos, and the insertion of all sorts of pins and studs, as adornments, into virtually all parts of their bodies, and, in the extreme ones among them, a fascination with vampirism.

Drug Effects–Ecstasy

This drug is very similar chemically to the amphetamines. Ecstasy has an hallucinogenic aspect, which distinguishes it, however. But it more reliably elicits the opening to love for others and the favorable perceptions of others and sense of unity with them as described above as occurring for amphetamines also along with the driveness of speed that is more characteristic of it.

Ecstasy came into use in the late Seventies and in the Eighties; and it has had continued appreciation of its effects through to the present. In fact, it is considered the drug of choice at raves—one of the more recent generational phenomena. The growth in popularity of raves maps near exactly on the increasing appreciation for Ecstasy. It would be hard to view that as coincidental.

Disco Yupp.

So the free love and communalism of the Sixties was superseded by a disco phase in the Seventies. The disco phase emerged and grew immediately upon the waning of use in the psychedelics, the increasing use of marijuana as a “cocktail,” mixed with alcohol, and the predominant use of cocaine by the Yuppies and Me Generation bordering on Generation X.

Rave on, Millennials!

Raves became an emerging phenomenon following somewhat upon the fading of the disco phase–a decline which occurred in the late Seventies. So raves were a phenomenon coincident with the rising use of Ecstasy and primarily affecting the generations following the Yuppie/ Me Generation, i.e., Generation X and the Millennial Generation.

Baby-Boomer Echo Generation

For some reasons that may be obvious by now, little has yet been said in the media about the daughters and sons of the Sixties Generation. This generation is currently in their twenties and thirties, though some are still in college and even junior and high school because of the tendency for some Baby-Boomer parents to postpone having children, often waiting till the very end of a woman’s reproductive years, just before the age of 40.

This generation has been called an “echo” of the Baby-Boomers in that just as the Baby-Boomers represented a significant population increase, conceived in the post-WWII euphoria and stability, these children of Boomers also represent an incoming population wave, due to the numbers of their parents. There was a wave of increased school attendance during the 90s and post-millennial years. Universities more recently have been attending to their needs.

Just as in every other generation mentioned, this Echo Generation, also called Millennial Generation, shares many of the characteristics and values of their parents.

Similarly, they mirror the drug use of their parents. There was a great to-do in the press during the Nineties about the increase in drug use among the young, particularly in high school. Furthermore, in typical WWII-Generation style, the media and Republicans in Congress attempted, during the Nineties, to scapegoat Sixties-Generation President Bill Clinton on this issue of drug use.

For though during the Nineties the WWII Generation was in the process of leaving the scene, those elderly of them left were conducting a fierce rearguard battle to save what they could of the culture they knew and created. In their desperation, they risked any cost in terms of outlandish scandals, government costs, and loss of social progress and governmental effectiveness.

Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that the increase in drug use among the young—which significantly enough involves predominantly an increase in the use of marijuana and, as they say: LSD…It’s b-a-a-a-a-ck!—had to do with the fact that the parents of these young people are indeed the people of the Sixties who themselves experimented with these substances.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am in no way saying that parents, in general, actively teach their children to take drugs—whether we are talking about the alcohol and cigarette use of the WWII Generation or marijuana and LSD use of Boomers—yet children are influenced by what their parents do or have done, even if just in the fact that the parents are more tolerant of such usage, having done it themselves. I say this because it could be countered that even the Sixties Generation, as parents, were engaged in the public antidrug campaign. Yet when they did so they were doing it out of a fear for their children’s physical welfare, not from a severe moral perspective that these drugs are the royal road to hell or from such other paranoid attitude, as was most often the case in the parents of the other generations discussed so far.

To return to the point, though not enough has been said or written about this “echo” generation, these are some of what has been noted about them: Beginning in 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton, the youth vote has swung back to going for the Democrats. There has been an increase in activism and idealism among the young in the last two decades, surprisingly this increase was noticed as early as when this generation was in high school and grade school. Polls done on their attitudes as children and adults showed a strong increase in their concern about social and global issues.

In fact, the issues that appeared to concern them the most have to do with racism and the environment. It is no coincidence that in the peak of their influence as young adults, there was an astounding wave of participation in Obama’s campaign, largely by this cohort, that resulted in the first African-American to attain the presidency.

This group also has fears that the future may not be very bright or as good as it was in times before them, particularly in terms of a ruined ecology due to environmental assault and/or nuclear disaster, yet they, like their parents, also are more likely to activism and taking up causes in the face of such dire possibilities.

These values of the Echo Generation are understandable, not only in that they reflect those of their parents, but also in that in the most recent decades the Sixties Generation—and indeed it would tend to be the more idealistic of them that would opt for the low pay that teachers currently get—predominates as the teachers and administrators in the primary and secondary schools that taught the Echo Generation.

The same, however, cannot as much be said of the universities, with Millennials attending, for reasons having to do with cutbacks in educational funds, the lingering success of the WWII Generation in turning universities into career factories as opposed to truly educational institutions, and, with the cutbacks in funding, the lack of job openings for Sixties Generation applicants and the resulting continued influence, bolstered by the institution of tenureship, of pre-Sixties professors—those of the Fifties and Fallow Generations, and a few remaining, very old, WWII folks.

Still, the Sixties Generation influence on these youth in college existed because of several contrary trends. The Echo Generation’s numbers swelled university attendance, requiring additional hiring somehow, whatever the funding constraints, and those of the generations preceding the Sixties Generation passed from the universities into retirement, or the beyond.

The candidates for the openings that did come about at the university level not as much those of the Fallow Generation, the Yuppies, or Generation Xers, but were instead members of a Sixties Generation who alone, among the generations mentioned, valued education over money and careerism. They had been waiting a long time, diplomas and experience in hand, for their chance to return to the universities—this time as the instructors and administrators—and eager to change its course back to true education, as it was when they were students in the liberal-minded Sixties. We see the effects of this in Obama’s election and the phenomenal numbers of demonstrators coming out to fight back union attacks and budget squeezes in Wisconsin and throughout the US. Though these are not attracting media attention these outpourings are continuing unabated. My analysis provides insight into why this is occurring now.

Different Drugs, Different Worlds

This has been a brief overview of salient characteristics of generational cultures of some past and current generations alongside a description of that generation’s predominant drug use. I simultaneously unveiled in some detail what we know about the effects of these particular substances on consciousness and attitudes. Finally, I discussed the behavior and beliefs that can coincide with the use of these drugs, as they affect consciousness in different ways, creating different kinds of consciousnesses, different perspectives, indeed entirely different and distinct ways of perceiving the self and the world.

This discussion of drug use and generational cultures might be complete enough at this point. Any of the many connections not specifically made should be readily apparent and the information being brought together this way is suggestive of much more. What I do not think needs to be spelled out is the obvious: For example, how alcohol and nicotine use could be correlated with a generation that could put a Hitler into power, create a holocaust, and carry out the most destructive war in this planet’s history. It should be obvious how marijuana use could be correlated with the alienation, pessimism, and defeatism of the Beats. It should be abundantly clear how the use of LSD and marijuana among Sixties youth could correlate with a disgust with normal society and culture and thus the creation, from scratch, of a counterculture, with a pacifism in regard to war, with a reemergence of a lived and individual spirituality, with an emphasis on real communication, with an attempt to create real community and relationships, and with much more that has been associated with them. And it should need no explanation how cocaine use could be correlated with a manic economy and irrational, overoptimistic schemes, and failed business ventures.

Painting the Faces of Generations

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I should point out that, except for the WWII Generation whose drugs were legal and easily available, the above is based on generalities and trends of a minority of the people in the generations mentioned. Yet it is that distinctive minority of any generation that paints the face that generation presents to the world. It is the differences in generations and the new ideas and perceptions that make up the intellectual currency of a period and which rise above the familiar scenery to be spotlighted by the media and press.

The “Beats” did not comprise the majority of their generation and not all of them took marijuana or even had the horrifying perception of our normal unreality that is possible on that drug, yet a number of them, larger than any previously in any other generation, did exactly that…and those who did were often compelled to express those perceptions and the accompanying ideas, in literature, poetry, theater, and the like, that would influence the reality constructions of the rest of their generation and would come to characterize the palpable ideas of the era.

So it is as well with the Sixties Generation, the Yuppies, and even Generation Xers and the Echo Generation. It is the differences between generations that is worthy of discussion. And it is my point that those differences are unusually correlated with the distinctive drug use of that generation and the effects that those drugs have on one’s perceptions of reality—a point that I have not seen explored before.

Drugs and Culture War

Finally, I wish to emphasize that these drug-influenced perceptions create the worldviews of generations out of which they create their generational cultures–the stark differences of which can fuel culture wars.

Continue on this site with

“Culture War, Class War, Chapter Five:

The King Won’t Die“

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Footnote

1.  The events and statistics about this concerted effort are detailed in my book-in-progress titled The Once and Current Generation: Regression, Mysticism, and “My Generation”…stay tuned. 

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2. I’m not the only one to notice this generation or to see the swings in political leanings from one generation to the next. Kevin Drum, writing in The Political Animal, on January 5th, 2008 called the generation the Eisenhower generation. He places this generation in time between the World War II generation and the “counterculture generation of the sixties.”

He describes the swings from Democrat to Republican–World War II gen, Democrat; Eisenhower gen, Republican; Sixties gen, Democrat; Generation X, Republicans; Gen Y (boomer Echo generation, Millennial Generation), Democrats. And he predicts a political coming of age for Gen Y in that year’s presidential election (2008), which is exactly what happened.

What I add to that is the obvious point that these swings coincide with the parents of each generation of these youth. Specifically, counterculture generation members voted Democratic like their World War II generation parents; Gen X youth went Republican like their Eisenhower generation parents; Gen Y or Echo youth are solidly Democratic in line with their Sixties generation parents.

He describes it as follows:

Democrats and the Youth Vote

Voters, like other consumers, develop brand loyalties early in life. The World War II generation, which came of age during the New Deal and cast its first votes for FDR and Harry Truman, sustained a Democratic majority for decades. Likewise, the Eisenhower generation that entered the workforce during the fifties remains Republican to this day; the counterculture generation of the sixties and seventies remains a Democratic stronghold; and “Gen X,” the famously angst-ridden generation that started voting in the eighties, continues to vote Republican as it enters middle age.

And today’s youth? Surprise! It turns out it’s a Democratic powerhouse. In the early nineties young voters began shifting rapidly toward the Democratic Party and haven’t looked back since, even after a Republican won the White House in 2000. Today, twenty-somethings lean Democratic by 52%-37%, an astonishing advantage of 15 percentage points. It’s a bigger gap than any other generation currently alive, and it’s already showing up in the voting booth. Last year, not only was turnout was up, but young voters cast their ballots for Democratic congressional candidates by 60% to 38%.

All of this might be no more than a temporary blip if it were caused merely by a combination of George W. Bush’s historically dismal disapproval ratings and dissatisfaction over a grinding, unpopular war in Iraq — both of which will eventually come to an end one way or another. But that’s not what the evidence suggests. After all, the Gen Y movement toward the Democratic Party began in the early 90s, long before either Bush or the Iraq war had taken center stage. What’s more, in a recent New York Times/MTV poll of 17-29 year olds, young people were actually more optimistic about the war in Iraq than the rest of the population. It’s true that they don’t like President Bush much, but the war really isn’t the driving factor.

So what is? The most likely, and ironic, answer is a different war: the culture war that was originally stoked by the Christian Right and then taken up as electoral salvation by Republicans starting in the early nineties. Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, famously believed the Christian Right to be the key to victory in 2000 and 2004, and recent Republican leaders from Newt Gingrich to Tom DeLay have embraced it with open arms.

But young people aren’t buying. Quite the contrary. For the most part, they’re turned off by the sex and gender fundamentalism that animates so much of the modern Republican Party’s social agenda. Polls show that most young voters are OK with abortion remaining legal. They have openly gay friends and are far more comfortable with gay marriage than their elders. They think that legalizing marijuana for personal consumption is common sense, not a sign of moral decay and the breakdown of western civilization.

So when Pat Buchanan declares that there’s “a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America” — as he did in prime time at the 1992 Republican convention — or when Jerry Falwell goes on national television and blames “the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” for bringing on 9/11, young voters cringe. And when the Republican Party embraces their agenda, they go off to vote for Democrats.

Over the past 20 years Democrats have found themselves consistently on the wrong side of conservative campaigns based on social wedge issues like these. But although these campaigns have produced short-term gains for the GOP, they seem to have done so only at the expense of long-term ruin. A generation that’s more secular, more sexually at ease, and more tolerant is increasingly casting its lot with the Democratic Party and is increasingly showing up at the polls to prove it. And unlike changes in the voting patterns of independents or soccer moms or other favorites of the political sociologists, this change is likely to be permanent. If Gen Y acts like previous generations, keeping its political loyalties essentially for life, it means that the past 20 years have produced a time bomb: an enormous reservoir of new Democratic voters who are just beginning to flex their electoral muscles. 2008 will be their coming out party.

Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

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Continue with

“Culture War, Class War, Chapter Five:

The King Won’t Die“

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Culture War Is Class War Disguised

Culture War Introduction

Culture War is dedicated to exposing the reality behind the biggest divide in America since the Civil War. It explores how this war was instigated and kept alive for forty years by certain elite powers, revealing how and why these privileged powers chose to benefit while tearing families in two and keeping America paralyzed.

This website looks into 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. We discover how their fear of 60s activism panicked them 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.

Finally, we see how this culture war continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, tax cuts for the "filthy rich" and corporations, budget battles and cuts in government services and entitlement programs, rampant anti-environmentalism, and anti-minority, anti-immigrant laws and attacks.

For example, we see rabid culture war in the abortion debate; attacks on unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and many other states; ever shrinking civil and human rights, including suspension of habeas corpus; runaway imprisonment of minorities and free-thinkers through egregious anti-drug and anti-sex/anti-gender laws; indefinite imprisonment without trial and torture of political prisoners; and much, much more. A few recent examples of the extremes of this attack include politicians like Congressman Barton who kowtow to corporations, even defending British Petroleum from having to pay for its atrocious oil spill, and a candidate—Republican of course—for the Arizona Senator's race who actually ran on the platform of doing away with Social Security and Medicare.

To continue, go to Part One, Culture War Beginnings: 50s through early 70s – Politics, Truth and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies.

Culture War, Part Eight: Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Part 1

Dire Prediction

A Message Arrives from Eleven Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events

We are disturbed reading that eleven years ago our present national situation was foreseen. Worse, we are reminded of what we lost; what could have been; how we’ve managed to block that from our memory in accepting the much diminished prospects now; but also how we should not forget; how we should remember how it happened; who was to blame; who helped and colluded in bringing it about, and why; so that, remembering, we might never let it happen again.

Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It

For we learn, worst of all, that our chance to progress, rather, just to survive, now depends on remembering. Because eleven years ago, in the year 2000, all that’s happened since could easily have been prevented if only we had not allowed ourselves to be talked into forgetting the history of only eight years prior to that.

This is a serious and thoughtful piece, which everyone would do well to know if we are to survive another fifty years, not to mention a century or longer. Still, I am not the sort to feel that facing harsh realities means we need go around glumly, martyr-like, in sack-cloth and ashes. Rather, I feel we might as well enjoy and make use of all the God-given abilities we have whatever the outcome of our efforts.

So don’t be surprised that this exposition is aided by guest appearances making their points in hilarious fashion.

If you’ve never heard George Bush as Bluto from Animal House, you’ve got to.

Wolf Blitzer is not recognized for being a comic, but when he goes on to explain to his faithful viewers how they’ve been lied to and manipulated for years, because of pressure from the Administration, and how grateful he is for their gullibility as he is receiving promotions and honors because his viewership is polling the highest in mindlessly accepting the concocted view, well we see many new sides of Wolf.

Thought-provoking but funny, another thing he explains is that their incredible success over the years in getting people to believe and or to forget whatever they want, has resulted in their having a little celebration consisting of an experiment as well…which they hope will bring them in even tighter with the now all-powerful Administration.

The celebration-experiment consists of a documentary in which the entire truth of the multiyear campaign to lie, deceive, and to control minds is laid out. And the experiment part is that they are certain that the next day and ever afterwards when such thing ever being aired is denied, the people will completely forget it and believe they must have been mistaken. Wolf signs off: “One last reminder on our special tonight, the documentary, “Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story and How, this Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over six Years, We Can Now Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” Tune in, don’t miss it; You’re sure to forget it.”

Ok, I’m gettin myself off the floor I was laughin so hard I couldn’t help myself. Ok, now to a more serious part.  [Continued below audio]

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more Silly Mickel’s Calling The Noble In Spirit: Wake Up Sound Clips and Michael Jackson And The Authentic Life Sound Clips

Time Capsule Discovered

Not long after Bush left office, I unearthed, March 9, 2009, 9:49am, three never finished drafts of an article I intended to publish on my website prior to the 2000 Presidential election involving Bush v Gore. Stuffed and interwoven among the electrons of the backups of old computers, I had completely forgotten ever having written any of it.

Engulfed, indeed, pushed around and battered within the intensity and sharpness of recent political, geopolitical, and economic and financial forces of late, I was shocked to see the words, written a decade earlier, which, desperately intoning, warned of specific dire happenings should George W. Bush be elected. For it seemed those exact words, of so long ago, had just been lifted from the headlines and front pages of today’s daily news.

At any rate, I certainly thought at first that I was reading something about the current collapse when I read what I had written in early 2000. I think I’ve said way too much without providing some meat—what kinds of things did I find? OK, in mid-2000, long before Bush was put in power and had a chance to show anything at all of what kind of President he would be, I wrote these words concerning what I thought would be the result of a George W. Bush getting elected:

[If Bush gets elected in 2000,] “I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.

Prophetic? Eerie? I don’t know quite what to make of it.  [Footnote 1]

Reading more, this popped to my attention:

So is this election important? I believe it is. For me it is especially important, for I feel that if the Republicans take over, they will do so much to damage to the dreams of my generation that even if the Democrats were to be reelected to all branches of government in 4 or 8 years, they will do so much damage (the example of Reagan-Bush nearly QUADRUPLING the National Debt in their mere 12 years being the perfect example) that My Generation will have to clean up their mess afterward, taking more years. And only then will we be in a position to progress in this country and world and bring it more in line with the ideals of peace, love, community, and harmony we envisioned in the Sixties.

Now back to 2011.

The obvious but hidden becomes visible by contrast.  Though I had foreseen it, I couldn’t have felt more helpless. I was made to face the fact that America’s, indeed the world’s, prospects for regaining a financial footing, whereas a mere decade ago looked like lift off, now was predicted as decades off. And that just to regain an ordinariness of life, with some saying that Americans will never again, ever, enjoy the standard of living they once took for granted.

It certainly disturbed me and got me to wondering and then to writing.

It saddens me what could have been. Reading it, I am stunned by how we’ve managed to vanquish from our minds and our media the insane, chaotic, and truly awful outlines of our times, as the events of the last decade crept daily into our lives and world and shaped them and it in drastic ways that we can discern only by the contrast. It was such a slow and gradual change, you see.

These unpolished catscans of a mind and time provide such a contrast, stark and shocking.

Concerning Time Capsule, I have much to say, much have I remembered, and much have I reviewed in my mind observing the timeline of these events and the changes in the social and cultural scenery, and in people themselves as these events happened over the last decade, one following another changing us all. I will make myself clearer following the text of the former piece below.

Dire Vision, Revelation

But before going into either my writing from 2000 or the recent events that it shows more clearly by contrast, I wish for you to consider how I felt coming across this piece that so clearly laid out the future and the fact that these ideas were not brought out into the media. I wish for you to get a notion of what went through me as I mused upon the abject failure of our media to remember history so as to keep from repeating it.

Words from a Decade Ago Come Back to Haunt, Sadden, Provoke, Enlighten, Motivate

How would you feel if you found out for sure that you foresaw in an eerily accurate way the events over the last decade before they happened? Sometimes we all have a sense of what the future is likely to bring forth. Everyone, in fact, has some working model of the future.

But be honest you’ll probably acknowledge those models of the future are almost always some kind of continuation of the present and of the recent past, perhaps with a few technological advances thrown in. And usually, being the hopeful optimists we must be in order to continue our daily efforts, we envision something that is at least somewhat a progression. Something a little better at least.

What if you foresaw an exact reversal of the current trends, including an economic debacle, recession, market crash nine years before it happened? And even that it would happen about the time it did? You could think yourself prophetic; it could pump up your ego. 

However if you also knew that you did not pick those predictions out of the air, but that you also had lived through a similar period in the past, if you also had decades of experience, intensively witnessing the deepest patterns of people’s minds, as a facilitator and deep feelings therapy as it was, and all kinds of minds, so that you knew something about what really moved people, and you added to that your own multidecade exploration of your own mind and motivations lying deeper and deeper all the way to the roots of your being…I went through primal therapy is what I am saying, as well as therapies like that…so that you had a pretty comprehensive view of what caused you to be who you were, and then along with this understanding of others and yourself you also had been an avid observer and participant of the social and cultural movements over the decades going back to the Fifties….

Well then you might attribute the prophecy as being an astute but quite expected conclusion arising from the visible evidence of the times, and nothing eerie, supernatural…premonition or anything like that.

But then you are no important person, pundit, or professional prognosticator. You have written and achieved moderate success in your field and you had been receiving invitations to write or be interviewed for other publications, but your social, political, and cultural commentary have been met mostly with silence.

Even among those who followed your writings concerning the mind and psychology, its origins and its changes over millennia and the current context and how it might be affected. And even attributed superlatives to your xxx that you knew better than to just notice and put behind you.

No. Pretty much just silence about your cultural stuff, your social commentary. The masses have not come scrambling to your door nor have you been invited to write on such topics or seen doors of professional opportunity open for you. You expect that you are not unusual in your perceptions and any contrary thought is met with the fact that there has been a virtual silent response to your ideas. You feel that other people have similar predictions inside themselves. Isn’t that what you would think?

But then these events unfold over the years, as you predicted, and…and this is surprising…without exception the experts, the paid prognosticators and pundits all of them, to a person, bemoan wearily the complete inability of anyone to have foreseen any of what transpired on each of these things, as the years go on.

And to a person they talk as if these things came completely out of nowhere, a freakish weather pattern or an act of God, falling to Earth like the frozen chemicalized ice bombs of jetliner rest room waste or the lightning bolt out of some dark mysterium tremendum hovering high in the sky above us, but in no way having any roots in any previous events.

No, these people, these commentators on events that you see nitely and whose every word is broadcast into the minds of multimillions, who knows, billions? and then often repeated again, … they have another show or…or more than once…their very words are echoed by other commentators around the world, and in the United States, they’re echoed far and wide by people and in all countries afterward.

These people with such immeasurable power to reach and influence the minds of a global populace. Well they also went through the same events as you, as proven by their age. Yet they also do never mention the times before that were so similar as to cause you earlier to make the obvious conclusions you made. Now, in retrospect those obvious near exact patterns of events of the not so long ago are not mentioned by them.

Specifically, I remembered what happened with the Reagan-Bush tax cuts and how we went into a great recession that resulted in Clinton getting elected and so on. Eight years and Clinton creates a budget surplus and eight years of Bush and nobody’s mentioning even as he’s doing his first tax cut and blowing the surplus that this didn’t work last time. But through the years mind you did any of those events of the not so long ago up till 1992. instead an attitude of we’re just a human and nobody could have known predominates.

Well this would cause you to ponder, would it not? How could so many people, people whose job it is to do so, not connect the obvious thoughts you and others did a decade ago and now even in retrospect they are unable to. Some of the possibilities are that the people who are speaking for everyone have not risen to their levels on their abilities but that something else is behind their rise to positions to speak and shape the thoughts of the multimillions. Yea.

You might also ponder then if better more astute prognosticators and analysts were being kept out of the positions of influence intentionally. Yea. And so on. How else do you explain it?

What it would come down to is you have to ask yourself are you somehow the only one who is capable of making predictions from the recent past, which might make you feel good if you have some problem in your life which made you doubt your abilities but which, if you continue to think that way, would have you living in a world of your own that did not have any ties to reality, you not what I mean.

Or, if humble and astute enough and not so desperately needy for a pleasant thought about oneself, you would have to ask yourself to consider more seriously the prospect that the media reaction may very well be an unexpected part of the original prediction.

If we’d lost freedom of speech and of the press, would you find out about it on the news?

Now consider if one had predicted an erosion of basic rights, and that had come to pass, basic human rights, like from the Bill of Rights, why would not freedom of speech and of the press be part of that erosion. Thinking more deeply would it not have been a necessary part of the erosion of the rest?

For if the press had been doing its job, would it not have been acting as protectors of our rights in decrying any assaults, proclaiming any  intrusions, documenting any erosions, and so on, in the uncountable ways it has done in the past? Would that not have been a second “2” which added to the other “2” makes sense out of the “4” you are observing and trying to understand? (two plus two equals four.)

But as usually happens when stumbling on the hidden but obvious other, sometimes laughably obvious correlates come to mind.

If Freedom of Speech and of the Press had been part of the erosion in human rights—the rights laid out by our Bill of Rights—well, who would be researching, detailing, proclaiming, or making documentaries about it? The Press? HA!

In order to give you a sense of the way I began viewing things, after the Time Capsule’s revelations, I’d like to take you on a little journey, a little reverie that may provide a glimpse ahead, perhaps an understanding of the unbelievable, as a journey through the looking glass can often do.

So in answering the question above: If freedom of speech and the press were rescinded who would tell you? I would say that it would be one “revolution” that would not be televised, for starters. 

“Well, of course,” you think, cynically, “surely they would have done lots of things.”

Yes, I respond dryly, one of them might have gone like this:

Wolf Blitzer – Freedom of the Press, Repealed

“This is Wolf Blitzer. Tonight, tune in as CLN details the way we, and the rest of the mass media, have been slowly but relentlessly pressured and bullied into presenting the views of the party in power, the Republicans; how we have learned it to be in our interests, if we were to continue unobstructed, to eliminate more and more of the voices contrary to those in power. You will hear how we learned techniques of deception of our own so that we could seem to be presenting a range of views but how we could easily get the viewer to conclude that the party pressuring us was the most credible. How? 

“Tune in and learn how we matched the words of sophisticated and savvy talking heads from the Administration against the least informed and least polished of those on the opposition, and how we managed a game…which we termed, keep-out-the-insightful…of politely putting off, through excuses of saying we were focusing on areas not in their realm at the present, and a multitude of such ploys, as years went by and they began to doubt their currency and thus doubted themselves and no longer sought to air their views in any but much smaller venues.

“So that’s how we managed to get the intelligent opposition away.

“Or even letting people knowing that they were still around or alive. In fact we were able to get people to think that those people had simply changed their minds and were believing what everybody else was believing, or something.

“But, anyway: Tune in to see how mass media like ourselves were able, because of our collectively acting in the same way, having been pressured toward the exact same ends by the one power in America currently, the Republicans and the “filthy rich” owners of our corporations—being essentially one and the same with one being the public and the other the private faces of the same group—were able to cast doubt…the newscasters were able to cast doubt…into the minds of seasoned intelligent and astute analysts as to their worth and currency and that of their ideas in the current era, making them feel that their time had come and gone and that personally they were has-beens, as at the same time we were recruiting the least able and the most naïve to take their places. 

“Other ploys: See how we kept media favorites who opposed the administration and who were astute observers and witty, articulate communicators for their side, how we kept them on the dole and were even able to reap the profits of their appearances but how we slyly undermined their positions in myriad sly ways, using known effects of time of day scheduling, competition in particular time slots, sequencing of segments within shows, and of the shows themselves in the lineup—you know, placement of shows and so on—all in ways to discredit them and garner the least audience for these voices.

“But still, we reap the benefits of having them on the show and collecting the advertising money. Additionally, we just look better in seeming to be more balanced.

“So, in our documentary, see how we maintained our position and survived an assault on the Press, by caving in to the dictatorial demands of a Party that also essentially owned us, surreptitiously of course, but how we managed to fool the public  that we had in any way done so; how we managed at times to fool the public that we were their adversaries for truth and a counterbalance, as the Fourth Estate traditionally had been, to the powers of government and wealth, while in fact we were totally their tools in concocting the realities we were told to and muddying or ignoring the truths that came our way that would have been illuminating to the public presented fairly, but would have undermined the position we were pressured to present.

“So, tonight, our special documentary, “Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story, and How—This Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Six Years—We Can Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” 

“Be sure to tune in or TiVo it. For it is just a little fun we are allowing ourselves—that of spilling the beans about what is really behind the things we bring to you as actual events and true analysis—as a kind of celebration of the thoroughness of our success, and as a proof to the administration at how thoroughly we have manipulated your thinking that we can dare to lay it all out and feel certain that it will fail to enlighten a single one of you, in fact we feel it will aid us in an aspect of our campaign—that of keeping you confused so that you will be dependent on us for your conclusions.

“Especially when tomorrow evening and from now on, there will be no mention that this documentary ever existed, it will be expunged from all lists and archives and thoroughly be extracted and destroyed, as if it never existed.

“At that time we will begin…we’re already assuming our success here…and we’re planning a comprehensive campaign to add to our success so far in confusing and then convincing the public of the Administration’s version of events, and to add to our favor with the now sole power in America…basically to suck up to them…we will have begun a calculated effort that we have designed that we think will be very successful and that you will enjoy, of the slow elimination, first, of American’s, of your collective memory of your past, beginning with the most recent and then, hopefully if successful and of course with your help, will continue further into the past; and following right behind the elimination of memory—no, we’re not going to tell you exactly how, now that wouldn’t be very game-spirited of us would it? Naw.

“Although, no one but you and I here now, I’ll give you a hint—confusion, for one, has been found to be extremely powerful in clouding out the details of memory—now, that’s all I’m gonna say, and believe me, if I wasn’t so totally convinced that we have been so successful that we can tell you just about anything and get away with it, then I wouldn’t have even said that.

“But of course, I am. That’s why people like me still have these jobs, while—gad, for a second there I almost said, my god just like it were the old days, I almost said, while “you may have noticed the losses and demotions of many formerly household names here at CLN who haven’t been as cooperative, supportive, committed, or as convinced, as I certainly am, of our ability to totally manipulate your thinking, as we wish.”

“Yea, I almost said that. But then that would have assumed that you had remembered any of them. Oh. Old habits are hard to drop.

“And anyway, I have to say I have my viewership to thank for that…for my success. Sincerely, I owe a great debt of gratitude to you folks who regularly tune in to my show in particular.

“Why, the absolute malarkey that I was putting out to you, slowly at first, not feeling totally convinced of your gullibility, I mean, still in those days it was pretty irrational and unbelievable bull droppings, completely concocted out of only the hot air emanating from egotistical rants of those whose sole desire is only to comfort and enslave you. 

“Yet, the pollings that came in showed that I could practically fart out these concoctions and you would swallow them whole like tasty confections! I truly began to feel that I was like Moses bringing nightly the stone tablets; such was the utter inability among the masses of you to evaluate in any way what you were being fed. 

“My colleagues say that my success is my beard and frizzy hair—part patriarchal, paternal, Moses-like, as well as appealing to My Generation base of long hairs and facial hair valuing; to which we added my supposed background as a member of a Sixties band and interest in current rock music—we felt we needed to do more to convince them, with their tradition of question authority and all—and, well, we must’ve got some of them at least because the polls were overwhelming in their insistence on my staunch credibility. 

“So, I just want to say again that my success is owed completely to you, my viewers, and your unbelievably vapid minds, inane gullibility, or busied, stressed, overworked, or threatened existences as to make you grasp at anything outside as being of more substance than what you feel inside, and perhaps more pleasant.

“But whatever it is, thank you, and keep it up. In this next experiment, I’m sure you’ll show up, among all the segments of our viewership, as being the least able to remember and the easiest to forget what we will tell you later tonight. I’m sure you can do it.  I’m counting on you.

“Oh, but now I’m forgetting. Sorry, I just got caught up in a wave of heartfelt gratitude to you all. The high ratings you give me and the solid staunch belief in my credibility that comes so high in the pollings, well they just … just that I get choked up … sorry, folks … this part is between me and you and … well, you’ll forget it anyway, if it’s decided by the Deciders later, that you can’t have it … so between us, well, how do you thank someone who has taken you from the ratings floor to the moon? How do you thank someone who has given up their reason, their very reason and rationality, for your success? You see, I take it as a kind of personal affection you must have towards me….

“And that wasn’t me trying intentionally to sound like Bill Clinton at all. No it wasn’t….

“How do you thank someone who has given up their reason and rationality…their individuality for your success?

“You see? I take it as a kind of personal affection you must have towards me when…who you don’t even know, to be so willing  to be the greatest mass of idiot viewers on TV, getting the prize certainly.

“Because, you know, I simply can’t imagine that people exist who could be so unbelievably lacking in reason, intelligence, or simply the ability to remember what we say from one night to the next, as to swallow so hungrily the pig slop that I’ve been out here portraying as accurate, unbiased, etc. HA. Ha. Oh, the drivel we won’t say.

“So, unless somehow they’ve managed to create people with air balloons for brains… ha, ha…… No, No, no. Sorry, my friends, my bad on that. Let me assure you that has not happened. No, there are no people who’s heads are actually balloons. Believe me, OK?

“Ok, then, what I’m saying is that unless the greatest percentage of you is vapid minded or brain dead—and that I don’t believe folks—then the only thing could be that you folks really care about me and making me a success as to sacrifice your own thought, reason, and individuality.

“Well, yea, I’m sure you’re getting something out of it too, Y’know. I’m sure it helps having not to think and being able to just tune in nightly to be told what’s true and what to believe and never to be given anything unsettling or contrary as to cause you to be upset and have those horrible feelings of uncertainty. 

“So, anyway, we get it, we get each other, and together let’s go make newscasting history—if they’ll ever keep an accurate one… hmmm… oh well.

“But at least for now, going back to what I was telling you about our next big wave of … well, some on our side might call it mind control or even enslavement … but you and I know that you’re better off with us giving you your reality, your memories, your beliefs. I’m sure you’ve all realized by now that we’re doing a whole lot better than the crappy reality you all had before we started helping you out.

“So the exciting next phase, as I was saying, begins with the slow elimination of recent memory, then memory further back. And to put it in a nutshell: We’re going to give you new happier memories, and interpretations of those memories that you’ll just relish. Just like we’ve recreated your present by substituting confusing reality with simple heart-warming, however untrue, views and perceptions.

“Well, together we’ve been so successful that we’re going to show our gratitude by doing the same for your past. Of course, in pleasing our Deciders, it will be the grand events of the past, the ones that are in their interest to change, that will be conveniently removed and replaced by versions to suit them, but you can trust us, you’ll much prefer, in fact we guarantee, you’ll enjoy what we give you.

“And, be patient, once we’ve been able to do that; you’re going to have to help of course… of course you will; with that accomplished, we’ll be able to help more and more with your personal memories. Not too long now, and you’ll have wonderful happy memories—we’ll have taken your miserable real ones and instead we will give you these happy memories, splendid memories that will completely buttress the views that we’ve been feeding you, giving you personal, unreal, memories of personal experiences that prove the validity of the beliefs that we’ve caused you to have.

“And believe you me, we’re going to load it up with goodies of all kinds—ice cream dates, Christmases perfect and loving, Fourth of July celebrations and innocent love under the fireworks—but that’s enough. Just you be assured, your gonna have your very own “Happy Days” for a personal past. Our guarantee at CLN – the Central Lying News.

“Now, back to regular programming, save one last reminder on our special tonight, the documentary, ‘Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story, and How—This Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Six Years—We Can Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” Tune in, don’t miss it; You’re sure to forget it.’”

***

Well, thanks, Wolf. You’re a real trip, man. But anyway, back to reality, er, some version of it. After that little trip into a parallel, bizarre universe that might actually be closer to the truth than we would like to realize…I think a lot of us would like to know how true it is…

Anyway, let’s take a look at that catscan from the past that I was talking about.

Paranoid? Prophetic?

So these writings I will reproduce here for your consideration. The entire piece is on the long side, I’m sorry to say, but if you, like me, are a real political junky, I think you’ll find a lot of meaty stuff. Substantial and important zeitgeists of that time are I believe made palpable.

However do keep in mind the date on the upcoming writing. The last date this piece was even touched was, as determined by the “date modified” figure, exactly August 19th, 2000, at 9:41pm. That date, so long ago in my memory, really shocked me, especially in terms of the parallels with events today that were equally salient then.  [Footnote 2]

Considering what is going on right now in our political arenas, it may seem so tangible that you may forget that it is not about today. So I must stress that in no way, even slightly, was this writing altered to influence you or anything. This is exactly the way it was, with incomplete editing, mistakes, and all. 

Okay, my bad. I feel the need to pause here and to make the most sincere qualification about what I’m attempting to show and how I’m insisting on garnering the utmost I can of integrity and credibility for this investigation. So, we pause for this qualification:

Let there be no misunderstanding of what is written and why it is included, editing incomplete. First, it reads pretty well, as is, as it had a good deal of editing, before it fell through the cracks, as other things came into my life and kept me from getting back to it. But it seems a little choppiness or even confusion around certain phrasings is far superior than to have its authenticity as being the exact creation of that mind of eleven years in the past at all questioned.

So, however you look at it, I neither remembered, but I also did not want to change a thing, and I needed to show that I didn’t, so that I would be believed on this entire premise. As it will become clearer, the fact that this could have been written and certain things foreseen is not just an anomaly, nor is it an ego trip.

You will see it goes against a particular mindset that we’ve been led to believe over the last eight years is all that can be expected of us humans, even when we somehow rise to the highest positions in a government.

I’ve already related about my astonished feelings at having come across this long forgotten piece of writing. I repeat that it will be reproduced exactly as found, without even changing obvious typos or even confusions of grammar. The least I could do would be to do all I could to avoid any suspicion that it was somehow tainted or, god forbid, that anything was added, that any wording coming out of today’s media was included to bolster my case.

Ultimately you can choose to be suspicious of its validity, but I can only do what I can to allay as much suspicion as possible. I know that basically you only have my word on this. I can only say that I feel no need to puff myself up nor do I care if you don’t see what I think is obviously there.

And that’s the thing, you see. If you suspect its validity, then the things that it has to teach us and the illumination that came to me, will be lost on any one too suspicious. But then, getting back to Earth now, for what purpose would I pull such a stunt!? After all this is not a high-stakes ploy. What would I be gaining by lying? I could have written this up without bringing in this document, too.

So do what you will. I’m convinced that a little common sense will reveal to most folks that there’s little gained by any contrivance on my part, and that, when you hear the things that this incident provoked in my awareness, I think you will not think them anything but reasonable on their own merits. The document is just a convenient mirror in which we can see things that we mostly know, and here’s the point, that somehow we have been taught to forget, lately, mostly without our realizing it, and since intentional, why it would be done.

It’s Not Paranoid if It Really Happens

You need to see this not-quite-finished article to really understand why I would be shocked at what I said back then. One might even say that some of the things I was saying were paranoid. Which makes an interesting point. Here we have a “case study,” actual hard evidence that what would have sounded “paranoid” then is now part of American’s knowledge of recent history. So, paranoid or prophetic, guess they can be hard to tell apart.

Anyway here is the untainted mirror into the visions of a mind and its eleven-year ago meanderings. Do parts of it seem really like they are out of today’s news? Why would that be when these two presidents—Clinton and Bush—are so different? And then do you see the huge contrast between the way things were seen then and the way we look at our world today? Any and all comments are welcome. Really astute ones are especially appreciated. It follows:

What They Succeeded in Having Us Believe

It was titled, “Can America Afford to Go in the Bushes?” Subtitled, “What They Succeeded in Having Us Believe and America’s Last Chance to Realize the Ideals of a Generation”

“Stay Out the Bushes!”

Yet Little Talk of Scandal Arose.  At the Democratic Convention this past week, Jesse Jackson exhorted us “Stay out the Bushes”! His chant was echoed by the convention-goers, creating, arguably, the most dramatic event of the convention (though, since it was blacked out of all networks save C-Span, you probably didn’t see it)1 He was referring to voting for George W. Bush for President, of course. But he gave examples of what his brother (“Baby Bush” as Jesse told it) did as Governor of Florida and George W.’s father (“Papa Bush,” according to Jesse) did as President. He pointed out the heinous record of the Bush family, point by point, until he had the house rockin with “Stay out the Bushes!” It was clear that Jesse felt America could not afford the disaster of another Bush presidency.

Cut to another time, on the convention floor, when doing the roll call for electing the President, a delegate from my former home state of Colorado made mention of how another Bush son (I think he said Neils Bush) had run from Colorado in shame after squandering two-hundred million dollars (someone might correct me on the exact amount) of Coloradan’s money in risky and unethical ventures when he was at the helm of a major Savings and Loan Corporation there. This was back in the days of the Savings and Loan scandal.

Despite the fact that the Republicans, including George Bush Senior, pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out these corrupt banking officers at that time, little talk of scandal arose. This, even though it was said at the time that our grandchildren would still be paying, as taxpayers, on these hundreds of billions of dollars in S&L bailouts. Yet little talk of scandal arose.

This is What They’ve Succeeded in Having Us Believe

Instead, years later, the media piled onto the flimsiest of evidence concerning Democratic President Bill Clinton and the supposed “Whitewater” scandal. Though, despite years of digging by an unlimitedly funded Special Prosecutor, they came up empty on anything illegal on the Clintons, the media was tireless in raising its voice in slandering our sitting Democratic President and his wife. It is my recollection also that the amount of money involved in the supposed scandal of Whitewater was a tiny fraction of that squandered by the Bush son (not to mention that involved in the entire S&L scandal)—I believe it was two million or less, making it about one-hundredth or less of that involved in Bush’s Colorado S&L scandal. Despite these facts, the media had the American people believing that this was a story of so much importance and was such a scandal that it was often compared with Nixon’s Watergate scandal. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

So, what is my point?

Speaking to mostly Nader voters, and especially to “My Generation,” I wish to pose this question: What have the Republicans accomplished in the last few decades? More correctly, what has the Shadow Government accomplished since the coup de etat, involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, which installed the Shadow Government, with its figurehead Lyndon Johnson at the highest levels of our government and has kept it there ever since except during the brief Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter and during the Clinton Presidency? Oh, but you say you thought Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and that he was a lone, crazed gunman, who alone plotted and perpetrated the assassination? Very interesting. Well, this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

So a little history lesson for starters . . . for those who don’t know: You thought the “Conspiracy Theory” of JFK’s assassination was something that was put out by Oliver Stone in his movie, “JFK,” and has been roundly repudiated. I know, I watched the movie and I watched the reaction on TV. I’ll never forget the segment on CBS, with Dan Rather, which was announced as being a looking into the claims put out by Stone in his movie. I sat, amazed, as Rather focused on a few peripheral issues in the movie—ones that I do not even remember being IN the movie—and, proving them inaccurate, concluded that the movie “JFK” was pure fiction. Of course this is a common ploy to avoid dealing with an issue. It is diversion and distraction from the real issues, but it has a particular name: “setting up a straw man.” In discrediting SOMETHING, Rather was claiming to have discredited EVERYTHING. The whole show rested on his credibility with the American people. People who had not seen the movie came away convinced that the movie’s plot and details were spun out of thin air. Those of us who saw the movie were silenced by the weight of CBS and Dan Rather and the influence they carry. (Interestingly, I have been told that Rather himself was in Dallas that day, as a journalist covering the story, when Kennedy was killed. Coincidence?)

But what was that, a decade ago? Times have changed. Only two weeks ago, I saw on the History Channel a series called “The Men Who Killed Kennedy.” It spelled out in detail and with videotaped interviews of people close to the conspiracy and photos of the other men involved in the shooting just who killed Kennedy, who was behind it, who ordered it, and how it was carried out. There were in fact four gunman. They were hired by the Mafia outside this country—it was not clear just who had hired them, but it was people in this country. And it was clear that people in the CIA, the FBI, and the local Dallas police were involved. It was also made clear that people as high up as Earl Warren, former Supreme Court Justice, were involved as they had gone along with it in putting out the Warren Commission Report—a pack of lies. But don’t take my word for it. You can see the documentary on the History channel yourself. I’m sure they will be playing it again and again.

But the upshot is that we had a coup in this country. That is in fact the last thing that was said in the documentary. It was said that this truth should come out so that people can know that it is not only Third-World undeveloped countries that can have coups; that in fact the source of worldwide democracy can itself have one, and indeed has had one in its recent past.

But the media in this country is still covering it up. This should be front-page news. It is not. The myth of the lone gunman and that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy still stands. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

Furthermore, since Kennedy was assassinated, we accomplished several major things in this country: a major revised tax structure that took from the poor and gave to the rich in the Eighties—called the largest transfer of wealth in American history; the escalation and deeper involvement in a Vietnam War—costing many human lives, but benefitting the defense contractors (Kennedy was shot within a short time of his telling his advisors that he was going to back out of our involvement in Vietnam); the increased concentration of power in huge multinational countries [sic. What was meant was “corporations”][Continued below audio]

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more History Unspun The Smoke, Lies, And Revelations Sound Clips and The Once And Future News Sound Clips

“Believe We Are in Grave Danger”

But the media in this country is still covering it up. This should be front-page news. It is not. The myth of the lone gunman and that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy still stands. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

Furthermore, since Kennedy was assassinated, we accomplished several major things in this country: a major revised tax structure that took from the poor and gave to the rich in the Eighties—called the largest transfer of wealth in American history; the escalation and deeper involvement in a Vietnam War—costing many human lives, but benefitting the defense contractors (Kennedy was shot within a short time of his telling his advisors that he was going to back out of our involvement in Vietnam); the increased concentration of power in huge multinational countries [sic. What was meant was “corporations”]

— many of whose revenues exceed that of half of the nations on the globe; and more recently, the defeat of a universal national health care plan along with a right-wing conspiracy (it has been proven, folks) against Bill and Hillary Clinton that has been going on since he took office in 1993. These are just a few; I haven’t even mentioned the obvious ones like Contragate and our illegal involvement in the affairs of Latin American countries. Now, all of this may sound paranoid. But this is what they’ve succeeded in having you believe

What else have they succeeded in having us believe?

I recently received an e-mail from someone who responded to my Musepapers supporting Clinton regarding the Lewinsky scandal. He started his tirade with this “Clinton’s a loser.” Clinton a loser? Clinton—only one of three presidents in the last fifty years of this country to succeed in getting elected a second time and having a full eight-year term. In fact, he is the only Democrat to accomplish that since FDR. And what did Clinton accomplish as Governor of Arkansas? What was it, some kind of record I think, since they have elections for Governors every two years there I believe. Anyway, I think he was elected to the governorship something like ten times. And then there is this guy, calling me “Dude,” telling me that Clinton is a loser. I wonder who this guy is, and what he has accomplished in his life that he can call one of the most popular and elected public figures of our time a loser. But, isn’t that what we do? We see outside what we hold inside. Something tells me that this “dude” guy knows a lot more about being a “loser,” than Clinton will ever know. Still, with the media’s help, he thinks he has the right to pile on this besieged President, making claims about him that are absolutely dishonest on the plain surface of them. But this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

At the Democratic National Convention, Clinton was skewered by the media about his, supposedly “cheesy” long walk down through the halls to the auditorium as he was coming to make his speech. I found out only last night, for days there had been a feeding frenzy on this issue—one fat commentator saying it was the most “narcissistic” display he has seen in politics in his life. Then I find out only last night, days after this frenzy had been allowed to go on, that, in fact the major news networks, owned by the wealthy and the large corporations had taken the video of Clinton’s walk and deleted something crucial that would make it have meaning to those of us who watched. It turns out that the program called for captions to be put up, during Clinton’s long walk, on the bottom of the screen, detailing the accomplishments of this man’s administration over seven and a half years. If it were anyone else—a Republican like Bush Senior or Reagan—this would have been considered an aspect of simply honoring the hard work the man has done for the country. It would have been considered an honor he deserved, which he does (his accomplishments on turning around the country are unequaled in American history). But the major networks DELETED the captions and deliberately made Clinton look bad. They called the walk, the “rock star” walk. They called it cheesy and narcissistic. Yet it only appeared so because the networks made it so. This is unheard of! You would never see the media interfering in the scripted programs of a Republican Convention. Yet this part of the script was denied the American people. Despite the fact that Clinton enjoys a 60+% approval rating—higher even than Reagan or Eisenhower did at this time in their presidencies (and, by the way, these are the only two presidents who, as mentioned above, served a full eight years in office)—the networks decided to make Clinton look bad by changing the script. How is this any different than, say, turning off the mike on him or one of the any other speakers when the media doesn’t like what is being said. So this is an example of the media creating the news, not simply “reporting” it. Clinton’s walk was supposed to be a summary of his accomplishments in office, which 60+% of the American people would have liked to see. It was not supposed to be a “cheesy” or “narcissistic” walk. Still it was reported in this way by the pundits and commentators and the journalists and anchorpersons on all the major networks (including and especially the ones that deleted the captions to make the walk appear that way). So this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

The night of the convention on which Joe Lieberman talked I heard him refer to previous presidents at one point and the last two of the four were “Reagan, and Clinton.” This is what I heard; live on TV, with my own ears. Afterwards I came across a floor commentator state, in trying to keep alive the slander/scapegoating of Clinton, that it is noteworthy that Lieberman mentioned Reagan and significantly and deliberately left out Clinton. Yet no correction of these things ever occurs. One wonders if they are so caught up in their Pain and their hate or their desire to create a story, add to the drama, or whatever, that the TV journalist in question actually simply blocked out, in his mind, the next two words after the word “Reagan” and never heard them. This is in keeping with psychological understandings of what folks do to their very experience and reality. But the news media and our networks have lots of money to try to get the facts right. And they would have us believe that we have an unbiased news media, despite the evidence of our own ears. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

I received an e-mail from someone who called me naïve in supporting the Iraqi bombing. Hussein propped up and made by the CIA. But this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

What else they have accomplished in this country. The mean-spiritedness. The cynicism.

Surely the tactic of scapegoating is a major human defense. Slander. I’ve seen it used recently on myself and my wife by an organization with which we were not too long ago heavily involved. Despite the fact that the media’s primei way of commenting on events is to undo any good in any event that it is reporting on, they blame the lack of interest in the election and the lack of on the politicians. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

Throughout the eight years of this administration constant mention of the rumors and the leaks but woeful and begrudging of the coverage of the great and grand things this administration has achieved. From the Right, Clinton can’t get away with anything; from the Left, Clinton can’t get credit for anything. But this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted. Take HMO I have a sister…But she has been and probably still will be voting Republican. She’s certain that it is the Democrats who are at fault. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

My spiritual teacher says we live in the Kali Yuga. It is the most unrighteous of times. A time in which black is portrayed as white and vice-versa. It is only an understanding this extreme that can assuage the frustration my wife and I feel when we tune in on the social hypocrisy and lying that we see on a daily basis on our TV screens.

Yet the talk shows are flooded with talk of hatred of Clinton and Democrats and talk of how….

In fact, just yesterday, Hillary Clinton, after spending uncountable amounts of money to bring down her and her husband was absolved of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater suppose “scandal.” This supposed “scandal” has hung over the White House for almost the entire Clinton presidency. Yet despite an unlimited amount of time and money they are able to come up with exactly zero on the Clintons. Yet, they say there is no right-wing conspiracy in this country. Well, this is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

So is this election important? I believe it is. For me it is especially important, for I feel that if the Republicans take over, they will do so much to damage to the dreams of my generation that even if the Democrats were to be reelected to all branches of government in 4 or 8 years, they will do so much damage (the example of Reagan-Bush nearly QUADRUPLING the National Debt in their mere 12 years being the perfect example) that My Generation will have to clean up their mess afterwards, taking more years. And only then will we be in a position to progress in this country and world and bring it more in line with the ideals of peace, love, community, and harmony we envisioned in the Sixties.

So what I mean is that if we fail in the next 80 days, I can envision no more time of real hope again, for this country or the world, until I am in my Sixties, Seventies, or older. And then, even then, there will be no real hope. For as it is said of the poor, these forces of regression, Cowboy shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot, cynicism, and—let us call it what it really is: evil—will always be with us.

I think if Gore loses, my wife and I might just move to Canada. Though with the increased nuclear threat, the global pollution, which the Republicans will surely bring, there will be no place to run or hide, really.

Gore wrote a book titled Earth In the Balance. Despite the fact Gore was ridiculed by Republicans in the Congress of our great land passages read out loud for the sake of derision. This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe.

Concerning what this has to do with pre- and perinatal psychology, I want to point out that the cynical attitude is one wrought of early infant lack of bonding at birth. One is not nursed at birth, and is instead taken away to be “worked on” by total strangers. This leaves a lifelong imprint of hatred toward the world.

And this is part of the birth matrix of feelings described by Stanislav Grof. BPM II hopelessness, hate, and derision. Specifically, it is part of the attitude that “the whole world is wrong.” Everything is evil. Everyone is evil and has a hidden agenda. It is evidence, as I point out in my book, xxxxx, that we are closer, these days to our unconscious birth pain.

Concerning what this has to do with psychohistory, well Lloyd deMause and psychohistorians after him, have pointed out that it is in the best of times that we have a tendency to get into wars and to create sacrificial victims to assuage our feelings of being “fat” and prosperous. This has its roots in the fact that the neonate, at birth, after accomplishing the huge achievement of being born, is, instead of being welcomed into the world, slapped around, shunted from place to place, measured and weighed and scrubbed clean, and taken away from the only world it has know—it’s mother—to be placed into a sterile cradle or, worse, incubator. So we become frightened when we have accomplished something because our experience is that something worse will follow. To stave off that feeling, we make it happen. To stave off prosperity, we get into wars, or we squander our wealth (like current candidate Bush wants to do with our Budget Surplus). That way we can derail the rising feelings of “something worse is going to happen,” which happens after or when we’re about to accomplish prosperity and peace. We just have to screw it up.

Concerning also what this has to do with psychohistory, I want to point out that I read on the psychohistory listservice at one point last year . . . a Malthusian theory that has since been disproven (This is what they’ve succeeded in having us believe).

As for what this has to do with primal theory, it is part of the often observed tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot, when the going gets good, for having it good is not something we are used to; Pain is what we are familiar with; misery is what we know—it constitutes the comfortable furniture of our meager existences.

Concerning what this has to do with Primal, I want to point out that the tendency to sabotage ourselves, to screw up any good thing, because bad things are what were familiar to ourselves, is the hallmark of neurosis and is what Primal helps us to overcome. Ally McBeal once had to see her psychotherapist because, as she put it, she was feeling happy. And John Cage offered to let her have his appointment spot because, as he put it, I’ve got some minor rejection anxiety and so on, but nothing as critical as feeling happy.

Concerning what this has to do with Breathwork, let me point out what Grof has said about the way we have manifested globally what is our perinatal, particularly BPM II and III experiences, in terms of “polluting our own nest,” etc. etc. See the article on this site.

Concerning what it has to do with the New Age, if all the theories above come to pass this time, there will not be any “new age.” In fact, we will continue down the path of struggling until the end of our days.—both the hippie and New Age visions of global peace, harmony, and love having turned out to be nothing but fantasies. Those of us involved in the New Age movement will end up feeling we have wasted our lives in a useless struggle. We will die, disillusioned and disappointed, like Abbie Hoffman was when he popped back the pills that took his life.

But again, there is hope in the fact that our closeness to our unconscious birth pain makes it possible for our society, for the first time in history, to not spoil, squander, or waste our accomplishments or prosperity, but to actually build on it, going into a new phase unlike anything known in history before—a true New Age. My book, xxxxx, explains how this time has the chance of being different. And the current polls, which show Gore leading, indicate that we may just be on the road to that New Age after all.

I urge everyone to not just vote. I am taking time away from rebuilding my house, from doing my taxes for the last two years, from working on the lawsuit against the insurance company that has kept my wife and myself living out of an RV for over 14 months, and from an enormous number of tasks that have built up due to the fire and the other tragedies referred to above, in order to write this MusePaper. We plan to contact our local Democratic headquarters to see what we can do. We also plan to do much on this website to help to inform about this election and encourage people to do something concrete, not just to talk about it. For everyone who reads this and agrees with me on what I’ve written here, there are probably a thousand that do not—so much have they succeeded in getting so many to believe otherwise. Out of every hundred that agree, there are ninety-nine that will be too unable, physically, psychologically, or financially, or because of truly overriding time constraints, to take any action to prevent the tragedy of the Cowboy Ticket from getting elected. But I hope they will at least vote. So if you are one of the ones left, consider how important it is for you to actually put some action alongside your beliefs. The other side is rich in the power of the push of their Pain, which causes them to fear, hate, distort, and rail against and destroy the good that is coming into being. They are themselves, though they may be anti-abortion, not pro-life but anti-life as they say and do the things that will kill the fetus of the New Age, which is currently growing in America’s womb. The numbers of the fearful and in Pain are enormous and their resources are mighty. It is only our sweat, our belief in ourselves, our faith in the grace of a beneficent Higher Power or Universe, the strength of our combined numbers, the xxxx

that can keep this chapter in the novel of our lives from turning it in the direction of being, like the movies, one that ends up labeled a tragedy or that fits into the genres of the happily-ever-afters. You owe it to yourself to help yourself by getting involved. Of course, the world, the Universe, God/Goddess/Higher Power demand it of you too.

Copyright © 2000, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part Nine:
Time Capsule, Part 2″

Footnotes

1.  It certainly disturbed me and got me to wondering, and then to writing. Perhaps now, as I lay before us the thoughts that I couldn’t help but ponder, and alongside them the thoughts expressed in the writings of that little remembered time, you and I, just might, perhaps in ways that we would never even be able to express to each other, nevertheless find revealed to us something totally unexpected, maybe even wonderful.

By looking closely, we might just get a peek beyond life’s veil surround; we have here the chance of capturing a glimpse beyond or into that mystery that has been said to be just beyond our limited senses, that place of awe and odd activity, a mere membrane away from the normal, which mystics, sensitives, seers, and sublime artists, claim to sense and sometimes speak.

Take that as you will; still there’s no denying the fascination and fixation that these awesome unknowables held for the likes of Einstein and William James, pinnacles of rationality to the world, yet regarding these things in their attempts to communicate them only ecstatic and rhapsodic language would do, and even at that, they would claim they could not come near what they were intuiting.

So, here, perhaps, is just that kind of rare opportunity, rare for ordinary people, for getting such a glimpse of that sensed but unseen reality beyond the common sensical one, perhaps a keyhole into Mystery itself.

Certainly possible all this, yet I have to be extremely careful to note that I was hardly the only one thinking these thoughts eleven years ago (the most recent dates on them are 8/19 and9/21/2000).

2. I’ve already related about my astonished feelings at having come across this long forgotten piece of writing. But, you see, I knew I hadn’t seen or even remembered writing this. I knew that without question. For some people that might be difficult to believe, but then I doubt that many of those have reached the age of sixty-one, like I have.

No, I’m not claiming, as people laughingly say when, being older, they forget something that they’re having a “senior moment.” For me, it really seems—although this is also meant to be more humorous than exact scientifically—but it really seems that I’ve only got so much room on the old hard drive up there, and year after year, decade after decade, of piling in more and more information on increasingly diverse subjects, to boot, it seems to me, just sort of requires that one has to “delete” some of the older files; there’s not even enough room to archive them.

This is not as silly as it might first seem, for I don’t believe a generation has ever existed of humans who have had more information, changes, and so on, thrown at them over the course of a lifetime, requiring them to learn it or else to slip back in the ranks, not be able to compete on a par, as not even the worst consequence.

I won’t get into the need to stay on top of ever more complex material to just keep one’s house, to not have one’s money dribble away in complex investments, or even to keep from being taken to the cleaners by the IRS because of tax codes that are so meticulously structured to suit an array of special interests, rather than structured for fairness for all and simplicity. Don’t get me started.

The point is, you know, just from an overheated outpouring of information coming out of and turbo-charged by the cyber revolution, that we all, in the course of our lifetimes, are confronted with such overwhelming change and information. It is overwhelming in itself, but tack on the fact that you don’t even have a choice in the matter. The advances in technology, just to take one example, require that one learn, relearn, and then relearn something different about the same thing a few years down the line. You know that it’s driven by the incredible changes in computers and the software, but it has catalyzed changes in every other area in our lives, so that everyone, no matter their job, is forced into lifelong learning just to keep up.

I’m not saying anything new here, why even President Obama addressed this point in his initial campaign when he emphasized the need for societies to have structures in place to facilitate this “life-long learning,” which, as he put it, in the coming decades and with the increasing speed of changes, is going to be ever more required in order for folks to keep up and to stay in the work force as they age.

So this problem is one that was first noticed, perhaps, in the Fifties, when there was talk of the “rat race,” with the image that one never could keep up.

It was stunningly symbolized in the movie, “Brazil,” where one character walking on a windy street is hit by one paper, then another, and they keep sticking to him, despite his fervid, then frantic attempts to get them off him. He gets frantic because the papers accumulate so much that they, gradually but inexorably, cover every part of him, eventually papering over his head, then turning him into a struggling ball of paper, for all you can see; till the struggling stops, the huge ball of paper rolls around a bit on the sidewalk, and then is hit by the wind, whereupon, at first slowly, then increasingly, the papers blow away and the ball gets smaller and smaller—you keep wondering when the man will emerge—but, quite horrifically, I would say—it slowly dawns on you that the person has disappeared, who was inside the overwhelming mountain of paper (for paper, just substitute information). And the papers, you see, are all eventually taken up by the wind and blown away—one last tiny paper tornado swirling on the sidewalk, then it too dissipates leaving . . . nothing. Can’t tell you how many times I felt like that! Can you dig it?

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part One” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more Silly Mickel’s Calling The Noble In Spirit: Wake Up Sound Clips and Michael Jackson And The Authentic Life Sound Clips

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more History Unspun The Smoke, Lies, And Revelations Sound Clips and The Once And Future News Sound Clips

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part Nine:
Time Capsule, Part 2″

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Culture War, Part Seven: The Rise and Fall of "Obvious Truths," Part 3

Reprise – “Obvious Truths” Parts One and Two

This is the third and final part in this series delineating the history of the American Republican’ incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive…seemingly coordinated…nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “Filthy Rich” through totally concocted untruths.

All in the Family

We are seeing here revealed 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.

Awakening. I am showing how only because of increasingly cocky and greedy acts and extreme over-reaching “in broad daylight,” before the entire world, did this malevolent surround become visible. These brutish and thievish over-reaches displayed an incredible disregard for, disrespect of, indeed, an actual literal inability of the “Filthy Rich” and their Republican puppets to SEE American People, who were the recipients of these attacks. Together these reveals, displayed unintentionally however blatantly and unknowingly by the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich”… and before the entire world…disclosed to the masses of Americans some “cracks,” “stains,” or textures in the “dome” of unreality they’d existed in, which had made them blind to Reality itself, and had kept them in a near zombie-like dream reality.

“They’re so cute when they jump for their treat.”  As this awakening continued, some began remembering events, the memories of which had been “bleached” out of awareness until just then, and then with remembering they realized how they’d been trained like animals their entire lives for the uses, whatever they’d be, of the “Filthy Rich,” and been trained then to forget that.

“From here, they look just like ants.” It is clear that the “filthy rich” had an absolute certainty of their success because of their unmitigated power. What is also evident is the absolute inability of the “Filthy Rich”…which was the shocking thing they’d carelessly let out and therefore displayed to the World…absolute inability of the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich” to actually notice, let alone view or act towards, Americans as any thing even living or having sentient ability, let alone as humans, people, or individuals.

All we have to do is dream.  And as for the term “fellow Americans” often employed by Rich-publican politicos, if that thought even crossed your mind for a second as being anything but a device, you are not fully appreciating just how literally I mean for my words to be taken. You may very well, in fact, be deeply dreaming and have missed the crack in the dream state that had shone the light in the eyes of a sufficiently large segment of the world population as to cause them to come out of trance and begin to untie their formerly invisible bonds, so that they could try looking around, which led to the realization of the reality that had been blocked from view, and the beginnings of investigations into the real truths of their existence, and to this series of expositions, which delineates the actual, formerly invisible profile of the actual actors in American’s lives, and the processes of control, and the things in their lives that were determined for them by the “Filthies,” though ordinary folks thought they had been making decisions for themselves.

What They Would Have of Us

And the last aspects of this series delineates the real factors in your life and the outlines of the real intentions for our lives these puppet masters have had, and have even now in mind.

Making ready the field. In Part One, I talked about the fifty-year Republican campaign to convince the media and the American people of certain truisms that had nothing to do with the truth, in fact were almost one-hundred percent of the time, the opposite of the truth. It is a pretty amazing story of a campaign involving such things as getting people poorer and poorer, requiring them to work longer hours and so on so that they would have less time to think about things. It included other elements such as the way in which people’s minds were either stressed or made busy, and also the way they wore down the American people’s resolve to fight back against injustice.

Part Two elaborated on these parts of the campaign, which together resulted in an erosion of reason among Americans. I discussed how this erosion of reason resulted in an erosion of action as well and why this would be desirable by the societal puppet-masters. Next, I discussed the means of the manipulation–the media, the puppet strings employed by the masters.

The great hustle (Cool Hand Gipper). After that I talked about the way our lives were focused away from human concerns and reduced to the level of a game, contrived by the elite and which was geared toward their ends, suited to their abilities, and in which they dominated. This game was most of the time camouflaged in positive, civic sounding phrases and terminology that made it seem that it was an endeavor for the betterment of all, but I explained how it actually was played and what the motives and ends really were.

$$$ 666 The Great Religion

Last, I bring out how even this ruse of societal welfare was ever more let go of, as the puppet-kings gained in strength and in success in converting mass minds to a belief in the dogma of the game that they controlled.

Dogma keeping out pesky saviors.  They channeled people’s inclinations away from their own priorities and from human concerns to be in alignment with the overseer’s non-humanistic, alien ones. Human concerns such as life, easing of suffering and the like were seen as silly and laughable.

As they gathered power, they became more blatant and reckless in their machinations. The game was successfully installed as the focus and preeminent value of life itself; but in this headiness of accomplishment they became complacent about their subterfuge. Reckless in their maneuvers and ever more careless in concealing it, they risked being exposed.

Nightmare apparent.  Aspects of their self-benefiting game play and the cockiness with which they pursued them are further disclosed here in Part Three. We see how this creates a condition of such extreme suffering in the populace that stimulates them into awakening from the dream. The matrix is glimpsed. How the masses awaken and behold in horror the shackles and blinders upon them is described beginning here and in subsequent parts of Culture War.

Parts One and Two are intended to be read before this one, but if you haven’t done so this review will gave you a platform from which to view what follows.

“Brother, I do not know thee.”  Part Three continues from the end of Part Two where I was describing how the brouhaha around Rich Santelli’s callous comment revealed a wholesale and disturbing change in American’s sensitivities toward each other and in particular a callousness about each other’s suffering. Part Three starts after the audio player and links following this.

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,’ Part Three

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more Presidential Race 2008 Sound Clips and American Presidents Sound Clips

The Great American About Face –
Foolin’ the People About History

Obvious “Truths”:

• Reagan “saved” America.
• Reagan saved Americans from an oppressive tax burden.
• Reagan brought down the Iron Curtain, the Soviets, Berlin Wall.
  
• In America we were far better off than the Soviets were because…
  • wealthier.
  • don’t have to work as hard.
  • can take better care of our children.
• We are the richest country in the world.
• In America we only get better.

So these days you have the attitude, “A dollar laid is a dollar played”; people’s suffering is irrelevant to the game.

Reagan’s Great Ruse

We have seen a lot of change over the last five decades. And many new thoughts have become truisms that are actually not true. In the real world they’re nonsensical.

The Eighties changed everything…The great swindle. Unfortunately they abound because of the cultural change initiated by Reagan that lowered the standard of living for everyone except for the rich who were the beneficiaries of that switch. It was the greatest shift of money upward, to the higher classes, in history, at that time. Bush in the last decade outdid him though.

The Republicans pulled off this transfer of wealth under the banner of capitalism. The huge tax cuts for the seriously rich, which was how this relocation of money was accomplished, began with Reagan. When it was proposed during the 1980 presidential race Bush the Elder called it “voodoo economics.” This was before he was invited on the ticket with Reagan.

Voodoo economics gradually brought the highest marginal rate of taxes down to thirty-something percent from the sixty-some percent it had been when Reagan took office. This should be compared with the ninety-some percent it had reached in the Forties, the eighty-some it was during Eisenhower’s presidency in the Fifties and the sixty-some during Kennedy’s time. Reaganomics took corporate tax rates down to forty percent from the fifty percent that it had been previous to that beginning in the Forties.

Keep in mind that these were times–Forties through Sixties–when America’s economy boomed, turning the US into the wealthiest country in the world. Remember also that the last time, previous to Reagan, that marginal tax rates were below forty percent was in the Twenties, prior to the Great Depression. Not coincidentally at that same time, preceding the Depression, corporate tax rates were also at their lowest and were down in the teens. History records how well those low corporate and private marginal rates worked out. This did not stop the Reaganites from opting to repeat the previous debacle.

The Face of the Enemy, Ours

Overall, this bonanza for the rich–along with union-busting and other anti-worker practices by Reagan–had the effect of gradually lowering the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans. The result could not have been more ironic. These pro-capitalist, fervid anti-communist Republicans like Reagan and his supporters began the process that would make us mirror images of Soviet Russia in several hugely important ways.

At one time, “Women don’t have to work”; at another, “Women are free to work.”  Reaganomics brought in the two-salary family. This had been one of those major propaganda points for the anti-communists in the Fifties: We were horrified finding out that behind the Iron Curtain both parents had to have jobs to support their family. It was thrown out as one of the ways we were superior in our capitalist way of life–American wives and mothers did not have to work and were able to spend their time instead raising the children.

The anti-communist Reaganites also brought in institutional child care, for now this was needed because both parents were working. Someone had to take care of the children, and they would begin that at earlier and earlier ages.

At one time, “Strangers take care of their kids”; at another, “Child care teaches social skills and enhances multicultural awareness.”Again, extramural child care was one of those elements of Soviet life that in the Fifties was pointed out to us disdainfully and which we were grateful not to be subject to. It would be thought inhuman, if not barbaric, for children to be cared for by strangers, while the mother was working. There was something dangerous, if not lascivious, insinuated to us by propagandists, about pre-school children not being with their mothers, not receiving her protection and love during that vulnerable and needy time, but being instead “in the hands of strangers”…(god forbid!)

But after Reagan this dreaded feature of Soviet culture became the norm in American culture as well.

So Reagan’s economic policies pushed Americans into a lower standard of living—fooling them in all kinds of ways that this was not the case—which was evident in major changes in American culture which mirrored that of the Soviets such as the virtual requirement of two-salary families and along with that the necessity of child care outside the family at earlier and earlier years. But these Soviet-like changes did not also bring with them Communist benefits of job security, free child and medical care, guaranteed lifelong support, and so on.

Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?

Foolin’ the People About America

Obvious “Truths”:

• Americans are innovators and problem-solvers.
• There’s nothing Americans can’t do, no problem we can’t solve, once we put our minds to it.
• Things just keep getting better in America
• Republicans are for small business.

So unfortunately for many people, with prices on health care and pharmaceuticals going through the roof along with the sudden unexpected increases of other necessities of life, you had that lowered standard of living. You had a population that was poorer, in relative terms, and got increasingly poorer.

Over time, over the course of my lifetime, though we might ostensibly have appeared to prosper we did not. The apparent rise in standard of living was a result of the glut of new consumer items produced in an increasingly technological and complex culture. You might be able to afford plenty of cheap trinkets and toys, but for things that pertained to your well-being and quality of life, such as health and medical care, good schools, wholesome food, higher educational opportunities, a clean environment, recreational opportunities, fuel and energy, leisure, family, and quality time, and so on we were ever more wanting. 

Peaking in the Sixties

In retrospect I can see we prospered in the Fifties and Sixties. The records show that Americans achieved a peak of affluence in the Sixties and that since then, and rapidly accelerating since the Eighties, we have been on a downward slide.

Poor mothers could afford to stay home and take care of the kids. I can see the ways we, living in the Fifties and Sixties, were as a culture fairly well off, though personally my circumstances were anything but that. My father made only fifty dollars a week for a time. But my mother never had to go to work. She actually did get a part-time job much later in life for the enjoyment of it. Can anyone today imagine that?

What’s health insurance?  My family didn’t have any health insurance, had never even heard of it. We were not well off, but we like most people could afford to go to the doctor. And similar to others we could even normally pay hospital bills, for maternity and so on. If anything very serious developed that required more money no one ever imagined that they would be turned away at a hospital. The Mercy Hospital in my city, run by a religious order of Catholic nuns and funded by contributions, was a place one could always go regardless of one’s means. Sounds unbelievably quaint, doesn’t it? I know. I myself can hardly fathom the discrepancy with now.

Starving for Prosperity

“Have some more, there’s plenty!”  And we never starved. The dinner refrain was “Have some more, there’s plenty.” Though we were fairly poor by the standards of that time, I never, ever, ever imagined there being a lack of or limitation on food. There were big restrictions on sweet treats and goodies, but not on wholesome food. So it shocks me to see how much more concerned parents are today about how much their children will eat, as well as how precisely they mete out their gustatory offerings when entertaining.

“You’re not leaving this table till you’ve eaten all your…ketchup.” When not long ago I worked in a group home for troubled boys I was shocked and distressed to see the controversies over the food portions given and the restrictions on when they could eat. This was a government-funded group home and had to abide by all kinds of minimal standards in nutrition. Still, ever since Reagan determined that ketchup qualified as a vegetable serving, I have noticed this public stinginess about food.

Where I worked, sugared-water drinks qualified as juice, and peanut butter consumption was limited to a thin layer like that of butter that’s spread on bread. Cheap sugar this and thats and nutrient-low, colon-clogging baked goods, noodle dishes, and pizza were the at-hand substitutes for wholesome, more substantial offerings. The resulting blood-sugar swings and erratic, aggressive behavior were handled with drugs and listed within their case histories.

“Please, sir, some more?” There was much more like this but suffice it to say that I could hardly believe the happenings in this Oliver Twist world. My heart went out to those young boys who in this once wealthy land and still surrounded by plenty in this post-millennial, rich suburban California stood near the kitchen with plate in hand, their eyes pleading if they might “please have some more.”

This miserliness about food seems a prevalent thing throughout the culture as it is evident in school lunch programs also. Whereas at the grammar and secondary schools I attended while growing up I enjoyed complete wholesome meals on a par with and sometimes surpassing the enjoyable repasts at home and even seconds were allowed, what is considered a decent school lunch today is shocking. Corporations have taken over as suppliers. Can you believe we had a Joe the Cook in grade school who concocted home-style offerings, which was ladled out by those of our mothers, including my own, who had volunteered?

The beloved school cook–Pepsico.  Today the school meals are akin to that in fast food restaurants and just as monotonous…pizza, chicken nuggets, spaghetti, greasy burgers, hot dogs, fries. They are not “cooked.” From what I understand, they are taken from freezers, popped in microwaves, and dealt out to pupils like one would cards. The epidemics of obesity and diabetes in our country attest to how much worse is the nutrition for young folks today.

Your payment or your life.  What else is different now? Well, there’s people who can’t pay for health care… can’t get health care? …. Now that’s something new for me too. Can’t get health care. Wow. You mean you’re sick, you’re gonna die, but you can’t get help in the medical system? Unbelievable. That used to be unheard of.

So what happened to our country? We were supposed to be a country that valued human life, for example, but is now valuing contract law over that. So the word has become more important than the person, and better that people sleep in the gutters or lie out in the park than to lend them a hand. And god forbid when you have children, that one of them get sick, someone have an accident, or someone get killed….

The Compassion Gap

Goddamn it. Y’know, here you’ve got Rick Santelli saying, well they must have put in a kitchen or else they wouldn’t have gotten foreclosed on. Where does he get that? That’s not a fact. That’s a made up thing, just to get people angry.

And that’s the game. A game that’s not founded on any facts, only played to be won, and it’s won by making the best argument to arouse the most passions, the most negative passions in people, and to find scapegoats.

Stop war? Don’t be silly.  And this is the kind of thing that was brought up year after year over the decades to the point where it became that the things that I heard being valued growing up were laughable: compassion, if you were caring about people, or not wanting people to die.

Say, there was a war or something and there was agony over the loss of life. And all these people would gather together out of their concern. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. People anguished and horrified by other people’s sufferings…reaching out to help them, help each other, comfort each other, pray together…hope…weep.

Oh my Lord, kumbaya. Yea, a great big kumbaya moment! Wow. And I’m sure that’s what you heard, too. So I get it. Ok, so you shouldn’t have any feelings toward your fellow suffering brother or sister. Is it, what, silly? Uncool? Weak? Wussy? Sappy? What?

What is it you’re trying to prove to others with that?

What is it you’re hiding about yourself?

… What would Jesus have said to that…

It seems more than the standard of living was lowered since those days. And I’m sure they are in many ways connected…. I’ll get into that later.

Health Not-care

Getting back to the change in the physical standard of living that Reagan wrought, though, let’s take for example the increase in health care costs. This is one of the necessities of life, and it’s been climbing out of reach, putting a burden on people, ok?  … …

Humbug for the poor.  As I explained in Part Two, Nixon addressed that problem in the Seventies. He was supposedly  helping out the people, the poor…. Uh. But, no, he would never say that. He would never say he wanted to help the poor! Previous to him, in Johnson’s time…The Great Society and all that, yes. That was surely a time when you would hear talk like that. But by the time of Nixon…. So, I guess that’s when it started happening.

You couldn’t say you were actually going to help out the poor anymore. Because the truism, which I’m sure you all agree with, whether you admit it to yourself or not,  is that the poor people deserve to be punished because obviously they’re lazy. Think about that, isn’t that the same stuff they were saying about blacks?  …

Democratizing the hate.  So isn’t it kind of like that racism has become classism. It’s kind of like a hatred that’s not been eliminated because they’re still saying that  about blacks, but it’s been expanded. It includes more people–whites and blacks…and all other kinds of colors. All the poor, they’re all now lazy, deserving what they get.

The middle class–the last bastion of who you can give a damn about.  So instead what you hear today is like the “middle class”! Well, supposedly the middle class are ok people. They’re not deadbeats; they didn’t put in that kitchen they can’t afford… Actually they’re the ones who are owning homes so some of them actually are the ones getting those new kitchens.

Nixon cared about health…healthy profits. So Nixon’s answer to health care, to help the middle class, he started the move toward HMOs. And remember how it came about. There were actual White House tapes, an actual taped phone conversation of it. You hear Nixon talking to Ehrlichmann. And they are discussing the matter, health care. Nixon is told that Kaiser, and this is the guy who started Kaiser Permanente, one of the top HMOs. He is told that Edgar Kaiser is proposing a “for profit” system of health care. Now here we have people who can’t afford health care and now you want to have a system that’s going to add to the costs of it. How’s that you say?

Some people just wanting to get sick again and again! You say HMOs lower health care costs by reducing overhead? Maybe, but to all necessary costs that are already there, HMOs add the cost of profits to go to the owners of that health care system. Ok? Also, Kaiser pointed out it would discourage “overuse” of medical treatment. Wow! So, here we go again.

So now we see that people who need medical treatment are just like those deadbeats, they’re like poor people, they’re overusing medical care. My god! They’re getting sick too much. And if you had a for-profit system, well, they could deny people coverage. And they could deny people medical treatment, no doubt, because they would naturally want to increase their profits.

GOP-think. GOP, think! GOP…think?  So guess what? So, Nixon replied, “Well, now that I like.” This is a true story. So this is a look into how Republicans think.

Well not long afterwards, maybe a few days, or a few weeks, Nixon gives a speech to present his sweeping new health care proposal. What does he say?

Remember, there is this obvious disdain for certain groups of people who might be getting too much health care. On the other hand, Nixon is wanting to see that certain other groups of people will make out big time from profits that will be involved.

But his speech doesn’t go like that. Nixon is recorded giving a speech, proposing a big solution, purportedly to answer the problem of the rising health care costs that are beginning to be felt at that time. He will emphasize that his proposal would be a great benefit to the middle class.

Make it to the middle base and you score. Keep in mind as I was saying in Part Two, there was a time in which influential groups would consider they “had a home run” when they could make a case that their proposal was going to benefit the American people. But by this point, because of the culture war and mean-spiritedness being stirred up in the country by Republicans, it had become necessary to single out the middle class as the only ones receiving the benefit, because, y’know, poor people…they’re not Americans.

Thanks for the health care savings, Dick. So Nixon says he is going to lower health care costs. Well, you can see how right he was about that. Just look at Michael Moore’s movie on American’s health care system if you can handle knowing how bad it got. The documentary, “Sicko,” lays out in brutal detail how devastating it was to inject the profit motive into health care.

“I was a hit-person for the HMO.” There is one especially disturbing example of this. A former employee of a huge HMO testified before Congress. Crying and tearful she related how she received a million dollar bonus for having denied health care to someone who had insurance with her company. This person was a member of their health care system, but she denied the costly medical care that would have saved this person’s life. Simply put, it would have cost the HMO a chunk of money to save this life.

So this female employee denied the procedures, saved the HMO money, and that person died. So she killed somebody and got like a million dollars for it. She’s kind of like a hit person, y’know?

[ML: Saving money on costly care means there would be more help for others.]

Pay us now. We’ll think about covering you later. No. That’s not the rationale. That’s another part of it. They can deny health care on any basis. They can deny it on any basis but they went out and they found more ways to make even greater profits. If you were going to cost them a lot of money, if what you needed to live was medical treatment that they might consider too expensive, well what they would sometimes do is hire people to look into you. These people would be paid to research your background, to see if they could find something that could be used as an excuse to deny your costly procedures to you.

Michael Moore records in his documentary at least one such researcher who explains, with remorse, what he had been paid to do and how he would go about it. He, and people like him, would pore over your records to look for something, even slight, that they could hang a denial of coverage on. They would in particular look into your childhood for any care that they could say indicated the presence of a medical condition for you at that time.  When they found something, they would be able to say that you had a pre-existing condition and so they were not liable for your care now. They would claim that you lied on your application in not listing such an ongoing ailment so that they could can drop you from coverage and let you die. So people were being left to die, killed in this manner.

Did you, at any point in the past, pre-exist this application?  Buuut it’s contract law! …dollar laid, dollar played, y’know. And it’s contract law that is stretched to benefit the people with the most money and who have the better lawyers and who can, y’know, twist things better in their favor. Here you have a situation, where, let’s say, somebody is dying and they’re dying of emphysema. I don’t know enough about medicine to know if that would be the kind of thing that could entail very costly care, but let’s just say it did. So this person very ill with emphysema might be informed that it had been discovered, let’s say, that they had a bronchial condition as a child…maybe to them, they were prone to get colds. But they would make the determination that your frequent colds shows a preexisting condition for you. Now you tell me how a person who is dying is going to be able to fight that.

Over your dead body getting paid.  We’ve all heard Obama’s story about his mother and what she had to go through prior to her death.  She spent the last months of her life arguing with the medical insurers over the bills. She was being told they didn’t have to cover her.

One-stop larceny.  Getting back to Nixon, at the time of his health care proposal he said huge managed care systems, which he touted as being one-stop medical systems, were going to lower health care costs. This was so, he claimed, because cost sharing and lower overhead would rein in the price of providing medical care. He said these lower expenses would benefit the whole system. 

Apparently he forgot to mention the for-profit part, which ended up funneling all those benefits, those lower expenses, into the pockets of the owners and shareholders. That is what happens when you put profit-hungry businessmen in charge of care. Gradually, America’s medical needs were primarily the purview of business, big business.

You mean you care…and you’re not paid to?? (oh, kumbaya.)  Previous to that much of what was involved in caring for the sick had been attended to by religious and charitable organizations. These concerned social institutions might be dedicated to idealistic or religious principles, for example, which included compassion and caring for the sick as one of their values or one of their religious ideals. So, much of health care had been in the hands of charitable entities and people dedicated to the idea of service, caring for the sick, getting them well, caring for your fellow person, your fellow man or woman, and so on; naturally the type of care you received was infused with such ideals.

With Nixon all that changed. And Nixon loved it.

The Monopoly game again.  So then also, these businessmen with their HMOs are having near monopolies; they’re the only HMO providing health care in many areas. The only alternative is privately paid physicians. And these medical providers have costs that have have gone up because of their reduced client base, their patients having been siphoned off by the HMO.

“Buy one appendectomy, get a second one for a dollar!”  So private care physicians have the same overhead, and now they’ve got less clientele. In addition to that, now with their making less money and having higher costs, they also have extra costs, of competition, advertising for the first time.

“I need to take two aspirin…I’ll call you in the morning.” But that’s only one of the many costs that occur in a situation where you have a small market, with the same number of providers. You have a scrambling with other private small medical practitioners over a smaller pile, which increases not only the competitive costs involved in having to put oneself out there to win clients from competitors and thus further increases the cost of private care, it also increased pressures and tensions on private physicians who now are required to have two jobs. They have to be medical provider and business person. They have to work longer hours because of this too.

Of course you can imagine what a boon this was for medical care in our country. Now you not only have to pay more for private care but also compared to not so long ago it is being increasingly performed by angry, stressed,  tense, overworked, underslept professionals. Well what happens when you’ve got those kind of people providing you medical care on the private side?

So, on the one side–the mega-care side, you have them denying you medical care even if you’ve paid. You’ve got them denying you coverage if you have anything wrong, or if you’ve ever had anything in your life and you admit it. You either don’t get covered at all, or you may have paid premiums for years but when you get sick you don’t get treated so you die.

“Take two aspirin and call me after tax time.”  On the other hand, you can pay the higher costs for private care out of your pocket. And these people are overworked, spending much of their time trying to drum up business and trying to take care of all the increasing paperwork of a competitive business enterprise and that of an ever increasing number of payers. So they’re making more mistakes. And more mistakes equal what? More mistakes in medicine means more people dying, by mistake, or having the wrong procedure done, or having the wrong limb removed. The extra stress will push some physicians to “operate under the influence” of alcohol or the readily available prescription mood drugs glutting the market.

You get the idea that things may have been getting worse over the years in a lot of areas?

So with all the extra pressure on medical practitioners, we begin to hear more and more about malpractice. So, another cost is introduced. And medical malpractice insurance for physicians  has ever increasing premiums. This adds even more to the price of private care.

The kind of care that increases suffering.  So you can see that the suffering of the masses, in both health care systems, is going up. As for the doctors themselves, well now they’re either out of business because they made a mistake or they’re keeping up with the competition and trying to make a living. But now they have these huge malpractice insurance payments. This is a cost HMOs can easily absorb, but for private physicians, it adds even more to their costs of business, their need to increase their fees, their loss of patients, their financial stress. So what happens? They’re forced out of their professions. Or, they’re minds are filled up with financial considerations and they are burdened with concerns…and now they’re gonna treat you!

Making It So You Need a Car to Do Anything

Well, I’ve been around long enough, I saw this before. It’s a pattern you keep seeing over and over again in America. And it’s changed America.

Back in the time of neighborhoods. There was a time when there were no supermarkets in America. I remember that time. You used to be able to walk up to the corner, walk down the street, and you’d see bakeries, drug stores. There were penny candy stores, there were meat markets…. There was a wonderful ambiance of community about it…it was a garden of delights…people smiling and everything.

Drive to the store, get a loaf of bread. And now they have these huge mega supermarkets. And I saw the way it slowly changed; it didn’t happen overnight.

On the side of the mom-and-pop Safeway.  Those supermarkets–run by hourly wage workers–could beat mom-and-pop prices. Gradually over the years we don’t have meat markets, bakery stores….

And Republicans say they are for the small businesses, the backbone of the middle class. Well, this is an example of just what a lie that is because, no, supermarkets are not small businesses. It’s all those meat markets, bakery stores and all that–those are the small businesses, they are the mom and pop, those are the average Americans trying to be self employed. Self-employment is not huge corporations.

Money Madness –

Foolin’ the People About Money

Obvious “Truths”:

• Tax the wealthy, you’re taxing me.
  
• Democrats tax and spend, they bust the budget, balloon the National Debt.
• Republicans are fiscally responsible, fiscally conservative; they balance budgets and are careful about the National Debt.
  
• Rich people create the jobs.
• The wealthy are society’s creative sector.
• That “class warfare” stuff “just doesn’t work.”

Obvious “Truth” – Tax the Wealthy, You’re Taxing Me

But when you hear the same things again and again, even black-and-white facts can be put up for dispute. For example, during the 2008 presidential race and prior to Obama’s first budget the Democrats’ tax proposal was explained as a tax cut for the middle class and no increase on any Americans making less than two hundred thousand a year. This was a black-and-white fact, part of the public record, not in dispute. But how did the Republicans explain it?

That’s a small business? I certainly heard it, over and over again; I bet you did too. Republicans were saying the tax proposal was going to affect small businesses. So we have small businesses that are making over two hundred thousand a year in pure profit? And that’s a small business? That’s a small business? I think if you’re making, after all your deductions and everything and you’re still making two hundred grand, I think that you’re not a small business, I think you can afford extra taxes, but that’s what we are told.

We’re all rich. Somehow I missed that memo. So apparently we got a group of people who think that people are really rich. The assumption is that most Americans are rolling in dough so that any tax increase on the wealthy is an attack on all Americans.

So, you can’t tax that sliver of the very, very wealthy a little bit more so that the majority of Americans might benefit. Benefiting the majority of Americans used to be how you got to “home base.” But now, it’s like, “No, you can’t tax Americans; we are Taxed Enough Already!”

The Democrats’ want to take your money. The way this “obvious truth” is phrased now…no way to get around it, it’s a flat out lie…goes, “You can’t tax the very rich, cause that’s…” and they’ll just say it right out, “that’s gonna affect all Americans, that’s taxing everybody.”

Well how did it get to that conclusion when actually it’s going to lower taxes. And they were saying it over and over again, “No, we don’t even need to know what the plan is; we just know he’s a Democrat and that he’s going to raise taxes,” they would say of Obama…or for that matter of any Democrat at any time in recent history.

Now, how did that become true? Well because…he’s a Democrat and well haven’t you ever heard the term tax and spend Democrats? And there we go again.

Obvious “Truth” – Fiscally Responsible Republicans

Pointing some fingers already. Alright, let’s go back. Pre-Roosevelt turn of the century initiatives so common and familiar now, such as the Food and Drug Administration, are the kinds of things Democrats brought in that added to government. Yet, Republicans spout misinformation; they get people angry about “evils” of such “big government.”

Misplaced credit. The Democrats are the ones who brought in the FDA, worker’s rights, workman’s compensation. They’re the ones who put in Medicare. They’re the ones who put in Social Security.

Misplaced blame. And we remember the Republicans are the ones who created the Great Depression, created poverty for everybody at that time. They’re the ones who did it again with Bush, who tripled and nearly quadrupled the National Debt under the twelve years of Reagan-Bush, then more than doubled it under George W. That’s a lot of goddamn money.

That’s a lot of money. And then the Republicans were giving away seven hundred billion dollars to rich people who afterward were giddy in their ingratitude. This giveaway, keep in mind, came at the end of Bush’s terms. And you would hear CEOs bragging how they’re not going to spend any of that on people; they’re not going to use any of that money to loaning any of it out, which was supposed to be the purpose.

And even afterward, all Congressmen were agreeing that’s a huge amount of money, which at the time was the biggest amount of money being spent at one time, in such a short period of time on anything. And how could we forget that they just took the money and did whatever they wanted with it? They paid off debts to other rich friends; they went overseas and invested in other countries.

Chase didn’t use the money for what it was intended for. Goldman Sachs used sixteen billion of what it received to pay off an outstanding debt to a German bank. The head of Chase bank is known to have said he wasn’t going to use the money to increase credit. In fact, he said he was going to keep that money and he was basically going to feather his nest with it and keep Chase solvent so that when other banks went under he  could buy them up with it. That’s the money of the taxpayers he’s playing “Monopoly” with, mind you.

Obvious “Truths” – Tax and Spend Democrats

But stacked up against the facts we have this idea of tax and spend Democrats. It’s been repeated, going back many decades. It basically goes back to Roosevelt who ended the Depression and benefited virtually all Americans. And now that’s somehow a bad thing, brought up to get you mad about the tax and spend Democrat. And they’ve got all Americans convinced that if you vote for a Democrat, they’re going to take your money, they’re going to tax it, and they’re going to spend it on somebody else. Well, that has nothing to do with the truth.

Social Security, Medicare, and surpluses, oh my! It has nothing to do with the truth. Certainly Roosevelt benefited all Americans with Social Security and so on; certainly Medicare, brought in under Lyndon Johnson benefited the vast majority of Americans. All these things the Democrats did. And Clinton raised taxes on the very rich a few percentage points and balanced the budget. Clinton created jobs and prosperity, balanced the budget, reduced the National Debt, and created a surplus that could have gone into creating a better America for all Americans. But, no, that was considered bad, because they said it hurt all Americans when the extremely wealthy had to give a little more in taxes.

The fun times anticipating the surplus. Never mind the facts, never mind that fact that we had a surplus that we were talking gleefully about how we were going to spend it. If you can remember, we were discussing investing in better roads and infrastructure that would have benefited even the businesses.

Stealing home. But no, it wasn’t about the truth anymore, it was about how you made it to home base, how you got money for yourself. And it didn’t matter anymore if you just skipped all the bases, and you started at home and went to home…if you just took the money. I mean, after a while the Republicans could just do that; tax breaks for the wealthy just because they were wealthy. Because, after a while, after all those years of repeating it: They could get away with, If you tax the wealthy you’re taxing all Americans. Wow.

Obvious “Truth” – Rich People Create the Jobs. 

The wealthy are the job creators; they’re society’s creative sector. Yes, I have actually heard it said this way; a good chance you have too. Here’s how it works: Raising taxes on the wealthiest is gonna hurt all Americans because by taxing that sliver of the upper two percent of Americans, you are inhibiting the creative sector’s ability to create jobs. Rich folks are society’s wealth creators. The wealthy are the creative people in our country.

They’re creative all right. They’re the creative people, huh? Yea, they’re creative in stealing from us. They’re creative in fattening their wallets at our expense. They’re creative in getting people elected who are liars and things like that.

That’s not the kind of creativity I’d like to have. As far as creating jobs. Who creates jobs?

Excess wealth given to the rich created high art prices, not high employment. Here’s the facts. You know all that money that was given to the rich people? All those tax incentives given to the rich people by Reagan? Well, It didn’t create jobs so much as it created a lot of excess wealth that went into, well, people were buying yachts, and they were investing in art objects that were being bid through the roof.

The wealthy were scrambling; they had so much money they were fighting over art objects. And the art objects—paintings and so on, famous paintings–were making headlines in being sold for so much. During the Eighties under Reagan it was common to hear of a hundred million dollars for such and such…two hundred million, three hundred million. And because what? Because they had so much freakin money. Now you tell me how many jobs money tied up in art objects created?

The rich will squander or sit on extra money. I mean it isn’t rocket science. It’s very simple… simple psychology. This has to do with facts: You give money to rich people who don’t need it, they’re the ones who are going to squander it; they’re the ones who are going to spend it frivolously, or not going to spend it just let it sit. They’re not going to benefit society with it; they’re not going to multiply it; they’re not going to invest.

The poor will sweat over and multiply money, what they can. You give a fraction of that to a poor person, a tiny amount of that to a poor or moderate income person and what will they do? You have any idea how somebody who is poor will make a little bit of money go a long long way?

I saw my father do it. He is the same person making the meager fifty dollars a week at one point. And he wasn’t making much more, but he eventually got a truck driving contract. He was able to own several trucks and to hire several workers.

So, why did he do that? Because he didn’t have a lot of money. And by taking those chances and becoming a businessperson, taking that little bit of money he had, he created jobs for a few other people. Because he was motivated, he was desperate. And for him it was all about a chance to raise himself out of being poor. He spent his life scanning for such opportunities till he finally came across one.

Billionaires are not highly motivated to become millionaires. So you have people who would take any money coming their way to better their situation in life, the real American way. They would really love to be millionaires; they would risk their very lives for that. They would work their asses off. But those folks aren’t the people who are already billionaires.

But nobody will point it out. So you’ve got these inanities thrown out there. They’re being said over and over again…”Rich people create the jobs; they’re society’s creative sector.” These obvious untruths are not being countered by journalists and pundits. There is really no one pointing out that anything is a lie, there’s nobody saying out loud that these self-serving pronouncements are untrue, or that what is being said is vastly different from the facts.

Foolish People –
Foolin’ the People About “Us” (the rich)

Obvious “Truths”:

• Things you hear a lot are true.
• Simple “truths” are real truths.
• Democrats think they’re better than everybody; they’re snobs, elitists.
• Unlike Republicans who are regular people just like me, folks I could sit and have a beer with…they’d understand me.
• A rising (economic) tide lifts all boats.
• The “Me Generation” is those young folks from the Sixties.
  

Confused People Take Comfort in Stupidity

When all your hear are lies, you begin to think it has to be the truth. So, what happens? What is the result of these things being heard long enough, with nobody countering them or anything. It’s natural, if you hear something said enough, you don’t question it.

I myself am that way. I was told that we should go into Iraq because there was weapons of mass destruction. I didn’t hear anybody saying anything differently. So I believed it. Well, that turned out to be a lie.

It’s just natural that if you don’t hear anything to counter something, you’re going to believe that the only thing being said is the truth. And that certainly has increased over time…through the years.

Democrats feel like they’re talking to a wall; they’re talking to the weary. It is not that these lies weren’t countered. But what I observed is that pundits weren’t any help in clarifying things for people.

Journalists would say, “Ok, Mr. Democrat, what do you have to say about that?” And The Democrat would respond with a reasoned argument, laying out all these things that made perfect sense if you’re familiar with the issue.

And pundits wouldn’t delve into their argument, tease out its elements so as to enlighten.

And keep in mind that now more than ever people need that. We have people listening to this who are working two jobs, tired, overworked, worried about their health care, stressed. They’re not going to be able to follow an argument very well. In fact they’re going to forget what all those words meant and how they all fit together.

So after a while a lot of these folks are going to say…I’m sure you’ve heard them, they’re Republicans and the ones who vote for Republicans…they would say, “Aw geez , that’s just a bunch of words, it don’t mean anything.” But what the hell does that mean?

Confused people retreat into the stupid. Well, it means that all these words can’t be remembered, they can’t take root in their mind after the lies they’re always hearing from the other side. They are surrounded by the organized disciplined ongoing assault against them by the Republicans. They are filled up with talking points benefiting the wealthy comprised of simplistic simple-minded irrational mantra…irrational, repetitive, simple slogans.

So, the result is that Democrats don’t end up having a lot of power; they don’t get elected. I saw it happen in presidential election after presidential election. I saw Reagan saying simplistic things, getting all the people pissed off about poor people and about the Russians.

From the other side, I heard his appealing to the worst in people countered by reason, by sensible explanations and realistic proposals of a Dukakis, a Carter, and a Mondale. And then at the end it was…. it didn’t mean a damn thing. Because people just felt more comfortable around somebody who kept things simple, who said simple words, and seemed angry like they were.

Not that Reagan said anything indicating any of his policies were going to benefit average folks. No, actually he screwed them, but they still liked him! Because Reagan, like other Republicans, are able to confuse people into thinking that any screwing up, of any time, must have been done by Democrats. They will tell you your poverty now is caused by Democratic policies of the past which actually got us out of  depressions, recessions, and created surpluses. They will tell you your lousy health care now is caused by money going to the Medicare that you like. They will tell you that the financial squeeze you feel is because of the “penny” going to a poor person not the bundles of loot they are taking.

So, the electorate is swimming in these simple irrational things that have been made to sound reasonable. And they are unable to see through them because they have been kept in this situation of increasing pressure to produce, produce, produce; of less leisure time and no time to think; of worries, medical care, all kinds of things you have to put out money for. They can hardly see through the swindle since they are distracted by the threat to their lives from insurance companies–those folks who may or may not pay you if you need it though you have faithfully paid them.

It’s gotten to the point where you have insurance but you dare not ever make a claim. You live with the risk of unexpected loss to your home at any time that you can not cover, because if you make a claim you may not get it next time. You risk losing home insurance and threatening your home. What the hell kind of insurance is that? You are insured but they can deny you? They can deny your claim, or as it happens all the time, you have one or two claims, and you no longer have an insurance company.

So if your payments are not making them a profit, if you are one of those few who are costing them more to be a member or to be covered by that insurance company, if you’re costing them more, they’re not going to take it out of the profits of all those who are costing them less, so, you’re eliminated. So why do we even have insurance companies? Most people have insurance just in the hope that they’ll be covered.

Who has the time to think clearly or reason confronted by all this other uncertainty, this other insanity? So we have all these pressures and then there’s these slogans put out and people are not able to follow rational arguments. So how could they possibly, without being able to see clearly, how then could folks ever be united against these injustices against them which they don’t even realize are happening?

People do not even know who the perpetrators are, for the pundits won’t tell them. Folks cannot figure it out for themselves; and the pundits absolutely refuse to point out who’s responsible for the things that add misery to their lives. Media types say they cannot do that because they say it has to do with, something about equal time. But that was supposed to be for elections. And, as I pointed out earlier, equal time turned into something where, no matter what lie is put out there or would be put out, no matter what truth is put out there, the media will find somebody, they could find anybody, who would be willing to say a lie and sound reasonable for the purpose of confusing things.

With all this, how can anybody know what the truth is?

Obvious “Truth” – A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats. Real Truth – The Rich Get Richer at Our Expense.

Real truth – Life has gotten harder. So we have this increasing deterioration of our prosperity, of our standard of living, of our joy of life. Life becomes more and more of a struggle, and who benefits? Well we see who benefits. We now have a new super rich class which is above even the very rich. It’s called the filthy rich, as I’ve pointed out.

Real truth – Our suffering has paid for even greater obscenities by the wealthy.  And to create this super-rich class where did that money come from? Well, it’s come at the cost of average people like us. And I can tell you this because I lived through it all. I’m old enough to have seen the changes. I was born in 1950. I’ve been there to know, things are much harder than they used to be.

And our rights and our freedoms have changed. Because of their successes in the Culture War, because of Reagan and Bush, the Patriot Act, the neo-con takeover, and everything, our rights to speak out and to live without harassment have been diluted. Out of all the civilized countries in the world we have the greatest percentage of our people in jails. So what does that say?

We have these huge corporations taking over and it’s humiliating to people. I mean in times past we had the small retailer, perhaps this person had a small coin shop, bakery, drugstore and pharmacy, shoe shop, maybe a corner grocery store. Now, there aren’t any small stores like that. And where does that person end up making a living?

Well, he worked in retail so maybe he even ends up working for the same supermarket that pushed him out of business. So what does that do to your self-esteem?

There’s example after example of people like that in recent years; it’s something that went into high gear under Bush. There are ever more people who are losing their jobs, well paying jobs, because they’re being sent overseas; and they are sometimes actually forced to train the people who are taking their jobs.

Humiliation, increasing humiliation of working people. I can say I feel fortunate to have lived many years in an America quite different from what most people in America being younger than me have been growing up with.

I watched in the early Eighties the lies about the “Me Generation” coming out. Republicans brought that out to beat people down with. The idea was planted that people who wanted anything for themselves were selfish, for after all only the wealthy should ever benefit.

And it’s funny too, how they were able to use their own spawn to make this case. You could look around and see a new cadre of young folks who had bought into their values, who had been deluded by the untruths that they had been using against the masses. The rich elite had succeeded in convincing those younger of mind that the wealthy folks interests where actually their own. So while they gave rise to this greedy new bunch of young folks–young upwardly mobile professionals–they could also use them as examples of the obscenity of greed, thus deflecting attention away from their own. To further their ends, they also claimed the origins of this unseemly greed lie in the contradictory values of the Sixties generation and their idealism.

This was one of their most amazing feats. They were able to take their values, sow them in another generation, point to those values and criticize them, blame them on the hippies, all the while hiding their own espousal of those values. They perpetrated, denied, criticized, scapegoated, distracted, and obfuscated all together! They thoroughly convinced Americans that the Me Generation was those who formerly were flower children. This group was a bunch of reactionary young, and not so young, people who said to hell with this idealistic stuff, and of helping out, and kumbaya, and all that stuff. They said, we’re for money, to hell with any one else. And somehow they convinced folks that these were the one-time visionaries. Of course they only pulled this off through the people who owned the media.

The media flooded American minds with the idea that the Me Generation was My Generation. They said the Sixties generation had gone from idealism to just wanting money, thereby discrediting their opponents, us, at the same time they gave credibility to the superior veracity of their own values of greed and ego above all.

They gave one example, Jerry Rubin; they said he was engaged in trying to make money. And they never mentioned that what he was trying to make money on…God forbid somebody should try to make money…he was selling some kind of supplements or something like that; he was trying to help people out with their health. So, lies, lies, lies. And these lies become instituted and they’re not challenged after a while, after you hear them for decade after decade after decade…

You have to be older to know that it wasn’t always the way they tell you it is. It helps to have lived in different times and places and to have seen things with your own eyes to be able to see through these inane “obvious truths” that people take as absolute truths. It helps to have had experience with the things they are talking about to know what are actual facts and what are complete fabrications.

Truth Will Out – The Fall of “Obvious Truths”

Until just recently. For now the truth’s being told again. And the Republicans are on the run. Because they are being found out to be the liars they are; that term, lie, for the first time in my lifetime is being used for what they do. They are being discovered to be who they are and what they have been doing all those years is being told. All the things they like to do–the undermining of unions and the collective bargaining system, the ever increasing giveaways to the rich–are being brought into the light.

America was prosperous in the Sixties under Kennedy. And Republicans like to refer to his cutting taxes on the wealthy as support for their policies. They like to point to the good economy then as being the sort of thing that happens with their voodoo economics of  shoveling money into wealthy hands, and they dare to imply that he would be in agreement with them.

But Rich-publicans have been extracting far more from America than the modest gain they had under Kennedy. What they’re not telling you is JFK reduced taxes to percentages in the seventies. They’re not pointing out that America boomed under Eisenhower, when it was in the eighties, they’re avoiding the fact that Reagan took JFK’s levels to the twenties and caused a recession.

So they’re comparing a small reduction in prosperous times with huge cuts in times that are precarious. And they’re failing to point out how lower taxes in the Twenties before the Depression, in the Eighties before Reagan-Bush’s recession, and in the last decade under Bush all devastated the economy.

Despite the dire consequences they would opt for highest bracket taxes in the low thirties even now when they can hardly be afforded and they pushed Obama into continuing their tax cut at the end of 2010 and are now blaming him for the economy not responding. So Republicans firmly maintain that Matrix of misinformation and switching the blame whose purposes are to confuse the other-than-wealthy and thus keep them helpless.

They would keep us helpless for lack of a clearer understanding , as well as to keep us disintegrated and disunited. No big union movements, no big antiwar movements, no big environmental movements, and no movements for the poor and economic justice.

The misinformation overlay has become so pervasive, the masses have lost the solidarity that they had enjoyed only a decade or so earlier when issues were clearer. Even Clinton’s America was a time when the truth was easier to make out through the concerted Republican campaign to enrich themselves and to keep the average American confused, poorer, poorer and poorer, helpless, and thus dumber and more controllable, easier to manipulate, and overworked because of crazy-making ways of doing things.

What does their consistent, daily, pervasive and unrelenting repetition and lies accomplish? What does all that amount to? Their intentions are no less than those nobles of old, to keep people in servitude and serfdom, essentially to bring people into compliance with their totalitarian will.

But I refuse to believe that is the only possible fate for workers and the masses of people. I still actually believe in those things we were all taught about America in our schools. I still think of what we are supposed to be. 

But in our propaganda and lies we have become the Russians in many ways. But we’ve done it in a much slicker way that has got everybody confused.

Well, I did say this was about the rise and fall of the obvious truths. And I talked at length about those lies and those obvious truths that were never challenged. I hope I made my case.

It is our good fortune for these lies to become clearer in recent years and for the perpetrators to become more visible. But what did it take for those guys to be seen for what they are? It took a lot of suffering by the American people. For eight long years, it took a lot of being abused by the powerful. The Republicans got so cocky, they took so much money, they were so uncaring of the suffering, of the dying of Americans. They were so obviously not caring…not even putting up a pretense of being for the American people, who they were supposed to be representing and who they were claiming to be on the side of. They were obviously the wealthiest of us and those fighting for those interests of the filthy rich, but they were insinuating that they were all people, that what suited them was a benefit to us all.

But you see you can get so cocky that you can lose your discipline and then you start to say things that people can see through. And then if you have a war and people are dying and then if you finally have a collapse, an economic collapse that was based upon taking away regulations that people and good thinking Democrats and so on were trying to protect people from having their life savings taken away from them, and all kind of regulations that were put into effect to level the playing field with the rich and anybody else playing the stock market.

You would have such regulations, then they go and take them away and we saw what happened. The rich people, they went crazy, they went amok; even at the end they took 700 billion dollars out of  the American Treasury, and got away scot free.

I was making the point earlier how that was extortion on such a grand scale. I brought to mind how extortion happens a lot more among the hundreds of million of Americans but when they do it on a tiny scale they go to jail, but when this elite does it on a large scale, well they just talk about it as if it is history. And It’s like, “That’s too bad. We gave all that money to them, and they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. Hmmm. Too bad. I mean there’s nothing we can do.”

The Fall of “Obvious Truths”

However people did start to see through the “obvious truths,” finally, through all  of the haze. Maybe it was because so many people were out of work they had some time to think. I don’t know.

And then Obama came along. He spoke plainly. He spoke like one of us because he was one of us.

You couldn’t say he didn’t; you couldn’t make him out to be an elitist. Of course, they tried to say he wasn’t one of us; they got so cocky there is nothing they would not speak to see if they could get away with it.

But, no, he spoke like us. He made sense. He used rational arguments like his Democratic predecessors, but unlike them he could weave that logic with examples and words from our lives. Perhaps Clinton is the only president in recent memory who could really do that as well. And, being black, he obviously didn’t look like our usual American overlords.

Certainly, they tried to make him into some rich person. It is amazing how the filthy rich will paint their opponents with the brush that belongs to them. One of the big lies they always put out there is that “The Democrats are the ones who are rich.” And they’d say, “Well the Kennedys were…” Seriously, they do this. It is so typical. They will find one example of anything. Always just one example will they be able to come up with, but they will use that to make their crazy “truth.”
So these “obvious truths,” such as that you give money to the rich and it’s gonna create prosperity. Well, they’re falling. They’re coming out into the light and being seen to be the lies that they are. Not all of them. But some are, at great cost to Americans.

All that money squandered on those not needing it could have paid for child care for everybody in America, could have given everybody in America solar power, so that we would be completely energy independent in that way, not worried about terrorism or anything.
No, but all that money was just thrown at the  rich people. These very important life and death issues were tossed aside as irrelevant in the game. The players were intent on winning and it was like nobody really cared anymore if anybody got hurt.

After all, once you start telling people that poor people deserve to be poor and that they are responsible for any misfortune that others heap on them…even if they get hurt or killed…you’ve opened the door for much more. It’s like “Oh, yea, it’s the gangs they’re in. They’re having gang wars, they can’t control themselves, they’re not like the rest of us, they’re always starting trouble, they can’t be helped, they’ll always be poor, the poor we always have with us….”

And once you start saying things like that you’re speaking their talk. You’re helping to keep the rich in control of you, because you’re helping them to cover up what they do. You’ve allowed them to distract you from their nefarious game to focus on some other group. You begin having it out for some easy scapegoat and begin to think of them as not part of the real Americans.

The wealthy have you thinking after a while about this scapegoated group the way they think of you. They do not think you are as human, as deserving of a nice life as them; they want you thinking that there is some group…Jews, blacks, hispanics, gays…who are responsible for your problems and are not as deserving, are not as American as you. So they create all kinds of lies so you’ve got someone to blame that is not them, that is not the actual perpetrators of these things.

So this is what is meant by the rise and fall of “obvious truths.”
And I can only hope that the truth will continue to come out, that it will really come out and awaken people to their own interests instead of them working against themselves and each other. Obama is an intelligent person; he’s doing a good job and I hope it’s not forgotten what he is doing.

I saw what a good job Clinton did and I saw how that was covered up, how we were distracted to seeing only a scandal. Oh, yea, so he had sex. Our leader had sex, how horrible. So all of the people who died because of the Bushes and Reagan, all the suffering caused by rubbing people’s faces in the dirt of poverty are not to be mentioned. But Clinton had sex with some woman; that’s a cause for outrage. Wow.

But you hear that enough and you don’t have any real perspective any more. You cannot weigh the gravity of one wrong against the other, or in this case a supposed wrong against real ones.

But Americans are starting to know again what is really important. Pushing against the media tides, they are connecting outside of the public limelight. They are using the internet to exchange views. They are learning and taking action, gathering by the hundreds of thousands in rallies for change and to speak out against what is continued to be imposed on them to benefit the well off. They are doing this despite being ignored by the media, the media continuing its policy of trying to make some realities to go away while blowing up the ridiculous and the insignificant into matters of great and pressing portent.

So in spite of it all I think Americans have started to get back their solidarity. I think they are starting to get back their ability to reason.

I just hope that we’re going to get back some jobs too…and some money …and be able someday to enjoy some of that prosperity I remember from the past.

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Eight:
Time Capsule Part 1″

Footnotes

1. For a humorous, hard hitting aside on this callous attitude of Republicans, on behalf of the rich, and as contrasted with Democratic efforts, check out this audio monologue of mine, “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“ below.

This four and a half minute clip is taken from the longer, 35-minute audio, “Naked Republicans Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish.”

“You’re Turning Down my Money for ME!…To Stare Down…?!!…” – Comedy Monologue, audio clip

by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is the audio clip of my comedic monologue. Click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here. The script for this piece is included below the player, fyi. 

(Link) View more Silly Mickel’s Calling The Noble In Spirit: Wake Up Sound Clips and Michael Jackson And The Authentic Life Sound Clips

About the audio above.

[From July 2009]  What a riot these Republicans are. There was Louisiana, Alaska, Arizona, South Carolina, and Texas governors refusing stimulus money to “show up Obama.” Then they turn around and ask for it secretly, or as in the case recently with Texas, which turned down almost 550 million in unemployment extension money at the time, only in this last week (7/14-7/18) to ask for a loan from the federal government for about 440 million, get this, to pay for extensions on unemployment. HA! Well, in this clip, I play a constituent of the Louisiana governor who went nationally to say he was going to turn down the unemployment money from the stimulus. Now, if you’re a Louisianan, and you’re on unemployment…hmmm…just imagine how freaking happy you’d be to hear that! Well, that is what I express in this clip. Keep in mind this happened just after this governor had given the (horrible) Republican “response” to Barack Obama’s unofficial “State of the Union” address in January. And this governor, Governor Bobby Jindal, at the time was being touted big time as a presidential front-runner for the Presidency in 2012. You’re gonna love this response to the self-serving “more principles-than-brains” political one-upsmanships at the expense of their constituents by these Republican x@#&%$%#@@# governors.

And the text of the “You’re Turning Down my Money for ME…” audio:

Ok, so now I’m one of those “constituents.”  I’m thinking… 

“Thanks a lot, bastard, you think I got it easy?  You jerk!  Who the hell you think you are down there in Louisiana, Mr. freaking Governor who don’t need no additional unemployment money.  No, idiot!  You GOT a job!  It’s me that can’t find work and that’s worried about my kids getting sick and, well, now the almost certainty, by the way because of your stupid-assed spiteful action to turn down my money for me.  Now, I ‘m gonna lose my house, worry about my kids staying healthy, but you’ve done what?  You’ve stood up to Obama (the guy who was gonna give me money?)  You’ve said we don’t need no stinkin’ money and made yourself a spectacle on the national stage and, you think (here’s that lying again.  You screwed us over and then you’re thinking you can tell us that we were better than that or something of other of a slick confusing fog of insanity.), and you think that this will give you a leg towards the Presidency.  Well, Mr. Jerk-off turning down my money for me like it’s my pride your fighting for, do you really think we are still that stupid, still that happy to be burdened and crushed for your aspirations, which obviously don’t include, you’ve made that damn clear, doing anything for any person, any “constituent, any citizen, no, not anyone” and it’s clear that our burdens are so meaningless to you that you will heap misery on us to do, now what was that again?  You “stood up” to Obama?  What the fuck, are you in grade school?  Do you think I give a shit who’s staring who down?  I’m trying to live a life; a life that you have just put a cloud of unhappiness and worry over that will not go away form many many years; in fact I may never own a home again.  But I won’t go on about things that cause your eyes to glaze over.  Just let me ask you this Mister, wise-potato?  You “stood up” to the guy who’s gonna give me money, and hold out his hand to me?  Ok, Mr. more principles-than-brains, what’s your next big plan?   Oh, I see, you’re gonna stand up to, well, Santa Claus.  Oh, yeah, I hear it all right.  Out on the National stage; spoutin out as if you’re talkin our mind; shit, you ain’t even one of us.  But I hear you:”

“Nope, Mr. Matthews, you see we’re Louisianans?  Not beggars.  We don’t need Christmas.  We can take care of ourselves.  Let you folks out there have Christmas.  I mean, if you’re so weak.  So you’ve had it your whole life and now you’re kind of like addicted to it.  Well OK.  I’m not going to talk down any on those who are obviously so weak and needy.  But, you see, Mr. Matthews… Mr. Matthews, well let me put it this way, you ever come down to Louisiana?  Ever?  To visit or anything?  You have?  So you’ve met with some of our citizens, have you?  You have.  Well, then you know what a strong-willed,  strong-spirited, and PROUD people we are down here, don’t you?  You agree.  So you see that’s why.  I knew you would agree because it’s so obviously true about the folks that live down here, I didn’t see how you’d miss it.  So that’s OK, let Santa go somewhere else where he’s , you know, where they’re the folks that need to have a handout and can’t get by the year without having a good time.  No, my constituents are strong-willed, and they wouldn’t have me letting any squirrely funny-suited guy out here prancin around and lookin foolish.  Well, not us.  We’re not foolish.  We’re PROUD.”

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,’ Part Three

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more Presidential Race 2008 Sound Clips and American Presidents Sound Clips

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Eight:
Time Capsule Part 1″

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Culture War, Part Four: The King Who Won’t Die, Abortion of Cultural Rebirth… An Aborted Changing of the Guard

Culture War

What do these events have in common? The popularity of Democrats since the Nineties, with Obama’s favorability ratings high despite US entanglement in several wars; the astounding progress in race relations exemplified by ever increasing numbers of African-Americans elected and appointed to the highest posts in US government since the Nineties, highlighted by the election of the first ever black President in the most lopsided victory in decades; massive demonstrations around the U.S., attended by hundreds of thousands at times, in favor of liberal Democratic causes and opposing Republicans and showing people carrying signs displaying the peace symbol; outpourings of peaceful pro-freedom and democracy protesters throughout the Middle East and North Africa; the reborn popularity of the “peace sign”–two fingers extended in a V-like shape, for those who don’t know–including saying “peace” while extending it as a greeting (most often these days, when leaving); renewed interest in the book, Catcher in the Rye; the nostalgia for Sixties and Seventies cultural accouterments as exemplified by the TV show, That 70s Show ; the resurgence of fashion items like bell-bottoms and, on women, clunky high-heel shoes; the movies “Pleasantville” and “The Truman Show”; the popularity of Nineties shows like Ally McBeal and The X Files; one-time Sixties activist Bill Clinton’s sixty-some percent approval rating throughout almost the entirety of the White House Sex Scandal alongside the pundits’ complete and total befuddlement as to the causes for it; the strong presidential run by a woman, also with roots solidly in Sixties activism, Hillary Clinton, in the 2008 Presidential race…significantly only beat out, and barely, by an African-American; the passage of medical use of marijuana laws in a number of states and poised for passage legalization of marijuana initiatives (I may be wrong, but I believe that the voters ruled that marijuana’s medical use would be allowed, or would continue, in every instance where this issue was on the ballot!); the return to ballad-style, Dylan-esque music embracing and expressing social, philosophical, and extremely intimate personal views and experiences…. We’ve also seen, in California, the passage of Proposition 10—the ballot measure that imposes a fifty-cents tax on cigarettes to fund programs for young children…which ballot measure, significantly enough, was begun by Sixties-Generation representative Rob Reiner–formerly Meathead from All in the Family!… I could go on.

On the other side of this we have seen, in the last two decades, several “Republican revolutions” taking the opposite side on women’s issues, union and worker’s rights, environmental policy, health care and education, budget and economic issues benefiting the poor and middle class, and all other “liberal” causes; the rise of a media-supported Tea Party movement, heavily funded by wealthy and corporate interests, espousing wildly reactionary and regressive measures like eliminating social security and medicare, gutting environmental policies to give corporations a free hand in despoiling the environment, anti-union measures, deep budget cuts in social programs, and the showing in this movement of demonstrators hoisting signs with racist images and slogans and gleefully applauding the acting out of a slave auction depicting an African-American president, Obama, and his supporters in Congress and his administration as bloodied slaves in chains; the popularity of a news network promoting, in blatant and mostly dishonest form, reactionary issues and figures; the resurgence in the careers of Pat Buchanan, right wing propagandist out of the Nixon administration turned talk show pundit, and Newt Gingrich, reactionary culture warrior during the early Nineties; extreme pro-gun positions and actions, including openly carrying weapons to political rallies and events and proposing the allowance of children to bring guns to schools; thuggish attacks on left-leaning activists and demonstrators; the murder of physicians on the pro-choice side of the abortion/ women’s rights issue; and attacks and threats against progressive politicians and legislators, including the nearly successful assassination attempt on Democratic Congresswoman, Gabriel Giffords…. I could go on.

Most folks would see nothing connecting these issues on either side. What I believe we are seeing is a resurgence of the underground “culture war” that has been going on in the US since the 1960s between the Sixties Generation–those whose adolescent and young adulthood, formative years were influenced by the events of the Sixties–and the World War Two Generation–those whose equivalent times of life were forged in the Forties, during and around the time of World War Two.

Generation Gap and Counterculture

The huge ravine separating the views of these two generations was most apparent when those of the Sixties Generation were in their youth, engaged in the process of discovering and exploring their values and therefore expressing them blatantly and with all the indiscretion, lack of subtlety, confrontation, and rebelliousness that characterizes the inexperienced. Thus, terms like generation gap and counterculture were bandied about, analyzed, and fervently discussed. The differences were “on the table,” in full view; and because the views and values of the youth were so “counter” or opposite to those of the WWII Generation, much debate and analysis was spawned in the media to try to explain–for the most part to the WWII Generation–how this could be so.

But these terms of generation gap and counterculture, which highlighted the great disparity of views, would fade mostly into disuse. This was because, later, the Sixties Generation would learn to keep their private views and values more hidden, for practical reasons having to do with making a living, advancing in their careers, being able to raise their children, and so on; but this did not mean their values had changed. They were biding their time, waiting–sometimes hopeless that it would ever arrive–for a reversing of the pendulum and a return in society to the ideals and visions of a better world that had so inspired them in their earlier years.

For the most part, these Sixties adherents did not know about the psychohistorical tendencies I will be describing here–as for example in the evolution of child-caring and the triumphant phase of generations. For most it was just an awareness that something so strong and so right could not simply have completely vanished from the Earth, that with time comes change, and therefore there had to be a time, again, when the mood of the country would swing in the direction they felt to be healthiest and more ideal. For some of these people their hopes were based on the simple rules of gambling: Eventually, at some time or other, with the passage of time, the dice just had to roll their number, if just out of pure chance or randomness.

Others had a slightly more reasoned view buttressing their hope for a return to idealism. These folks were those of the Sixties Generation who had applied themselves to implementing the values they learned in the Sixties in the jobs and careers they held, in whatever small or not-so-small way that they were allowed by their older generation superiors, bosses, managers, or supervisors. Never knowing that they had allies among their generation that were doing the same kind of thing in their separate fields, they followed through, the best they could, on simple conviction, born of experience, of the rightness of the more idealistic ways.

Lastly, there were those of the Sixties Generation who identified themselves completely with their youthful idealism. In putting themselves “out front” this way in their values and beliefs they found others who were doing the same. They would together become the “New Age” movement, actively engaged in bringing about the better world their generation had envisioned in the Sixties and early Seventies. They would wonder, as decades passed, why it took so long for the rest of society to catch on to what they felt was an inviting and appealing evolution–one both necessary and therefore inevitable as well.

But these last, the New Agers, would be marginalized and scapegoated by the mainstream of society—a mainstream whose outlines, of course, were determined and inscribed by the mainstream media, which was, in turn, controlled by the wealthy elite of the World War Two Generation (more about this to come). Examples included Jerry Brown labeled “Captain Moonbeam,” the family dynamics in the TV show Family Ties, the burnt-out hippie depiction of cabdriver, Jim, in the Taxi television series, and thousands of other instances where those holding New Age views were labeled “flakes.”

Attack of the Body-Snatchers

Another reason these terms depicting cultural division, viz., generation gap and counterculture, went into disuse was due to the mobilization of the World War Two Generation–after their initial phase of somnambulant confusion over the events that were emerging in the Sixties which left them paralyzed and watching, growing in irritation and anger–into a comprehensive counterattack against the Sixties Generation, using all the Nixonian-like tactics in their arsenal…understandably, since Nixon was of that generation and his tactics were typical of the defensive style of his contemporaries.

Lassoing the Universities. In the early Seventies, the World War Two Generation used their power and wealth, being themselves in the Triumphant Phase of their lives, to put pressure on colleges and universities, nationwide, to discontinue the programs, courses, and the professors that they felt were responsible for the youth’s rebellion. Their targets for destruction included such noteworthy “dangers” as liberal arts programs in general, and especially “highly revolutionary” philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, and humanistic psychology courses. A transformation of colleges and universities into “career mills”–whose primary function was to prepare the young for practical and skill-oriented jobs and professions–was called for…or else! Or else these World War Two alumni would discontinue their contributions to these educational institutions. The “bottom line” being threatened in this way, no university administration, to my knowledge, withstood their demands for very long, if at all.

Cloning Themselves…WWII Generation creating an 80s generation of “Mini-me’s.” The youth produced by these institutions would hereafter be dissuaded from thinking for themselves and from “questioning authority”–as the previous generation had been encouraged to do–so part of the lapse in the terms of division between the generations–counterculture and generation gap–had to do with the fact that the wave of youth that followed the Sixties Generation would be molded, in their college years, into distant replicas of World War Two Generation members. They would be termed the “Me Generation,” since selfishness, greed, money-as-god, and upward mobility were characteristics of the WWII Generation that they were able to instill in their youthful clones. Thus, we saw the rise of Young Republicans on campus in the late Seventies, the return of ROTC to campuses, and the seeding of fertile young minds with the values that would later be verbalized–in the movie “Wall Street”–in the mantram “Greed is good!” At the height of this phase, periodicals were declaring how similar the “youth of today”—meaning those of the late Seventies and Eighties—were to their parents, how close they were to their parents in the beliefs and values they held, and how the generation gap had inexplicably closed. Such was the success of the WWII Generation in cloning themselves in producing Eighties youth.

In sum, beginning in the early Seventies institutions of higher learning turned away from their idealistic goals of “bringing out” from the students their inner truths and wisdom (the original meaning of the term educate), which is the avowed role of liberal arts programs, and instead turned hard, to the right, onto a path of churning out engineers, MBAs, hard scientists (even in the field of psychology, where humanistic psychology was shunned), medical professionals, lawyers, and the like. My liberal arts, semi–ivy-league college–founded, by half, by Benjamin Franklin–turned from the idealistic studies that typified Franklin and those of his time and swung from being a bastion of energetic inquiry into all controversial realms–political and spiritual and societal–a virtual “Plato’s Academy” of inquiry, into being a career mill centered around a “pre-med” program.

Harnessing the Media.  Similarly, these frightened and wealthy WWII “conspirators” (however unconscious their alliance) would use their leverage to ensure that books and the media–TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers–would expound their views predominantly, would present events through the particular psychological lenses and filters with which they were familiar, and would eschew viewpoints, and even coverage of events, that would in any way strengthen the stance of the, by this time, scapegoated Sixties Generation. The media declared, with much fanfare, in the early Seventies that a “conservative backlash” was occurring; and they published books documenting this event. Meanwhile they ignored the polls and the events–specifically the ongoing and growing antiwar and other counterculture “demonstrations”–that would show the lie to this idea, and they rejected and refused publication of the kind of books and articles, still being effusively churned out–that would support the counterculture movement. Controlling the media in this way and saying it long and loud enough, the “big lie” of the “conservative backlash” began to be accepted as truth. And even many in the counterculture and among the youth began to believe it.

Interestingly, those on the extreme right did not forget that the great divide in views was still with us. In the Nineties, Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich said a “culture war” was going on. More recently we see WWII and Fifties style Tea Partiers going up against huge rallies of Sixties style pro-union demonstrators and massive recall efforts.

So those on the right decry such massive outpourings against them, but they are correct that it is a “culture war.” Obviously they can see that the world has changed from the Fifties-style “Pleasantville” that they had imagined and wanted it to be.

The King Must Die

But the World War Two Generation could not maintain control forever. For one thing, people die. And being older than the Sixties Generation, eventually their numbers had to dwindle. Their numbers dwindling, they had to be replaced by those younger–some of whom were of the Sixties Generation and were now in what psychohistorians call the triumphant phase of life–that is, the time of life when a generation is in its “prime,” when it is most influential, when it takes over the reins of society, when it gets behind the wheel of the cultural bus.

From this perspective, we can view a remarkable film, “Pleasantville,” released in the late Nineties at the peak of the Sixties Generation’s triumphant phase, and see that it is a metaphorical review of history from the early Fifties up to that time–one which shows the Sixties Generation, in the end, finally realizing their vision of a more colorful, alive, open-to-new-experience and to change, growthful, changeful, passionate, unregimented, truthful, sensual, feeling and emotionful, and less determined, ritualized, and preordained existence. More about this later.

The Generational Changing of the Guard

First let me point out that this change in power, evident by this movie and the other recent cultural items I’ve mentioned, is a change as old as our species. Every generation, at some point, leaves or is removed from their seats of power when they are at or near the end of their arc of effectiveness and prowess by a younger generation that is coming into or–as in the unusual case of the Sixties Generation for the reasons unique to this time to be mentioned below–is fully in the prime of its life.

Myths, fairy tales, stories, historical tales, and legends the world over depict this change of power. The myth that is most transparent in its depiction of this change is the one in which a monarch, despot, or ogre controls and rules the land, keeping the people miserable with oppressive and selfish decrees and policies. A young prince emerges and, after a period of trial (in the case of the Sixties Generation, an unusually long period of trial) in which the prince proves himself worthy, he takes up the cause of the people and overthrows the old king and takes his place. Thus the saying “The king is dead. Long live the (new) king.”

The triumphant phase of the Sixties Generation had been delayed, however, longer than any other generation in history because of the advances in modern medical science, which has served to keep the World War Two Generation alive and kicking longer than any previous generation. The average life expectancy in the last sixty years (since the time when the World War Two Generation were in their youth or young adulthood) has increased remarkably. Hence the Sixties Generation has had to wait longer than the World War Two Generation to get a chance behind the wheel of society. It is strange and ironic that at a time when the speed of cultural change is greatest because of an ever increasing speed of technological change, at a time when the elder generation’s worldview becomes obsolete sooner and faster than ever before, at such a time when it would seem the younger generation’s view would attain relevancy and effectiveness faster and sooner than at any previous time, at such a time we have the reverse occurring, that is, the younger generation’s ascendancy is delayed and the older one’s stranglehold on power is extended.

But this rapid change and increasing rate of obsolescence may just have something to do with the WWII Generation’s desire to hang on and their vehement struggle against change. For, as mentioned before, there is a gap—greater than ever before—between the views of the younger and those of the older. This gap is wrought of the different technological worlds and the corresponding sociocultural worlds that each experienced. It is widened by different, more advanced on the one side, child-caring of children as well as by different drugs used and the contrasting world views they would elicit–as explained previously, in Part Three.

So the WWII Generation might be said to be more threatened than any previous one by the generation to succeed them, because the ascendancy of the next generation would appear to overturn and oftentimes reverse so much of what they believe, value, worked and sacrificed for. Because of the unprecedented technological change and corresponding change in material culture, catalyzing in ways too numerous to mention a myriad of sociocultural and psychological changes in their successors, there is less overlap than ever before between the worldviews of the generation handing over power and the generation coming into power. It follows that it would seem to the generation in power, even as they approach the end of their mortality, that less of what they are and were will live on after them than has ever been the case in the history of generational succession.

This being so, this generational succession represents a previously unheard of personal invalidation and undermining of the self-esteem of those of the World War Two Generation and a corresponding unprecedented attack on the usual delusions of immortality (themselves living on in some fashion in their successors) that older generations are allowed in exchange for their relinquishing power.

Generational Changing of the Guard, Aborted

At any rate and whatever may be the reason, the fact remains that the World War Two Generation has used their longevity for all their worth to block the ascendancy of their successors. They used their longevity to amass wealth and power–wealth greater than any previous generation before and, because of their actions, likely to come.

For example, their actions have led to a situation, currently, wherein they were taken care of in their old age by a Social Security and Medicare system funded by the work of the Baby-Boomers, aka Sixties Generation, at the same time that predictions abound that that same Social Security and Medicare system will be depleted when it is the Baby-Boomers time to belly-up to the bar. One might also note the WWII Generation’s environmental and ecological decisions making it that no generation after them will enjoy anywhere near the benefits—health and quality of life among them—of clean environment, abundance of natural resources, and ecological balance that they enjoyed. Finally, their decisions regarding arms buildup and proliferation may deny life itself to the generations following them. Other unprecedented ogre-like—greedy, selfish, and uncaring-of-succeeding-generations—actions can be numbered against this generation.

So the World War Two Generation used their unprecedented wealth and power to wage a war against the generation who would be taking over from them, keeping them and their values under attack and away from the centers of power and influence in society as long as they possibly could.

Desperate Stand: The Battle of the Bill (Clinton)

It is enlightening to consider in the Nineties the persistent attacks on Bill Clinton (similarly, on Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, continuing)–the first Sixties Generation U.S. president–ever since he took office. The Monica Lewinsky scandal is a typical example of the extent to which the World War Two Generation so effectively controlled the views and values expressed and subtly expounded in the media ever since it took conscious control of the society’s “collective consciousness” in this way in the early Seventies. By this I mean that in the entire time of the scandal, it was assumed that sex is bad, or at least that sex outside of marriage is bad. It was assumed that Hillary must be horribly pained and angered by the revelation of her husband’s affair(s).

Make love, not war.  It is as if the slogan “Make Love, Not War” was never a generational outcry. I don’t believe you will ever find in the history books paid for/ published by World War Two Generation owned publishing houses mention of the fact that slogan was ever used. Indeed, with all the talk by pundits, analysts, and commentators on literally hundreds of TV shows during the entire time of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment drama, that slogan, “Make Love, Not War,” was practically never mentioned. I am aware of only one time–when I heard it slipped in unnoticed by a participant in the middle of a talkin’-all-at-once brouhaha on the TV show “Politically Incorrect,” whereupon it was totally ignored.

Even more astonishing, those same pundits discussed, ad nauseum, this scandal and all the myriad ramifications of it yet never, to my knowledge, made note of Clinton’s generational status and the views, exemplified by “Make Love, Not War,” which our generation espoused. It has simply been assumed that all of the Sixties Generation “grew out” of that kind of “nonsense” and had adopted the views of the WWII Generation..again, polls on values and viewpoints be damned.

Rewriting history. Most telling of all in the attacks on Clinton’s behavior is the assumption that such a stance on open marriage and uninhibited sexuality is a product of uncontrolled lewdness and the sexual license exhibited primarily by the young, which naturally everyone grows out of in order to adopt the constrained and secretive sexual views of the old. The sexual revolution’s parallel growth in the Sixties with expanding civil rights, women’s rights, and individual liberty is completely ignored. Its roots in an idealism about final and complete gender equality is totally vanquished as if it were never so.

In fact, I doubt you, the reader, know of this. Yet hordes of Sixties youth shared with each other, conspiratorial like, the Sixties novel, The Harrad Experiment by Robert Heinlein, that portrayed–in poetic and highly intelligent fashion–an evolution to a radical equality between the genders, to an elimination of neurotic suffering around sexuality as, for example, in painful jealousy, to an ending of sexual violence as in spouse abuse, and a final and complete solution to a gender war existing for all time with incalculable casualities and near infinity of suffering on both sides. It was a story about non-monogamy and open relationships…”free love.”

Neither did the pundits point out that Bill Clinton is of a generation who made a book on “open marriage” a bestseller. The clinch on the media by that older generation has been so complete as to have, apparently, completely dismissed or erased from the minds of the pundits the facts that those ideas and books ever existed. Another thing erased from history since the Seventies: the “sexual revolution.” Remember that? When was the last time you heard that talked about? All of the energy that had surrounded these controversial ideas has, because of media manipulation and repression of these views, been channeled into and reduced to a fight over a woman’s right to choose, i.e., the abortion issue, and more recently to fights over union rights and budget cuts.

Abortion wars.  Incidentally, it is no coincidence that the issue of abortion has taken on such importance for so many in the electorate, for it is the last remaining battle of the “culture war” directly continuing from the Sixties. Prior to the Sixties, women’s bodies could not be considered their own, in many ways; a prominent way was the illegality of abortion, which made outcasts and corpses out of untold numbers of women. It was reversed by Roe v. Wade in the Sixties. But the battle never went away and is the major front in a Gender War that has been going on for millennia.

And your position on the abortion issue is the closest thing to a military uniform indicating on which side of the culture war you have enlisted. Specifically, I am saying that there are few of the Sixties Generation who would not classify themselves as “pro-choice.” Meanwhile, the anti-abortionists are found to be comprised primarily of those of the WWII Generation, their Eighties Generation clones, and the Eisenhower-Presley-McCarthy—and now we might add “Pleasantville”—Fifties Generation. (For a definition and explanation of Fifties Generation see previous part, “Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures“)

World War Two Generation just doesn’t get it…never has, and never will. Of course, I am saying that the War on Clinton was, in its essence, an unacknowledged but desperate battle in the Culture War that has been going on since the Sixties–despite these attacks not being framed or talked about this way–between the World War Two and the Sixties Generations. The World War Two Generation, especially after the elections of November 1998, has learned that it is way off in some of its assumptions, that their analysis of what has been happening in this country is woefully miscalculated. They are like the deluded schizophrenic who has believed passionately in the world he has himself created coming up against some of the hard, harsh, and indisputable facts of existence which undermine his world. The World-War-Two-Generation–minded–whatever the individual’s age–have been fighting back, since the Nineties, with all the firepower they can muster against realizing the harsh realities around them of their waning ideals. They have been in total and absolute denial of the direction of the American, indeed the world, consciousness; and they have been flinging all their wealth into the mix to try to repress the emerging truths.

When I first published on this topic in 1998 I wrote, “But we shouldn’t be surprised if we see some of those in their ranks–wealthy and facing their inevitable demise–merely increasing the ferocity of their war waging…humiliating themselves and seeming ever more pitiful in the minds of the majority of observers, who increasingly, as time continues to decimate their WWII ranks, are younger than they and thus do not share their delusions.”

I’m sorry to say I was more correct than I could ever have dreamed as we have faced, since the change of the millennium, neo-con wars built on lies and confused tea-baggers railing against their own interests.

“Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory

Not So “Pleasantville”

The film, “Pleasantville,” is a postmodern sociological allegory or fable released in the late Nineties. It begins in then-current time against a backdrop of the usual violence, chaos, and turbulence that we are conditioned by the media to believe characterized the Nineties in America. Two high school teenagers, David and Jennifer, played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are planning their evening.

A Tale of Two Siblings

David is planning to watch the Pleasantville marathon on television and to participate in the trivia contest that will be part of it. Pleasantville is a an old sitcom from the 1950s in the Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons style which has attained a cult-like following and is shown regularly on a cable channel similar to the “Nick at Nite” one that we know of which specialized in reruns of old sitcoms. It becomes clear that David is an ardent devotee of the show in part because it compensates for the lameness of his real life. Unlike his sister, who is portrayed as a real “firecracker” of a young woman, he doesn’t date or participate in the school scene. It is implied that he may be using the sitcom as an escape from not only a boring life but a threatening one and that he longs to live in the kind of ordered, safe, and unchallenging reality that the sitcom depicts. David is such an avid follower of the show that he is shown to be a master of “Pleasantville” trivia and is primed and eager for the contest on Pleasantville trivia.

But his sister, Jennifer, is planning for a hot date at home…their parents being away for the weekend providing an opportunity for her to be unchaperoned with her guy—which she eagerly anticipates. At odds over what will be played on the TV–Jennifer wanting to watch instead an MTV concert with her date—they wrestle over the TV remote and end up breaking it. However all is not lost as at just that moment and completely inexplicably a television repairman played by Don Knotts drives up in his truck, knocks on the door, and imposes his services on them in fixing the problem.

Don Knotts—perfectly cast, in a Jungian sense, for it is often the impish or normally overlooked and unnoticed element that initiates sweeping changes in people’s lives—indeed does introduce the magical element into the film. He produces a different kind of remote control, which he claims has special effects saying, “You want something to put you right in the show!” Sure enough, in checking out the remote they hit a mysterious button and are transported into the TV and thus into the sitcom and the town that is called Pleasantville.

To Follow Or Not to Follow “The Script”

After their initial confusion, they realize what has happened and try to return, but do not know how to. David–who it becomes apparent has been thrust into the role of Bud in the sitcom–advises his sister–Jennifer who has become Mary Sue in the TV series–to go along with events until they figure a way to get home. Since he knows all the plots of every show of the sitcom, his idea is that they act out the events as they are supposed to happen and that they do what the two characters–the teenage son and daughter of the parents in the sitcom, Betty and George Parker, played superbly by Joan Allen and William H. Macy–are known to do in the different episodes he has seen.

Essentially, then, David as Bud is advising his sister to “follow the script.” And of course it is not hard to discern at this point that we are beginning to see a metaphor for psychological realities and that “following the script” has a broader meaning for a choice that everyone must make in life in growing up, viz., to follow the script laid out for oneself by one’s parents and society in general or to follow one’s inner direction and inner guide in asserting one’s individuality and expressing one’s unique self.

The rest of the movie is the story of how these two characters–transported magically from the future as well as from the real world as opposed to a made-up TV world–introduce change into the town and thereby color. Mary Sue, formerly Jennifer, does it consciously. Rebelling against her brother’s admonishments to follow the script, she goes on a date with someone she is not supposed to according to the sitcom script and then–horror of horrors for a 1950s world – engages in sex with him at the local “lover’s lane”–where the farthest that anyone goes, according to “script,” is holding hands. We find later that her date describes this unheard of experience to his classmates, and, like ripples emanating from a pebble dropped in a pond, her action results in a number of the school youth engaging in sex and thereby becoming, to everyone’s amazement, colorized!

The brother also introduces change, and therefore color, but it is done unconsciously at first. As mentioned, he tries to get his sister to follow the script. Still, in a metaphorically powerful scene, when he is late for work at the local malt shop–this is unheard of as well because “Pleasantville” is a world where no one is ever late for work–he inadvertently introduces change himself. In fact, he introduces the most insidious element of change because he explicitly advises–without realizing what he has unleashed–that his boss think for himself!

In this scene Bud, formerly David, finds his boss and coworker, Mr. Johnson, played by Jeff Daniels, stuck at the end of the counter, cleaning away with a wash cloth, like a stuck record, at the same spot, even as the surface of the counter is rubbing away. When the soda jerk, Mr. Johnson, explains confusedly that the normal regimen would have required Bud to arrive at work before he, Mr. Johnson, could go on to the rest of his chores, “Bud” simply suggests to Mr. Johnson that in the future he continue with his next chore even if Bud isn’t there.

So simply in being himself, coming from a future in which people react to change by thinking out new responses and thereby adapting to them, Bud, aka David, introduces a totally new element into the soda jerk’s script. This has far reaching consequences as the movie progresses and Mr. Johnson begins thinking for himself and having ideas about other things as well. In this way, the soda jerk, soon to be artist, too ends up “colored.”

Blue Meanies

This movie, thematically, is remarkably akin to the 1968-released movie “Yellow Submarine” put out by the Sixties Generation rock group The Beatles. In that film there is a region ruled by the “Blue Meanies.” These Blue Meanies, especially their leader, are depicted as powerful and cruel, yet sniveling, insecure, weak, and selfish underneath. Their angry and oppressive personas are shown to reveal poor little whining babies behind them. Their actions are shown to be those of “big babies,” whose gruff exterior must remain intact at all costs, lest their hidden sniveling and hurt little selves be revealed. The analogy the Beatles are making to those of the WWII Generation—at that time the parental generation, those “over 30″—is impossible not to make.

“Nowhere Man.”  The movies are so similar in theme that the only major thematic difference between “Pleasantville” and “Yellow Submarine” is that it is music that is not allowed in “Yellow Submarine” whereas in “Pleasantville” it is color. But the idea behind them both is the same: Music and color both represent deep feeling, aliveness, thinking for oneself, and change. In “Yellow Submarine,” the man without music is Nowhere Man, who “knows not where he’s going to, doesn’t have a point of view.” In Pleasantville, the men without color act in the same ways, performing the same actions, day in, day out, without change, zombie- or robot-like–like characters in a 1950s-style sitcom in which nothing unpleasant, different, new, or too emotional is allowed to occur.

And above all, the black-and-white men do not think for themselves. This is graphically portrayed in the scene mentioned where the owner of the town malt shop, Mr. Johnson, portrayed by Jeff Daniels, is left cleaning the same spot of the counter for hours so that its top is rubbed away because his coworker is late and the routine they use to close up cannot be completed in the way it is done, everyday, in exactly the same way. Confronted with this small change, he shows himself to be the “Nowhere Man” and like a needle stuck on a record, he is rigidly stuck repeating the same action, not having the power to think of an alternative action in response to a change in the usual routine.

No longer a distant vision.  The differences in the years of the release and the different artistic modes used to express the themes of these two movies have something to say as well. In 1968 the changes in culture of the New Age were a vision and a hope. It is appropriate and telling that “Yellow Submarine” was expressed in animated form. Like a dream that would take a long time to realize, it needed to be expressed in cartoon-like fashion, for the time of its emergence in reality was too far off.

By contrast, “Pleasantville” blends a fantasy world–appropriately it is a TV sitcom, which has more similarities with reality than an animation–with the actual reality of postmodern times. The advance toward reality is patent in the evolution from an animated form–indicating the change is far off, a fantasy, a wish, a hope–in the 1968 movie; to a black-and-white form involving real actors, real people; and then to a colorized version involving real people in what is supposed to be real time and real cultural reality, in the movie released thirty years later. One might say that what was a fantasy over forty years ago is, however unconsciously, being heralded as, hopefully, emerging and coming into being now–in actual, black-and-white or colored, real time and place.

Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Concerning the movie “Pleasantville,” noted movie critic Roger Ebert quite astutely pointed out that it was “like the defeat of the body snatchers” (from his excellent review, “Pleasantville” ). One might also say that it is one in which Holden Caulfield, the character in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, wins out and children do not grow up to be adult “phonies.” Another analogy would be that it is a depiction in which Peter Pan stays young, when he succeeds in keeping the children from ever growing up and thereby losing their capacity to “fly”–representing the capacity to dream, to envision, to be open to new possibilities, to adventure.

What It Is That Makes One Alive

Against this backdrop of lack of real aliveness, the introduction of “color” into the town of Pleasantville through the introduction of sex is not seen as something bad at all. Similarly, in recent history, despite the increasing drum beating of the Religious Right in the last three decades, those of us who grew up in the Fifties know that the introduction of sex–in the Sixties, as in the “sexual revolution”–was a step forward from the hypocritical sameness and plodding repression of the Fifties.

Other elements introduced into Pleasantville that produce colorization in the participants include thinking for oneself (Jeff Daniels in his role as the soda jerk), intellectual passion (the sister), questioning the way things are supposed to be or, in Sixties terms, questioning authority (when the brother finally becomes colored), artistic and creative passion (Jeff Daniels again), and even the passion of honest rage (the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce). These elements arise in Pleasantville just as they arose into the collective consciousness of those of us living in the Fifties and Sixties.

Of course I am not naively saying that these elements never existed before the Sixties. The underlying factor that was introduced into the movie causing color and that was also introduced into our society causing all the sociocultural changes that we, usually, complain about is the factor of choosing something different than what is expected by society, than what is expected by the outside. What is introduced in the movie–as it was introduced in our culture–is the preeminence of inner authority in making decisions, as opposed to outer authority.

A New Psychohistorical Era!  In psychohistorical terms this difference is marked by Lloyd deMause as a difference in a mode of child-rearing. The black-and-white Fifties Pleasantville is a representation of a mode of child-rearing—which characterized the Fifties—wherein the role of the parents is to “mold,” model, and guide children along paths that the parents have deemed to be correct–called the socializing mode of child-rearing. The child is expected to be a clone of the parents, a mini-me, or at least to represent the parents’ ideas of proper behavior, ideals, and mode of living, irregardless of whether the parent models them or not. And when not, the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do” and the term hypocrite as applied to the parents are apropos. The basic nature of the child is considered to be sinful and evil or at least beastial; the classic novel Lord of the Flies depicts this view of human nature. Therefore the child needs to become other than itself and conform itself to something outside of itself in order for she or he to be considered “good” and to receive good responses in turn from parents and society.

By contrast, the colorized Pleasantville represents the mode of child-caring that came out, big time, beginning in the Sixties, wherein the parents’ role is that of “bringing out” from and supporting, encouraging, and helping the child to discover what the child’s talents and inherent abilities, feelings, and proclivities are, and then encouraging the child to “believe in him/herself” in the expression of those inherent and inborn good qualities and values–termed the helping mode of child-caring.  [Footnote 1]

This mode contains a radically new view of basic human nature. Humans are seen to be essentially good (even “divine”). It is evil and painful events impinging upon the child from the outside—family and society—that are deemed causative in taking the child from its natural state of innocence and goodness and inherent unique talents to one wherein the child is corrupted and thus becomes beastial and lacking in inherent good qualities and talents. Therefore the solution is to protect the child from traumas coming from the outside, especially the huge one of feeling unloved through not being seen or respected as a unique individual…as opposed to being seen as a mere outgrowth or mini-me of a parental entity. And in so doing the parents’ role includes helping the child to discover his or her uniqueness and dispensing unconditional love, that is, love that is given freely, without the requirement, as in the socializing mode, that the child do and be what the parents want before the child is accepted or shown approval or any emotional warmth.

In representing this advanced mode of being (and child-caring) the “colorized” people in Pleasantville open themselves to possibilities that were never before considered; they stray from the earlier mode requiring strict conformity to parental scripts. Robert Kennedy’s Sixties quote comes to mind as expressing this: “Some people look at things as they are and ask, why? I think of things that never were and ask, why not?” This means, then, a capacity to experiment and adventure in one’s life, which, at bottom, involve a belief in questioning authority and thinking for oneself in Sixties terms or, in Sathya Sai Baba’s words, a belief that we are, each of us, “experiments in truth” in our sojourns on Earth. And just as these elements and beliefs became more and more a part of America’s collective consciousness in the Sixties and Seventies and ever since then, they also gradually develop in “Pleasantville.”

“Love My Uncertainty”

One reviewer described the ending of the movie as “not at all easy and tidy, but rather very, very messy” ( “Pleasantville” by Chris A. Bolton). Ebert–more astutely but not quite correctly—wrote that the determining factor in whether someone became “colored” was the factor of change. The first reviewer, like someone with one foot still in “Pleasantville” or one who is still not fully colored, does not understand that the ending, wherein the characters proclaim that they do not know what is going to happen next, contains exactly the essential message of the movie. The ending can only be “messy” if one expects a particular ending.

And the whole point of change is that it is always something one does not expect. Likewise, when people act out of inner rather than outer authority, one can only expect that what happens will be unique, like people are when they are not conforming to external expectations. So there could be no pat or predicted ending. The moviegoer could not leave knowing whether Betty Parker, the Stepford housewife turned liberated woman, returns to her husband, George, or takes off with the soda jerk turned artist, Mr. Johnson, because that would destroy the uncertainty inherent in change, growth, aliveness, and so on. So the ending is exactly what it has to be.

And this ending expresses the spiritual razor’s edge each of us must cross during our life’s sojourn. Whenever we try to put life, or love, into a box, package, or a gilded cage, it dies or stagnates—just like a boring black-and-white sitcom world. Real change and spiritual growth means letting go and opening oneself to the unexpected and the unknown. So it is in this vein that the spiritual teacher Sai Baba tells his followers, “Love my uncertainty,” in helping them to deal–after the usual “honeymoon phase” at the beginning of their spiritual path–with the trials, changes, tribulations, and suffering that his devotees experience later on, along their path to greater purity of heart and compassion, and eventually spiritual liberation.

The Scenery of Healing

One of the reasons the movie, “Pleasantville,” so appealed to me is that its view of current events is so akin to that which I have been expressing in other of my more recent writings–e.g., the articles “The Sometimes Messy Scenery of Healing“ and “The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious“ and the books Apocalypse Emergency: Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? and Apocalypse, or New Age? The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious–wherein I make the argument that recent events are not evidence of a downfall of civilization, as conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan would have us believe, but are the necessary “birth pains” of a new age being born.

In Pleasantville, indeed, though everyone smiles and there is no crime or unpleasantness–which is supposed to reflect the view of reality presented in Fifties sitcoms like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver–it is inherently flawed in that it is lacking in “color.” Those of us who lived through the Fifties know that the lack of color is an apt metaphor for exactly the way it was at that time. It was a back-and-white world–a world that covered up its underlying nastiness and evil by repression and denial–psychological defense mechanisms that characterize the World-War-Two Generation especially.

New Mantram: “Thinking for Oneself Is Good!”

The point in the movie, which is so appealing, is that it causes us to look again at the changes in our society that have occurred because of the various “revolutions” of postmodern times–civil rights, student antiwar, women’s rights, sexual, and so on–and to stop bemoaning the “messiness” that comes with freedom. We have more choice, more freedom now than ever. And this freedom allows us the opportunity for a higher spirituality—some would say the only true spirituality—which involves the harrowing path of deciding for oneself, based upon one’s ability to intuit or “feel” the correct path, and experiencing the consequences of one’s choices, as opposed to the preordained religiosity of following a script.

Though many would argue this, one has only to look, as this movie forces us to do, back at where we started. And from that perspective, with that stultifying, hypocritical, dishonest, and phony kind of supposed “living” in mind, we can easily see the changes and progress made in individual freedom and, dare I say, genuine spirituality, and accept the uncertainty, emotional pain, apparent evil, “messiness,” social and political turbulence, and all the rest that comes with it.

Abortion of Cultural Rebirth, Aborted Changing of the Guard

It’s a (Not So) Wonderful Life

The paramount theme in “Pleasantville”—which is that thinking for oneself and following one’s own unique path and being open to the change that comes with that brings “color,” truth, and aliveness to one’s life—is truly a Sixties Generation idea. Again, it is not that it has never been thought of before. All great ideas have been thought of before, but that does not mean they have been implemented on a sociocultural, macrocosmic level. Many ideas have remained in the realm of the solitary pursuits of philosophers and mystics and been exemplified only in individual lives. But the Sixties was such a time of turmoil because the values of individual freedom, personal passion, feeling and experience, questioning authority, and thinking for oneself were shared by so many  Baby-Boomers and were so contrary to the values of the generation in power.

An excellent example of how opposed the Sixties values are to those of the WWII Generation is found in that beloved movie of all time, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart. In that film, the main character is prevented by circumstances from following his dreams. One event after another keeps him from leaving his home town. His story might be called “The Truman Show” in reverse for he comes to accept the loss of his dreams. He is rewarded for giving up his yearning for adventure with the warmth of a loving family and friends. Nonetheless, he has been reduced to someone who simply follows a script or role and when it appears that he might fail in that role he considers killing himself.

The movie is beloved and timeless, no doubt, because it reassures an entire generation and all those who have had to give up their dreams for whatever reason that their sacrifices were for a higher good and that it is a wonderful life after all. It provides a rationalization against the painful feelings of knowing that one will never know “what might have been” by pointing out the truth that one’s life affects others and has meaning regardless of whether or not one has been fortunate enough to actualize one’s deepest desires, talents, aspirations, and dreams.

As mentioned, “It’s a Wonderful Life” calls out to and epitomizes the experiences and attitudes of the World War Two Generation in particular. They were called upon to fight a war, after all, which no doubt would derail many a young man’s (and woman’s) dreams. As in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the circumstances that arise to prevent their following through on their dreams are imposed from the outside–the state of being at war and being called upon by a draft to enlist or else be enlisted. For the women, as well as the men who stayed behind, the war’s influence on their lives and the carrying out of idealistic schemes and dreams are only a little less pronounced. For, as in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the war created a society heaving with needs and pain, which only the truly heartless (who wouldn’t have any dreams anyway) could not help but feel compelled to respond to.

In one way or another, the situation in the Forties, with the war effort and afterwards, created a generation who, except for the rare individual or one of unusual circumstances, was called upon to step up into mature responsible tasks long before the idealism of their youth would have preferred that they do so. And their generation is scarred for having missed this opportunity. They are individuals deserving of our sympathy; yet crippled they are nonetheless.

Mashing Butterflies and Drowning Kittens

This is not to say, however, that the generations before the WWII Generation were allowed their dreams and that the WWII Generation is unique in being crippled in its development. For we know that earlier child-rearing modes required the submission of children and youth to parental wishes (again, see “The History of Childhood As The History of Child Abuse” by Lloyd deMause). Therefore, dreaming or envisioning an adventurous life was not the norm. For much of the history of the world and in most cultures, indeed, even the selection of one’s spouse was decided by the parents. So much has our history–in both Eastern and Western cultures–been marked by the assassination of youthful dreaming, idealism, and choice that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet can be said to be a revolutionary work in even depicting that this assassination of dreams is a tragedy!

Still, the WWII Generation can be said to have been especially affected by this slaying of self, for they did, after all experience the heady freedom of the “Roaring Twenties” and the dreaming that preceded the Great Depression. In the Twenties, victorious in World War I and with it now put behind, America was coming into its youthfulness and was heady with its achievements. Unbelievable accomplishments and inventions in all areas of life were speeding up sociocultural change causing some to believe that a new era was around the corner, just within reach, an era unlike anything the world had ever known. This was the atmosphere in the Twenties when the WWII Generation were in their childhood or adolescence. It couldn’t help making a very strong, because of its being early, imprint on their expectations.

However, these dreams would be dashed in the Great Depression, during which time they would be adolescents and young adults, and they would be harnessed into struggling like their parents had to earlier and were now again struggling. Still, as time wore on the dreams of a new world would be reignited with the idealistic union movement and the Franklin Roosevelt changes in the social contract that rescripted the relation between the society and the individual, creating a symbiotic one which enhanced them both as champions of each other. Folks would magnify the power of the person when united with others. They would dream of a fairer world in which the rich did not dominate with their wealth because the poor could balance the scales with their strength in numbers, adding to their individual power by joining in unions and by combining their votes in elections. They could begin to envision the light at the end of the tunnel of the Great Depression in which they might realize the freedom and adventure they’d glimpsed around them as children in the Twenties.

So it is understandable that they would not wish to enter World War II when it began. And Pearl Harbor Day, when their fate was inevitably forged, when it became clear that for the second time the light of individual freedom would be extinguished, would become an important marker in their lifetimes–a day almost as much to be memorialized as their birthdays.

Sitting on the Shoulders of One’s Ancestors

For this we can pity the World War Two Generation. As in John Updike’s The Centaur, the World War Two Generation is depicted as a generation that was required to give up its dreams and do its “duty,” above all. It was required to carry out a script given to them by their society, not allowing them to follow their natural youthful ideals. And as in Updike’s novel, they are beaten down in a life that is regimented and has no “color,” spark, life, idealism, or dreams. They have become the robot-like residents of “Pleasantville.” But Updike points out in his novel that their sacrifice, despite the personal tragedy of it on the individual scale, is both necessary and noble in that it makes possible the realization of dreams by the generation that they gave birth to.

The Sixties Generation Arrived

It is significant that the protagonist of change in the movie “Pleasantville” would be a young male, Bud (David). This is in keeping with legends of old where a young prince comes bearing the new knowledge. But in postmodern style, wonderfully so, he is drawn only reluctantly into this role and we see that it is women who are the real instigators, the least threatened by change. At first, David/Bud opposes his sister and argues for the status quo, maintaining that his sister, who is actually the first one to “break the rules” and thereby to bring color to the town, must abide by the script.

The “young prince” knows the rules well. This fits with legend, where the new ways are brought by a prince who is not ignorant of tradition; in fact the prince is the one who has excelled in training in traditional ways. In the movie, David is in fact a Pleasantville trivia whiz. He knows exactly the way things are supposed to unravel, the way events are supposed to go.

So when his sister first introduces color by introducing sex, he admonishes her. And when he also is tempted to a change in the “script,” he refuses at first. This is when Bud is offered homemade cookies by the young woman who would be his romantic partner. He refuses because he knows that, according to script, it is another young man who is supposed to get the cookies and end up with that particular girl. Despite his attraction for the young woman, his strong sense of maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat, causes him to try to refuse the cookies. It takes a great deal of forcefulness on the young woman’s part to get him, reluctantly, to accept the cookies that he actually does want. So, again, it is a young, significantly “colorized,” woman who tempts him into a change in the script.

It is not that the young man does not have the makeup for accepting change. In fact, even before his sister blatantly brings about change, and therefore color, by rebelliously introducing sex, he has already sown the seeds of change, although unconsciously, when he suggests to his boss, Mr. Johnson, that he think for himself, instead of following a rigid script. This he does unconsciously and out of selfish motives in that he by nature is different from the character he is supposed to portray and so he does not play his role exactly as it is “supposed” to be played. Specifically, because he is not really the robot character he has replaced, he ends up being late for his job–which heretofore was a totally unheard of event.

The Hundredth Monkey

It is also significant that it is the young that are the first ones in the town to become “colored.” As in the hundredth monkey phenomenon, it is first the young, especially females, who are open to new experiences, ways, and ideas. Then it is adult females–in this movie exemplified by Betty Parker, the mother of Bud and Mary Sue—who are next to consider alternatives and new ways. Adult males are the last to turn to color, but among them it is the sensitive of heart, exemplified by the artist/soda-jerk character, Mr. Johnson, who “turn on” initially.

Last to become colorized–i.e., to be open to change and thinking for oneself–are the “authorities” of the town, in this instance, those on the Chamber of Commerce. And among these the most recalcitrant of all is their leader, Big Bob, played by J.T. Walsh, in his final film role before his passing away. Though Big Bob displays a pleasing and affable persona on the surface (for this read “good old boy”), there is an insidious Hitleresque quality to him which provides the suspense at the climax of the movie where he presides over the fate of the artist, Mr. Johnson, and the “young prince,” David/Bud.

“You Can’t Legislate Morals”

With the support of the Chamber of Commerce, we know Big Bob has the power to do whatever he will with the two on trial. And since the events preceding the trial has included mob actions which have included a book burning, the attack and destruction of the malt shop, and the cornering, physical intimidation, and physical attack of “coloreds” by gangs–images common to modern times which has seen these sorts of events in actuality occurring in the civil rights and anti–Vietnam-War movements, and currently in democracy as well as anti-America demonstrations in third-world countries–the fate of the prisoners is imagined to include the ultimate penalty of death.

Indeed, this ominous possibility is promoted by the actions of the soda-jerk Artist who, at the trial, pitifully pleads for a compromise. This is pitiful since we know that his art is his life, that it is the one thing that has truly enriched his life and made it worth living. We know of its importance in that, even after the attack on his malt shop, he defied the “rules” laid down by the town’s authorities which outlawed art and color by working with the Prince through the night to produce a colorful mural on the outside wall of his shop depicting the current events of the town and the feelings swirling about inside its residents–an act which is reminiscent of antiwar demonstrators, who got fired upon at Kent State, of civil rights demonstrators, who police attacked with dogs, and of Tienanmen Square demonstrators, who were rolled over by tanks, shot, and killed, and most recently of all the courageous men and women of the Middle East risking their lives for freedom. Since this character, recently so courageously defiant, is intimidated into pleading for a compromise in which he would be willing to use only certain colors or where he would submit for approval by the Chamber’s leader his ideas for painting beforehand–a compromise which his body language and facial expressions show, wonderfully acted by Jeff Daniels, is one near up against the very death of his soul–we know he fears for the loss of his physical life.

The compromise is too much like the compromises we have witnessed being offered and come to expect being offered to some of the Tienanmen Square and other political prisoners of recent times wherein they are required to do something along the lines of admitting their guilt, apologizing to the State for the trouble they have caused it, and promising to never again to engage in such activities…and only in the most benevolent of circumstance being allowed to continue anything like their former activities but if so only under the supervision and with the approval of authorities with veto power over their proposed actions.

The Religious Wrong

So Big Bob and the Chamber of Commerce represent in the current social framework the Religious Right (sometimes referred to as the “religious wrong” and sometimes about which it is noted that the Religious Right is neither). Big Bob’s Chamber of Commerce represents Republicans, Tea Partiers, and those in general in our society who have succumbed to the rewards and threats of the World War Two Generation to live a regimented robot-like unfeeling passionless life; to become one of J. D. Salinger’s “phonies,” to abide by their misconstrued idea of “family values,” and above all to “behave” and not do anything to rock the boat of the status quo which might threaten the privileges of those currently enjoying power and wealth handed down, mostly, by heredity.

Civil Rights Movement

It is highly significant that in the courtroom scene the “colored” would be sitting in the balcony, above the black-and-white men. One might say this represents their status as being an elevated state, something to aspire to, and yet not on the level where matters are decided. But even more so, this scene is important in that it is a near exact replication of the courtroom scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” wherein the balcony of the courtroom is filled with Blacks, another kind of “colored.” This makes it clear that when the movie is dealing with the conflict between the adult males of the town and the “coloreds” it is referring to the Civil Rights movement.

The American Tienanmen Square

The events in China’s Tienanmen Square more than twenty years ago so affected and still affects some of us here in America because we know at some level that we have experienced it before. What happened in China two decades ago is so much like what happened here four decades ago, somewhat less graphically, around the Vietnam War demonstrations. Let me explain.

For one thing, the images of the demonstrations in China, e.g., the lone man standing in front of the tank, were so like those of Sixties demonstrations, e.g., Sixties youth blocking the paths of soldiers and placing flowers in their gun barrels.

And the result of both was the same: In both cases the opposition, the youth movement, crushed–violently in China, subtly and behind the scenes in the US–at the command of an octogenarian generation, clinging desperately to power as much as to their waning physical frames.

The King Won’t Die

Assassinations—Character and Otherwise

We see the same pattern of violent versus subtle played out in the US as well where we no longer assassinate our president as we did with JFK, we character assassinate instead, as we did with Clinton and which the Tea Party and the wealthy right are trying to manufacture against Obama. One might say the WWII generation in America has gotten more finesse, with practice, in its beating back sociocultural change not to their liking and that the Chinese geriatric set didn’t have as much practice with it.

Nevertheless the results in both countries are the same. They involve the ultimate victory of sociocultural change in both instances being delayed until the dying off of an elderly generation in power–a generation refusing to die or hand over the controls at the proper time like the generations before them. Simply, the king won’t die!

But the King Refuses to Die

Time is running out for the octogenarians on either side of the Pacific.

The expected, supposedly inevitable defeat of the WWII Generation–their dying off–is portrayed in “Pleasantville” by Big Bob, head of the Chamber of Commerce, ending up fleeing the scene in the courtroom. (Strange coincidence, the actor actually died after making this film.) There are many ways his defeat could have been played out in the movie. I think it is highly significant that he runs away, never to be seen again, just as in the current context the dying off of the WWII Generation is a literal leaving of the scene, not an outright defeat, or some other means of change of power.

Since Pleasantville

With these factors in mind, what have we experienced in the last two decades, as the Sixties Generation finally got its turn? As expected, it was at first quite different from what the WWII Generation had been serving up during its forty-plus years’ reign. We saw the beginnings of cultural enlightening and progress during Clinton’s term in the Nineties. In retrospect it was a colorful time; it was an enthusiastic time.

The Nineties were bookmarked between the economic wreckage left by Reagan-Bush and their voodoo economics throwing money at the rich leading to a huge recession and a financial scandal–S&L Scandal–that involved, for that time, an extraordinary price tag for the country. And the other end was the assignment by the Supreme Court of the election to George W. Bush over Al Gore–a battle of a Sixties Generation member against a WWII Generation paid-for creation, the W.

In between those two markers a war was waged, a culture war, whose battles–economics, abortion, sexuality, cultural expression, war/peace, child abuse, spouse abuse–and whose personalities–Clinton, Gingrich, Lewinsky, OJ Simpson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Brown, Ross Perot–were detailed and rehashed endlessly via the daily news mills.

At the end, the installment of the W represented a resurgence, in typical Culture War style, of the dominance of WWII type oppression and manipulation of the masses. It was the abortion of the changing of the cultural guard that was naturally occurring. It was the King propped up mechanically, robot-like carrying out the dictums of those who once lived but were no more. It was an abomination of the natural order. And its consequences during the first decade of the Twenty-First Century were exactly what would be expected from an abomination like that.

The WWII Generation–like the endings of horror flicks, which leave always a hint or part of the monster living on somehow, thus setting up a possible sequel–left behind part of itself in the form of the Eighties Generation clones and the Fifties Generation. And these folks ain’t going away any time soon! They are here in the Tea Party; they are here in the wealthy right, they are here in the ownership and guiding principles of the mainstream media, now become principal propagandist of the American patriarchy (the “filthy rich”).

Currently, in the second decade of the new millennium, the Culture War has erupted in Nineties fashions, pitting Obama now against the cultural regressives. Same old culture war, now brought to furious and fiery life, as a struggle suppressed by a decade of domination by untruths would be, as it emerges even angrier for having to wait.

The King’s Gotta Die Sometime!

However much we cannot know the future, and despite the seeds of WWII Generation values left incubating in the minds of Eighties and Fifties Generation members and emerging under tea-bag hats, we can hope that the vision of “Pleasantville” will eventually hold out. Just as in the movie when after everyone has experienced color there is no semblance of a wish to return to a black-and-white world, so also we might hope that as our society turns more and more away from war-making, selfishness, race- and sexism, ecological destruction, and all the other WWII Generation evils left behind, and turns more and more toward economic prosperity, peace-keeping, loving our children and having honest relationships, and the reclaiming of our natural environment and ecological balance, there will be fewer and fewer who wish to turn back the times to the unreal black-and-white world of the “Blue Meanies.”

We see evidence of this in both the election of Obama and the high popular ratings for him since in office. Earlier we observed it in the great support for Clinton even during the assassination attempt on his character. The approval ratings of both of these Sixties-side-of-the-Culture-War Presidents certainly is not comprised only of Baby-Boomers. Sixties Generation values are infectious because they offer so much hope. African-Americans of all ages supported Clinton overwhelmingly; of course they support Obama. We can certainly see that our black population would not wish a return to the black-and-white world that included discrimination and violence against them. Women of all ages, for the same reasons, would not be expected to wish a return to a less individualistic status, to a subservient state. And the young will always be idealistic if they are shown any ideals, which is what we can expect the Sixties Generation to be doing, as they continue taking their seats in the Wise Elders section of the parliament of sociocultural creation.

We have seen examples of this change all around us. In fact the current frenzied attack from the right can be seen as a desperate last ditch battle in a war they will inevitably lose. That is the good news.

The bad news is that, similar to the way the Republicans cleaned out the Treasury and left huge deficits and several wars on the desk of the incoming Democratic administration, thus hobbling it before it began, we have no idea how great will be the destruction left behind from these culture waging, albeit waning, authoritarians in the current context. With their gains in stealing from all classes of society below them in their last dying clingings of a dying old guard, a king who simply won’t die, they are heavy with gold. They have the means to buy much more influence than their numbers. The multitudes are growing in size against them, but with their wealth and with the technology and science available now multiplying further their abilities, their capacity to control the minds of much of the population is magnified beyond anything previously and beyond anyone’s abilities to calculate or foresee.

So despite the trends toward a natural evolution like we have seen in the past, we might witness a strange aberration–a zombie apocalypse created out of the thinking of a time long gone comprised of sick ghostly fantasies of a black-and-white golden age that never was. Such things have happened before; cultures have indeed stagnated for hundreds and even thousands of years; the Middle Age is one such example of stagnation beneath an oppressive deathly authority that would never renew.

Still, despite the scientific and technological monkey wrenches that might permanently upset a natural order of progression, it is more likely that things will work out as they have most of the time than that we will see an aberrant development. There is, after all, at least as much technology and science catalyzing progressive change as is not.

And the evidence for a natural development is there for all with eyes to see. With so much change needed, it is easy to forget how much has changed for the positive since the Sixties. Still, with no inclination to see it, no amount of listing of the evidence will bring them into view.

What might be helpful, though, is to note some other analogies from the movie “Pleasantville” which can provide insight as to what may be on the horizon or at least be considered food for speculation:

Whereas the black-and-white Pleasantville ends at the town’s borders and turns round again to the center of town, the post-color Pleasantville roads continue going, connecting Pleasantville with the rest of the world. Thus, with color and by inference imagination and thinking for oneself, Pleasantville has become part of a larger world, one in which Pleasantville citizens can participate and in which they can travel and take up residence. This represents the global village, the coming together of the interests of all nations–the emerging “global economy.”

But perhaps most of all this connection to a larger world represents those factors of modern telecommunications and travel that have made the world open to the eyes of all, which is the real reason the Iron Curtain fell, the real reason apartheid was overthrown, the real reason democratic revolution is coming to the Middle East and may yet be causative in bringing democracy to places like China and Iran, despite their oppressive propped-up elder-archies, their kings who will not die, their frozen non-renewing social processes.

And the most potent analogy of all: the World Wide Web, bringing together all peoples of the world into a collective consciousness sharing ideas and together shaping a world, not just a neighborhood, with true democratization of information, uncontrollable by any wealthy elite of any country or any generation.

Finally, the image at the end of “Pleasantville” is the most apt for what we may next expect: The only thing we know for sure is that it will be different.

Footnote

1. See “The History of Childhood As the History of Child Abuse” by Lloyd deMause on the Primal Spirit site.  [return to text]

Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

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Culture War, Part Three: Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures

Drugs and Generations

In continuing our exploration of cultural and generational conflict and the Matrix evolving out of that, it is instructive to focus on an aspect of that conflict that has burned with controversy—drug use. Since drugs affect consciousness and personality and different drugs have different effects, looking at the polar opposite views on consciousness altering substances is especially fruitful.

So for additional perspective on the topic of culture war and the processes of cultural change that have gone on since the 1950s between and because of the different generations involved, let us consider the relation between particular drugs, with each their own unique effects on consciousness, and the generation that uses them…or, one might say…between the prevailing drug use of a time and the generational culture that is created. I present some salient facts for your consideration:

Drugs and Consciousnesses

Drug Research, Public and Private

While it is common to state that drugs act differently on different people—especially, when referring to the less-mainstream, more esoteric ones, whose effects have not been experienced by the majority of people as yet—there are some obvious generalizations that can be made. For example, we would not say that we could not comment on the effects of alcohol. Its effects on the neurochemistry of the brain and on consciousness have been fully and scientifically explored, and of course its effects have been experienced by nearly everyone in our culture. Similarly, though research on the effects of the less-mainstream drugs have not been as thoroughly explored and documented, there is, in fact, quite an extensive body of scientific and popular literature on this, especially over the last half century.

Because of the widespread drug use of the Sixties Generation, massive amounts of money have been spent to try to determine how and in what way people are affected by the substances they used. Though this research has largely been driven by a World-War-Two-Generation desire to find fault with the drugs, so that the research is biased toward looking for and of course then coming up with findings that would be considered negative, still, the research has a good deal of useful information if you can read “between the lines,” so to speak.

Alongside mainstream research there is also a considerable body of privately funded research, which is therefore less biased, as well as a considerable body of anecdotal research on drug effects. By this last I mean that there is a good deal of literature detailing what people have said they have experienced while under the influence of the various substances. What follows is based on study of both kinds of research described above, as well as from reports by experiencers related to the author, and last but not least, is a result of the fact that this author is a member of the Sixties Generation, born smack in the middle, in 1950, and it may be concluded that I share some of the characteristics of my generation. Enough said, or, see below.

Drug Effects—Alcohol

Alcohol numbs pain and creates a euphoric state by blotting out higher-order cerebral-cortical functioning. It reduces access to memory, diminishes physiomotor skills, blocks anxiety, depression, and nervousness. These effects alone make it the perfect drug to create and sustain a defensive style centered on denial. Indeed, the drug can be said to “block out reality” in that one can be unaware of aspects of reality that could end up being dangerous and harmful while simultaneously enhancing the positive aspects of reality in an almost manic way. One can feel unafraid and unaware in the face of pain and danger, as well as one can feel confident and overoptimistic in terms of one’s evaluations of oneself, one’s capabilities, and the potential consequences of one’s actions.

We can say these are blocks to reality in that very often reality intervenes, through accidents, adverse social reactions, and the reevaluation of grandiose schemes afterwards “in the cold light of sobriety” in which they are seen to be unrealistic in that they did not take into account other aspects which would prevent their success. For those who rarely venture into that state where decisions and plans are evaluated in a sober “cold light”—and there have historically been entire generations (see above) as well as individuals during any period who have kept themselves “under the influence” pretty much all the time, sometimes considering it to be the natural state—for these people we know that the effect is a blocking out of reality in that the effect of acting on the drug-influenced decisions and schemes is most often failure, and a good deal of the time, much more often than would be the case following soberly decided acts, disastrous in one way or another, in that the acts lead to harm to the person, to others, or to the physical or social environment.

Drug Effects—Nicotine

There are three relevant effects of nicotine: It is a stimulant, it causes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and can cause sweating from the speeding up of metabolism. This allows it to be used to aid in working situations, where continued or repetitive action is required, beyond what a person would normally wish to do. However, it is not useful in, say, sporting types of action in that another effect of nicotine is a diminished physiomotor capacity. For example, people will sometimes complain of feelings of “wooziness” and/or its affecting one’s sense of balance, particularly if they have taken enough of the drug or are unaccustomed to it.

Nicotine can paradoxically create a depressing effect. This effect on the body can be felt as a relaxation, and sometimes, but only at its onset, as a relatively short lasting feeling of a surrounding warm numbness, which is sometimes termed a buzz. Thus a person can feel relaxed, sometimes to the point of mental depression, but simultaneously be metabolically stimulated. These effects are related to certain psychological effects of taking the drug, if it is taken in the form of smoked tobacco, as in cigarette or pipe smoking.

Janov has pointed out how a cigarette is the perfect breast substitute. Not only does it engage the oral sensory gestalt, but the breathing in of a warm and full air simulates the taking in of warm mother’s milk. Indeed, people who smoke have often, in psychotherapy, discovered that they have severe deprivations around nursing during the neonatal and infancy periods. The appeal of cigarette smoking, then, for these people lies in its ability to both engage and to some degree temporarily satisfy the oral craving carried over from infancy as well as to re-create both the desired warm relaxation, which the neonate or infant would have experienced if he or she would have been tenderly held and breastfed, as well as the depression/sadness that actually was experienced in infancy because the need to nurse was not satisfied.

We will see again and again this interesting pattern in drug effects, which helps to explain their appeal, in that very often they both assuage an underlying Pain as well as re-create it, either simultaneously or at different times of the drug experience. Primal and other psychologists have learned, of course, that those are the two motivations that emanate from early Pain. That is, that a person is driven both to run away from and avoid her or his Pain, yet “the body” (as it is sometimes said) pushes the person to re-create the original situation, over and over again, in what may be considered the psyche’s way of trying to resolve it. Put simply, we are psychologically designed to be forever faced with our problems until we handle them…in the case of primal pain, we stay stuck in the patterns and sensations of our past traumas until we resolve them.

A final effect of cigarette use is its ability to repress anger. Considering the above, it can be seen why cigarette smoking would be related to an “oral rage,” which is how some psychologists have described one of the emotional reactions to nursing deprivation. Stated plainly, a baby would be extremely pissed-off to not get the comforting and nourishing experience of breastfeeding that a human is biologically designed to crave. This anger remains inside, like all primal emotions, and is easily and often brought to consciousness, triggered by the frustrations of normal life, if nothing else.

However, the physical and psychological effects of sucking in a “smoke” are those of (psychologically) sucking back, or inside, one’s feelings and anger or reversing the natural push of anger which is to lash outwardly; they are also that of a kind of holding or controlling of one’s breath, which is also related to the attempt to hold back or control one’s anger in that breathing and emotions are connected (let’s not get into that just here); of replacing the urge to anger with the soothing warm intake described above, the deprivation of which (in nursing) helped to cause the rage in the first place; and, last but not least, to create a state of consciousness altered from the one of anger—one in which feelings are hazily confused and not clear and in which thinking and memory are somewhat impaired.

Drugs, History, and Cultures

Medieval Times, Drunken Adolescents at War

The Hundred Years’ War between England and France during the Middle Ages was fought by adolescents whose primary beverage was wine. In fact, there was one campaign in which England was raiding and advancing into France which turned into a precipitous retreat back to England. Because the French turned them back, stopped them? No. There was little resistance to their advance. However, they did run out of wine! Unable to acquire the needed wine in France (for what reason, I do not know), they could not continue.

History also reports that The Hundred Years’ War was ordered and commanded, oftentimes, by royalty and kings in their teens, who considered a daylong, somewhat intoxicated state to be normal; and it was fought by drunken adolescents and teenagers for the most part.

911 and Phantom WMDs, Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, Sinking of The Maine…But at the Start There Was the Wyoming Valley “Massacre”

I have mentioned how The Hundred Years’ War was fought by intoxicated teenagers. It can be added that other wars, including America’s own War of Independence were fought by inebriated soldiers. For example, “in a severe battle, General Putnam, who was almost perforated with bullets, complained most of all, that a shot had passed through his canteen and spilt all his rum….”

Moreover, major events in colonial times were brought about by alcohol-saturated actors. The Wyoming Valley Massacre, in which a handful of colonists were killed by Native Americans, was precipitous in the American colony’s involvement in the French-Indian War and the extermination of established Native American cultures and nations—Mohawk, especially the Iroquois. The reaction to the “massacre” was a crusade up and around the Hudson Valley in which the Iroquois, among others, was largely eliminated from the face of the Earth. “If they surrendered, they were killed…if they fled, they were killed,” it was said of the nature of this campaign.

What is not very well known is the nature of the precipitating event, the Wyoming Valley Massacre. The true story is that while a number of adult settlers in their prime were off fighting in the war, a group of older, elderly, and fringe citizens gathered one night. Under the heavy influence of spirits the group riled each other up with fiery rhetoric against the nearby Native Americans.

This resulted in a hastily put together, drunken assault against their native neighbors. Naturally these elderly inebriated attackers did not fare very well in their attempt, and the Native’s response had the colonists retreating to their fort. Not everyone made it. About four were captured by Natives. It is said the stragglers’ screams could be heard that night from inside the wall of the fort as they were killed by the Native American defenders.

This “massacre” was built up and slanted against Native Americans for propaganda reasons to garner the colonists’ full-handed participation in the war, with its extermination of Native races, as mentioned. It was quite successful in accomplishing that. Consequently, also, the true version of the events that led to such genocide would never be related in history books. And who would ever want to believe that the formative events of great nations…or the calamitous, genocidal events of other nations…could be instigated by a rash action from a small group of idiotic old men in a full-on state of intoxication?

World-War-Two Generation, Driving—Wars and Culture—“Under the Influence”

The World-War-Two Generation grew up in a time in which alcohol use was considered fashionable and elegant. It was common and acceptable for men to carry in their shirt or coat pockets flasks of potent whiskey or other hard liquor, from which they could publicly imbibe a swallow here and there throughout the day. When the World-War-Two Generation came of age, cigarette smoking also became fashionable.

We can see evidence of both of these in the movies that were produced in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. Any unpleasant occurrence or announcement could be followed by “I need a drink” or “Sounds like you could use a drink.” And offering a drink of hard liquor was considered the first rite in the normal ritual of hospitality. Also, offering someone a cigarette and/or offering to light another’s cigarette were considered a normal part of genteel behavior.

Elegant accouterments accompanied these rituals as well. Ornate, elegant, and often finely crafted metal flasks were purchased and used. In the same way, elegant crystal and glass containers for holding the liquors as well as elaborate and ritually designed glasses into which the alcoholic beverages were poured were commonly owned and used in genteel culture. It was considered fashionable to have a “bar” area in one’s living room containing these liquors, each in separate crystal containers, and the glasses for serving them.

Many a conversation in the movies of the era were shown to be conducted at or near these home bars, following upon the alcoholic bonding ritual of pouring and imbibing the drink. This ritual conversational imbibing of a beverage has its analogies in the water-cooler, coffee klatch, and coffee/espresso-house rituals of other eras and subcultures.

Pointing out the normality and ritualizing of alcohol use in this era is important because it is an indication of the pervasiveness, at any time of day, of the state of consciousness—i.e., intoxication—that this potent drug produces. Since this cultural behavior is still somewhat with us so that its anomalous quality may not be readily apparent, it may be helpful to keep in mind that current drunken driving laws of nearly all states would apply to everyone of that era involving themselves in only a modicum of that alcoholic ritual.

I.e., those folks, imbibing only one drink, would be considered “drunk” by our standards today, and sufficiently into an altered state of consciousness as to warrant their receiving severe criminal penalties, including jail time, should they put themselves into the driver’s seat of a car.

Yet in that era, normal cultural, business, and social intercourse was often conducted in such a state. Heady decisions concerning war, peace, and everything else were influenced by this culturally accepted drug use.

World War Two, therefore, was conducted and fought by a generation who grew up to believe that alcohol and cigarettes (nicotine) were an acceptable answer to unpleasantness—whether inside or outside of themselves. Alongside this and supporting it were an attitude and beliefs that negative—i.e., unpleasant—emotions and feelings were harmful and should be kept out of consciousness.

Thus, denial was the predominant defense in use; and it is no coincidence that “positive thinking” (popularized by the late Norman Vincent Peale), which is the keeping out of negative thoughts and the striving to focus always on positive ones, became such a rage near the end of their era—the Fifties, early Sixties.  [Footnote 1]

Drug Effects—Marijuana

Initially. The effects of marijuana are more diverse than those of alcohol and nicotine. Yet there are a number of things that can be said about its effects in general. The effects of marijuana are more subtle than the two drugs mentioned thus far. In fact, there are some people who cannot feel the effects of marijuana; and very often it takes several times of using it before one begins to realize its effects. Yet it is not an ineffectual or weak drug by any means.

The reasons why some people cannot feel marijuana’s effects appear to be related to their having very defended personality types, or, one might say they have a great deal of repression. The reason this would affect their ability to feel the drug’s effects are easy to understand when we consider the fact that repression of feelings of trauma would include repression of the ability to feel things in general. A repressed person is a more neurotic, more defended person; and more defended persons are basically defending against painful feelings. But feelings cannot be separated and to repress feelings of Pain means also to repress the ability to be sensitive to other feelings. Hence highly defended or repressed persons can smoke a great deal of marijuana and yet not “get off” or they may just feel feelings of relaxation.

Janov has said that marijuana acts to kind of “bend” defenses, which allows repressed feelings to surface, for those who are not in the category described above, which would include the majority of people. Since we all have some degree of primal pain, we all have defenses to being fully feeling, so the effect of marijuana for the majority of people is to open them to some of the pleasurable feelings that have gotten repressed along with the repression of Pain. Therefore some widely noted effects of marijuana concern its enhancing sensory ability and therefore pleasure. Listening to music, being in Nature, watching a movie, or sex can all be quite enhanced and different while experienced under the influence of marijuana. Aspects of these experiences that were always there but were never noticed can be explored. One can seem to be experiencing something on many levels at once, or to be fully immersed in the experience so that aspects of it that formerly seemed more “walled off” from one can seem almost tangible in one’s ability to experience it; one can become so immersed in experience that complexities of it can be taken in and enjoyed, which one never even noticed before. [Footnote 2]

Part of the reason for this type of effect of “pot” is that it lowers blood sugar and thus causes the normal cortical defenses to be less effective in blocking out experience. Related to this is a feeling of timelessness—a feeling of being in the Now—which can also be related to the diminished cortical functioning which is goal-oriented and related to linear time. Which brings up another effect: It reduces one’s feelings of needs to achieve or to be goal- or achievement-oriented. The sensory world is what is initially enhanced in the course of one’s experience with this drug; and the experience of the sensory world in its own right does not engage more complex, more “inward,” and more individually unique goals, feelings, scripts, dramas, scenarios, or motivations.

Eventually.  Robert Masters and Jean Houston, in their book, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, provided an architecture of the psyche, derived from their study of the effects of LSD, that is useful in understanding what can happen eventually with continued use of marijuana. They conducted “depth soundings” of the LSD experience and discovered that there were four levels of the experience: the sensory, the recollective-analytic, the symbolic, and the integral. While marijuana is not as powerful in its effects as LSD, it has a similar effect on consciousness; one might say it acts in the same direction as LSD. In contrast to drugs like alcohol and nicotine, which serve to aid repression and to help to numb or reduce one’s perception of both inner and outer reality, both marijuana and LSD have the effect of opening or enhancing one’s awareness of inner and outer reality.

However, the effects of marijuana are complex because they do not as consistently open one to inner realities as does LSD. Pot opens or enhances one’s experience of the sensory world initially, and as long as it does just this it can be used as a drug of avoidance of painful (inner) reality just like alcohol and nicotine do. That is, one with sufficient repression and defenses can use marijuana to flee from inner pain, depression, or whatever, into an enhanced, pleasurable sensory world that does not trigger one’s pain. At this stage, only, pot can be used to defend against pain and can be psychologically addictive in providing a palliative to pain. Once again, it can do this because it serves only to “bend” not to bust one’s defenses against one’s pain.

Yet for some people this effect of marijuana changes with continued drug use. It is as if the continued “bending” of defenses can eventually lead to a “loosening” of them, and with that loosening comes the deeper level of experience described by Masters and Houston and termed the recollective-analytic. At this level, enhanced sensory experience opens the door, so to speak, to enhanced inner awareness. This enhanced inner awareness can include the awareness of the underlying motivations of oneself and others, and this is mostly not pretty.

Because the normal person is motivated mostly by past, or primal, pains or traumas and is acting out scripts or roles that are pathetic attempts to re-create or struggle with events that happened a long time ago, the normal person is not really IN the present. The person is, as the great religions have described it, in ignorance, in samsara , in dukha, and is basically unreal. The person, as humanistic psychologists have described, is inauthentic and is acting out games or scripts, which they are totally unconscious of. They have identified with these scripts, roles, goals, and motivations—the outgrowth of a completely unique set of past experiences of pain and trauma—and haven’t a clue as to their arbitrary character, let alone of the fact that other people are similarly acting out their own unique roles which are just as arbitrary and, well yes actually, pathetic.

However, pot, just like LSD, can eventually (sometimes even initially for persons who are, perhaps because they are young, or whatever, are unusually undefended, more sensitive, and more open to actual reality) open one to the horrifying perception of the inauthentic and unreal nature of ordinary social behavior. In this state of heightened awareness of the inner world of oneself and others, one perceives oneself and others as puppets or windup dolls, pathetically seeking to satisfy very old needs, which are totally irrelevant to the present context, with others who are similarly and robotlike also seeking to satisfy very different past deprivations. In common parlance, it is said that most actions of people are just “games.” So, part of the horrifying nature of this perception, on the recollective-analytic level of awareness, is that indeed people are not truly relating to each other at all, that they are like people trapped in spacesuits trying to communicate with each other through the layers of barriers between them. [Footnote 3]

What follows from this perception is the conclusion that people are basically phony, or plastic; that life is unreal; that normal motivations in pursuit of normal social values such as achievement, status/popularity, and pleasing appearance are meaningless rituals—games—that are totally irrelevant to the true nature of one’s being or reality; and that one is trapped in this prison of unconscious scripts, with no chance of release or true perception of reality.

The “Beats” – “Phoney Baloney,”  So, “YOU do it!”

The “Beat Generation” of the Fifties used marijuana and caffeine, predominantly. Their culture included the rise of existential belief, the glorification and poetification of angst, and the belief that their contemporary society was characterized by alienation, conformism, inauthenticity, and, most tellingly, “phoniness.” The normal life of the World-War-Two Generation was seen as a “rat race,” motivated by such high ideals (sarcasm intended) as “keeping up with the Joneses,” and pervasive materialism and consumerism.

Yet activism was not the Beat Generation’s response to this perceived negative social context, as it would be only a generation later. Passivism, apathy, pessimism, and defeatism were the most common attitudes expressed. This is what one would expect as a result of marijuana use.

Nonetheless, art was deemed a weapon, however impotent, with which to rail against what seemed an overwhelming, huge mainstream ignorance or unconsciousness. So the only apparent activism of that time is found in rebellious poetry, folk music, and fine arts of all kinds, especially literature, theater, painting, and some film.

Drug Effects—LSD

The preeminent researcher on the effects of LSD on consciousness is, without question, Stanislav Grof. In his many works, he concurs with Masters and Houston’s early work that the initial phases of psychedelic experience are predominantly enhanced sensory awareness. It is this type of experience that is usually related to the use of LSD as when the experience is expressed in colorful and swirling images, which has been called psychedelic art. And for many people who used LSD, the experience remained on this level of surface, enhanced sensory awareness. Thus they could use it for “recreational” purposes.

But more often with LSD people accessed deeper levels of the mind, so that the recollective-analytic (Grof calls it the biographical or psychodynamic level) is reached, as well as levels beyond it. These levels were accessed even when the drug was used “recreationally,” because of the relative potency of the drug as compared with marijuana.

So it was that while Grof and other researchers like Masters and Houston were studying the drugs effects in controlled settings and with sessions guided by researchers who had experience with accessing deeper levels of the experience (as, for example, Grof himself), there was some degree of access of the deeper levels of the experience even by people using it in uncontrolled situations and with no guidance. It if for this reason that there were some calamities that occurred under the influence of the drug, which gave it the bad reputation that caused it to be banned. Yet for every disaster, there were many more whose experience of LSD was transformative, simply due to the fact that, even without a guide, the psyche’s normal tendency is toward growth and resolution; so, many people were able to flow with and be taken to deeper, more transformative levels of the experience.

For example, Stanislav Grof terms the third level of psychedelic experience the perinatal, meaning “surrounding birth.” It is equivalent to what Masters and Houston termed the symbolic level—the difference being due to the fact that perinatal material is initially experienced in highly symbolic ways, and it is only in later sessions with the drug that the birth material becomes more apparent. Since Masters and Houston’s research method was to study the effects of one session of the drug on over two hundred subjects and Grof’s method included its use with some individuals over a number of sessions, it is understandable why Masters and Houston did not discover the birth material laced through the encounters with their “symbolic” level. But beyond the symbolic level the researchers concur once again, with Masters and Houston calling the deepest level integral, and describing a number and variety of spiritual experiences that can happen at that level, and Grof terming the same level the transpersonal , and presenting in exquisite detail in his works a vast array of “spiritual” type experiences at that level.

With this in mind, I wish to point out that the Sixties Generation did not know of these levels and, for the most part, were totally unaware of the research that was coming up with these typographies or architectures of the psyche, or of at least the drug experience. Nevertheless, those of us who lived through that period and either participated in LSD use or heard the stories of psychedelic experiencers can attest that transformative spiritual experiences were quite common, even when the drug was used just for the “fun” sensory part, and people also described experiences of curling up in fetal position and reliving their births, long before anyone even heard the term perinatal. As concerns the spiritual level, it was not uncommon to hear of people who saw Jesus, or who went to a place they could only describe as “heaven,” and this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the varieties of spiritual experiences that were had.

For our purposes here, however, it is important to keep in mind that LSD had the capacity to take one to deeper realities than the horrifying recollective-analytic one. One might say that the recollective-analytic perception is a cognitive view, an intellectual view, or an existential view, and it is certainly an alienated one; but that most of all it lacks the aspect of “the heart.” In other words, it is only when one goes deeper into the psyche and “feels” the Pain of that estrangement, or in psychedelic terms goes deeper into the actual reliving of the traumas that caused the creation of those alienating scripts (as happens on LSD when the biographical or psychodynamic level is reached; and even more so when the perinatal level is worked through, relived), that one can go beyond the horrifying reality of estrangement to a reality in which one’s “heart” is opened and one can catch a glimpse of a reality beyond the normal one—one in which we are all spiritually connected, in Love.

It is significant to point out that LSD has this capacity beyond the use of pot so we might understand the differences between the Beat Generation’s reaction to their perception of the unreality of existence, obtained in their use of marijuana, and the Sixties Generation’s quite different reaction to that perception of social phoniness, who were influenced by the use of both marijuana and LSD.

Vietnam-Era Generation–“Wow, Man!” “Just Do It” “Go With the Flow”

The Vietnam-War, or Baby-Boomer, Generation was noted for their use of a number of drugs. Marijuana, wine, “speed” (amphetamines), “downers” (e.g., “ludes” or qualudes, also “reds”—i.e., barbiturates), LSD, other hallucinogens such as mescaline, “magic mushrooms,” psilocybin, and peyote were all in use. It was a culture of experimentation in all areas, including drugs, which grew out of beliefs (following in the footsteps of the Beat Generation) that normal life/people were characterized by phoniness (plastic was the Vietnam-era Generation’s word for it), alienation, conformism, robotism, and lack of feelingness…and hypocrisy.

Though the Sixties Generation (another term used for this generation) experimented widely with drugs, their predominant drugs of choice were “pot” (marijuana) and LSD. Alongside this sort of drug use were attitudes of activism, free love, love as the ultimate value and/or as equivalent to God, pacifism in regards to the war, the valuing of openness, authenticity, “real” communication, and passion and/or feelingness, including sensory awareness or heightened perception of the physical world.

It is easy to make the connection between the spiritual access capable with LSD and the emphasis on feeling, community, communication (‘rapping”), transcendence, and sensory enhancement that characterized the Sixties Generation. On the negative side, there was sometimes apathy and defeatism, like the Beat Generation, associated with marijuana use.

Marijuana “Cocktails,” History, and Culture

Once the pot experience opens to the second level of awareness—the recollective-analytic, which is deeper and more real than the initial enhanced sensory awareness—there is no going back. That does not mean that people will not try to recapture the earlier type of experience. Very often it is at this point that the person will begin mixing the pot with other drugs, in particular, alcohol, because they will try to block out the deeper awareness with these other drugs that diminish awareness.

Indeed, we saw this happen on a massive scale in the Sixties. Initially, pot users were disdainful of people who used alcohol, calling them “juiceheads.” They were disdainful of alcohol use because they were aware that it reduced awareness and that it had served that purpose for their World-War-Two-Generation parents, who they saw as in great denial of obvious realities—about themselves and the world—as people who did not “walk their talk,” and were…a charge leveled like an arrow at the heart of the WWII Generation’s values and world…”hypocrites”! Thus, regardless the cost the one thing the Sixties Generation did not want to do was to end up like their parents; thus, the disdain for the use of alcohol.

However, it is said that the movement changed, exemplified by the differences between Woodstock and Altamont. Woodstock epitomized the height of euphoric use of mind-expanding substances like LSD and marijuana, undiminished by awareness-diminishing drugs like alcohol. And Woodstock was, of course, noted for the fact that it brought together a million people for three days of peace and harmony, a model of nonviolent behavior under adverse conditions that, it was said, was never before exemplified by the alcohol or “juicehead” celebrations or gatherings of the past.

By the time of Altamont—another huge musical event held in California after Woodstock—the change was apparent. Alcohol was now being used, with the other drugs, in abundance; there was no disdain for its use; and violence and death at the event coincided with this change. It might be concluded that the “honeymoon phase,” let us say, of marijuana use had passed for many who were using it, that the heightened sensory awareness was now opening more and more people to the deeper awareness of horrifying psychological realities, which needed to be blocked from awareness by mind-diminishing drugs.

At any rate, the other response to the deeper awareness of horrifying inauthenticity that pot was revealing was for people to stop using marijuana. Indeed, a great many “potheads” abruptly discontinued its use.

And they dealt with the horrifying reality that it had revealed to them in a number of ways, oftentimes turning them into activists to change the social reality, into psychologists or personal growth facilitators to change it on the individual level; but sometimes they tried to retreat into traditional values and culture, only doing it one better—becoming “Jesus freaks,” for example; or they hid away in career and family; or they attempted to build utopian and “authentic” communities of relationship, sans pot.

Some took up the the use of cocaine or amphetamine, finding that the reality that speed revealed hid the horrifying reality of pot, replacing it with an avid and manic identification with one’s roles and scripts. In fact, some used speed with alcohol, then added pot, for a “twist,” and in this way sought to regain the initial innocent sensory euphoria. As the popular song described it at the time, “Just give me weed, whites, and wine….”

Nevertheless, some people simply never had the experience of the horrifying inner inauthenticity of normal existence. Being very defended, they were able to continue to use pot for pleasure, and some of them are able to continue to use it this way to this day. Older folks—middle-aged and up—are especially well-defended and repressed in general. As Janov has pointed out, such persistent and long use of defenses against reality reinforces and strengthens them to such a point as to make them inaccessible to change. Their defenses against painful perceptions cannot be brought down by primal therapy OR pot. In common parlance, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and older people are more “set in their ways.” So it is that when some of these, having missed the “party” during the Sixties, use pot hoping to get a taste of what they missed, they almost never experience anything but the initial sensory awareness and relaxation, that is, if they are able to experience the drug’s effects at all.

Drug Effects—Cocaine, Speed

Drugs in the amphetamine class are stimulants. This includes cocaine, methamphetamine, “meth,” “crystal,” crack cocaine, “crack,” speed, amphetamine, uppers, “whites,” and so on. They repress Pain extraordinarily well.

They are euphoriants and cause one to have the feeling that one’s mental capacities are expanded. One feels that one can envision projects and outcomes precisely. So one expends oneself in organizing and preparing for great achievements, which rarely are embarked on.

Since these drugs repress Pain, creating an amped state of mind more than normally able to fend off unwanted emotional material, they repress the normally present residue of fear, with its attendant caution in the face of activities outside of one’s comfort zone requiring forethought and anticipation. One does not feel constrained by normal fears or apprehensions, so one throws oneself into new activities with reckless abandon. One feels overly confident in one’s abilities and engages in all kinds of risk-taking—financially, sexually, interpersonally, legally. These activities have one embarking on dubious schemes which rarely pan out.

Despite these negatives the corollary of this mental activity is that one’s ability to think and see more clearly on some issues is enhanced, just because one’s fears can pollute one’s perception and apprehension of things. It is enlightening to remember that Sigmund Freud, among other notables in history, experimented with cocaine. At one point, Freud was heartily endorsing its use to his colleagues; he was waxing expansively about its benefits for mental life and clarity of consciousness. Of course, he changed his position on this later. No doubt his use led him to see its face of darkness as well.

Nonetheless, concerning the positive aspects of cocaine, it can be mentally enhancing partly because of its repression of fear. For fears, as mentioned, are both of the helpful-cautionary as well as the oppressive types. Being released from the oppressiveness of fears, being freed of the constraints of “fearful thinking,” can result in seeing one’s reality more clearly. Feeling fearless can lead one to acknowledging truths and realities normally defended against—thus being therapeutic even, getting a glimpse of reality outside of one’s fears.

Being freed from normal caution, however, can lead one into reckless activites with consequences far beyond one’s ability to handle in either a normal, or drugged, state. It is no coincidence that these drugs have seen heavy usage by wartime participants—notable are their use by fighter pilots and by Vietnam warriors.

Lastly, since these stimulants repress feelings, they can lead to insensitivity toward others. But since they can repress fear which blocks truer perception of and appreciation of others they can lead, paradoxically, to feelings of love toward others and a feeling of finally really seeing others and appreciating them for who they are, not simply in the way one has cast them (“pigeon-holed” them) to fit into one’s scripts, agendas, ego projects, or desires.

Matrix Manifesting

“Me Generation,” The Eighties, Yuppy-Kay-Yo-Kay-Yay

Matrix Manifest and The Big Lie.  The Eighties saw an epidemic of use of cocaine. This was commonly attributed to Yuppies, which is the popular term for the Young Upwardly-mobile Professional character of this era and is contrasted with the idealistic, activist, and anti–Vietnam-War Yippies (Youth International Party, whose founder and most famous member was Abbie Hoffman). Yuppies came in at the same time as Ronald Reagan into the White House and, indeed, exemplified much of what Reagan stood for. They were seen as greedy, over-achieving, materialistic, narcissistic, and societally and environmentally insensitive careerists.

They were portrayed in film; one in particular that sought to delineate the attitudes of this character type was “Wall Street,” in which Michael Douglas plays the role of the Yuppie, portraying complete self-centeredness, insensitivity to the ways his Machiavellian strategies harms others or the environment, and driven solely by a value that “Money Is Good!”—a slogan completely the opposite of the previous generation whose attitudes were expressed in lyrics like “I don’t care too much for money; money can’t buy me love” and “Love is all you need”; who bought and lived by books with titles such as How to Live on Nothing, The Greening of America, and Back to Eden; and whose most famous slogan was “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out” (or it was sometimes said, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”—I’m not sure anyone in the generation knew which was the “proper” way to say it).

In any case, another term used for the Yuppie Generation was The “Me” Generation. Thus it was that from the late Sixties, early Seventies (the height of Vietnam-Era Youth’s influence on society and culture) to the late Seventies and most of the Eighties—within a period of a mere decade—the prevailing, media-amplified cultural values of our society swung, pendulum-like, a hundred-and-eighty degrees from where they had been.

This change had a great deal to do with the efforts of the World-War-Two Generation—in total horror at the way their sons and daughters seemed to be reversing the values they had lived, and fought, for—to “take back” society. The WWII Generation did this by putting pressure, as well-to-do alumni, on universities and colleges across America to turn their curriculums away from liberal arts and toward job-oriented curriculums, and by using their positions of power in the media to influence the flow and content of the information to be fed to the mainstream public. For example, in the early Seventies, the WWII Generation’s money and power directed the press to declare that a “conservative backlash” was occurring in America, when in fact the opposite was occurring.

But eventually their “Big Lie” tactics won out so that people began to believe and then to create what they had been repeatedly told…the opposite view having, as part of the strategy, been censored in the media.  [Footnote 4]

Thus, the Yuppies were the creation of the WWII Generation in their attempt to reverse the course of society that their own daughters and sons, as “Sixties Youth,” had put it on.

Scapegoating an Entire Generation.  Coinciding with and supporting the strategy just described, and because the World-War-Two Generation during the Eighties were still in their Triumphant Phase—a psychohistorical term meaning they were at the stage of their life in late adulthood in which they had pretty much gained control of the reins of society—they furthered their cause by managing to plant a fantasy in the collective consciousness of American culture concerning the origins of Yuppies which persists to this day. In obvious denial (again, their predominant defensive posture) of the fact that they had helped to “create” the Yuppies and so of the similarities between their own values and those of the Yuppies, as exemplified by the similarities between the (World-War-Two-era) Reagan-Bush political agenda and that of the Yuppies—who indeed helped elect Reagan and Bush—yet aware of the criticism that their very own values, taken to the Yuppie extremes, was generating in the independent press as well as the negative publicity there about the cocaine use of the Yuppies, the World-War-Two Generation saw an opportunity not only to defeat but also to “get back” at their opponents, the Sixties Generation, by ridiculing them.

In the predominant World-War-Two Generation fashion of scapegoating (the accompaniment of denial), which they had been directing from the outset at the Sixties Generation (who had of course incurred the wrath of the WWII Generation by opposing and confronting them on the Vietnam War in sometimes harsh and hostile ways), the Yuppies, with their cocaine use, were portrayed in the WWII-Generation-paid-for media as former Sixties hippies who had simply grown older but—consistent with their alleged “narcissism”—were still selfish, only now, materially so, thus the appellation, The “Me” Generation.

So the Vietnam-era or Sixties Generation began being denigrated in the press with the accusation, “The ‘Me’ Generation,” and Sixties values were also denigrated—the scapegoating of the Sixties Generation continuing—despite the fact that it was a different age group in society, the younger Yuppies, who were actually the ones triggering the attack. The hypocrisy of the charge becomes even more blatant when considering that the values of the Sixties Generation included such selfless acts as risking, sometimes incurring, violence and personal harm, jail time, and a lower standard of living for the sake of their idealistic beliefs in peace, environmental restoration and preservation, and selfless communitarian living, among others–none of which have any overlap with Yuppie careerism, consumerism, materialism, and individualistic greedy selfishness.

Despite the success in our society’s collective consciousness of the fantasy of Yuppies being former hippies—once it had been planted in the popular culture by the WWII Generation sitting comfortably in front of American society’s steering wheel—the truth is that these Yuppies were predominantly the generation that shadowed the Sixties generation, arising as youth in the aftermath of the Sixties cultural revolution. Their values become understandable, then, not only in that they were in universities during the Seventies when the “Conservative backlash” Big Lie was being promulgated and universities were cutting back funding from courses in liberal arts, philosophy, psychology, literature, politics and government, and the like and were turning themselves into career-factories dedicated to producing compliant business persons, engineers, physicians, and scientists who were not being educated to think for themselves but how to achieve and make money in a culture the World-War-Two Generation was comfortable with; but the values of the Yuppies are understandable, furthermore, in that they were the sons and daughters of a generation between the World-War-Two and Baby-Boomer Generations, who have not been identified, as far as I know, in the media at all. We might call this overlooked generation the Fifties Generation, or the Eisenhower-McCarthy Generation, or the Elvis Generation…a more cumbersome but more accurate term for them would be the War-Born Generation.

The media tends to focus on the big trends and to ignore or miss the lesser ones. The way our recent history was portrayed, you would think that just because there was a huge number of babies born in the decade and a half after World-War-Two’s end—the much discussed Baby-Boomer Generation—that there were no babies born during the War…almost as if every man in America was overseas fighting or that, when home on leave or whatever, they simply would not or could not conceive!

However, of course these ridiculous notions are not true, so there is a pre-Baby-boomer Generation who happened to be born during or shortly before and after WWII, i.e., between about 1938 and 1948. And the Yuppies were predominantly the sons and daughters of this—let us call it—Fifties Generation. Marinated in the womb with war fears and born around the time of the war, the Yuppies’ parents then had their formative adolescence and young adulthood during the Fifties

So their beliefs are rooted in the cultural soil of Fifties conservatism, Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, Eisenhower, traditional religion, belief in the economic primacy of capitalism and the evil of communism, and the early “schmaltzy” rock and roll (e.g., “Teen Angel,” “Leader of the Pack,” etc.). Their roots reaching deep into war fears–hot and cold, many would feel jealous and angry about the freedoms and openness of the generation immediately after them. They would, as well, heartily resent all the attention being showered on the much larger cohort of  Baby-Boomers.

And it is the worldview of this Fifties Generation that was passed on to their children, the Yuppies. It is no coincidence that the era of Yuppie influence (mid-Seventies through the Eighties) saw also a lengthy period of Fifties nostalgia alongside the caricaturizing and ridiculing of Sixties lifestyles, values, and beliefs. It is easy to see that the materialism the Fifties Generation members were nurtured in after World War II, as a reaction to the fear and uncertainties their parents had because of the war and The Bomb would be replicated in their children. Only the fear and uncertainty their children would try to amass wealth against was the tumult, anomie, violence, and confusion of the decade of the Sixties, the era the Yuppies would experience swirling around their roots and upsetting the stability of their nurturant years.

Manic Irrationality, Voodoo Economics

The Eighties began, significantly enough, with the death of John Lennon and the election of Ronald Reagan. Concurrent with the epidemic of cocaine use was a manic economy, massive military expenditures, and a tripling-plus of the National Debt. It is relevant to note that the huge increase in the National Debt was caused by a tax cut for the rich, which of course benefited those of the World-War-Two Generation who either inherited or earned, with a lifetime behind them, their wealth, as well as those upwardly mobile, materialistic Yuppies. The rationale for the tax cut—which was characterized by some commentators as “Robin Hood in reverse,” because it also coincided with cutbacks in social programs—was a “voodoo economics” (George H.W. Bush’s term) with a “trickle-down” theory of investment and economic growth.

This economics is based on a belief that a “dollar,” metaphorically speaking, given to a rich person will be more wisely invested, creating more jobs and wealth for everyone, than will that same “dollar” given to a middle-class or poor person. This view, however, ignored human psychology, the standard economics of marginal returns, and the common observation that, simply put, for a person with a little or a moderate amount of money, that metaphorical dollar will have more value (because it will represent a much larger increase, percentage-wise, in their financial situation) than it will for a rich person, for whom its value is only marginally related to a rather large “purse,” so to speak. Therefore, common sense tells us that “dollar” will be more conscientiously and thoughtfully spent or invested, creating more jobs and wealth for all, by the moderate-income person, who of course will attempt to maximize its benefit to him- or herself so that he or she can also rise to the ranks of the wealthy. To the moderate income person that “dollar” represents an opportunity for a rise in economic status; hence it will be invested, sweated over, and monitored intensely. In general, he or she will attempt to squeeze every possible ounce of benefit out of it, very often starting businesses of their own and thereby creating new jobs, opportunity, and wealth in the process. Whereas for the already wealthy person, that “dollar” is only a dollar alongside many others, and is only marginally relevant, reaping only marginal, or minor, returns.

Voodoo economics did not work, of course, as indicated by the tripling of the National Debt. Another important indication of the falsity of its premises was the huge expenditures of money, during the Eighties, on luxury items, like yachts, works of art, expensive cars, and so on. Art items and artifacts were being bid through the roof and the prices they were going for were making headlines in newspapers and stimulating commentaries on the tube. Along with this was the overinvestment in spurious business transactions, including “junk bonds,” soon-to-be-left-unrented commercial buildings, and unwanted real estate. Much has been said about how these manic and ill-considered business transactions led to the lengthy recession of the late Eighties and early Nineties. Along with this is the connection with the S&L scandal which was behind the plethora of boondoggles and ill-advised investment.

But there are two aspects of it that are especially relevant here for a discussion of drugs and generational cultures. They are the manic quality of the times—the go, go, go, buy, buy, buy mentality of the investing—and the obvious proof it gave to marginal returns theory, i.e., the money, given to the rich, was valued little and was mindlessly blown on trivialities—it was said that the Eighties was a huge party for the rich.

So rather than creating wealth for the wealthy, which would “trickle down” to the less well off, Reaganomics, as it was also called, turned into an unparalleled failure. It was called the largest shift of wealth in America’s history, taking it from the poor and middle class and benefiting the richest, top two percent of Americans. More than that, it led to a debt that will be adversely affecting the well-being, lifestyles, and financial pictures of several generations to come.

Going into such detail about the intricacies and results of the economic policy promulgated by the WWII Generation, in alliance with the Yuppies and their parents, the Fifties Generation, is important because of the hypocrisy it demonstrates in the charge leveled at the Baby-Boomer Generation of being a “Me” generation and of being narcissistic. Again, we see the WWII Generation’s same tendency to denial, projection, and scapegoating.

To continue, however, other elements in the Eighties cultural arena, existing alongside the epidemic of cocaine use, was the aforementioned careerism and materialism among the Yuppies (comprised primarily of the youth in their twenties and early thirties who followed behind the Vietnam-era Generation), whose mantram was to get rich, get powerful, erect and maintain “family islands” which they saw as competitive with the rest of society (quite unlike the communitarianism of the Sixties Generation), and to retire early…social and environmental problems be damned.

Other standouts of the cultural scenery of the time included a rise of mean-spiritedness, e.g., cutbacks in social programs and charities, which, as it was said, had one effect of emptying the mental hospitals into the streets. It became fashionable to sneer at and blame (often scapegoating) the more unfortunate ones of society—the poor, helpless, mentally ill, children, the powerless–making some time for that alongside of outright snickering and smugness directed at the “hippie-dippie” values and “kumbaya” visions of the generation older than them.

Generation “X”

The next generation to wander into the cultural limelight has been termed Generation X. Predominantly these are not the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation as the values of the Vietnam-era Generation included marrying late and having children late so that their children are mostly younger than and not among Generation X. This value concerning marrying or having children later in life tied in with the Sixties folks’ belief in personal freedom, but is more closely related to the hypocrisy they perceived in the marriages of their parents, those of the WWII Generation. They not only perceived their parents’ marriages as being false and loveless, they perceived themselves as being the victims of poor parenting, wherein they felt they were not understood and were not accepted for who they were or supported in what they uniquely wanted to do with their lives. Furthermore, they saw the social and global context as a negative and highly dangerous one. For one thing, having been children during the “drop and roll” and bomb-shelter, nuclear-shadow era of the Fifties, and having seen the assassination of idealistic values in the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King during their teens and young adulthood, they had great doubts about the future of the world. Though of course the Sixties Generation is noted for its idealism and for its attempts to fight these perceived dangers and injustices, underneath there has always been for them an uncertainty that success is possible, so that bringing a child into this particular dangerous and unjust social context was seen as possibly not a good thing for the child.

So it is that Generation Xers are predominantly the sons and daughters of an early segment of the Baby-Boomer Generation as well as of those less idealistic of the Vietnam-era Generation that had, more often than not, opted for the traditional route of career, home, and family and thus had started having children many years earlier than their more socially conscious counterparts. This Fallow Generation , let us call it, would conceive the children who would be called Generation X—who are noted for their apathy and lack of distinctiveness.

But keep in mind that the Fallow Generation is not a true generation in the sense that it is composed of two age groups—the early Baby-Boomers and those of the Baby-Boomers who opted for a family instead of the social activism, college education, and establishing a career before raising a family decisions of their more heralded peers. Hence Generation X’s lack of a unifying cause, value, or characteristic may have to do with their being children of parents from two different age groups and generations.

At any rate, and understandably because they are mostly not children of the idealistic Sixties youth, the drug use of Xers strayed back to the use of alcohol and cigarettes—the drugs used by their Fallow Generation parents who did not make either the cultural or drug changes of their peers. Alongside this “traditional” drug use, Generation Xers are noted for their pessimism, defeatism, and fascination with death—as, for example, in their selection of black clothes, their tendency to ripped jeans, tattoos, and the insertion of all sorts of pins and studs, as adornments, into virtually all parts of their bodies, and, in the extreme ones among them, a fascination with vampirism.

Drug Effects–Ecstasy

This drug is very similar chemically to the amphetamines. Ecstasy has an hallucinogenic aspect, which distinguishes it, however. But it more reliably elicits the opening to love for others and the favorable perceptions of others and sense of unity with them as described above as occurring for amphetamines also along with the driveness of speed that is more characteristic of it.

Ecstasy came into use in the late Seventies and in the Eighties; and it has had continued appreciation of its effects through to the present. In fact, it is considered the drug of choice at raves—one of the more recent generational phenomena. The growth in popularity of raves maps near exactly on the increasing appreciation for Ecstasy. It would be hard to view that as coincidental.

Disco Yupp. So the free love and communalism of the Sixties was superseded by a disco phase in the Seventies. The disco phase emerged and grew immediately upon the waning of use in the psychedelics, the increasing use of marijuana as a “cocktail,” mixed with alcohol, and the predominant use of cocaine by the Yuppies and Me Generation bordering on Generation X.

Rave on, Millennials!  Raves became an emerging phenomenon following somewhat upon the fading of the disco phase–a decline which occurred in the late Seventies. So raves were a phenomenon coincident with the rising use of Ecstasy and primarily affecting the generations following the Yuppie/ Me Generation, i.e., Generation X and the Millennial Generation.

Baby-Boomer Echo Generation

For some reasons that may be obvious by now, little has yet been said in the media about the daughters and sons of the Sixties Generation. This generation is currently in their twenties and thirties, though some are still in college and even junior and high school because of the tendency for some Baby-Boomer parents to postpone having children, often waiting till the very end of a woman’s reproductive years, just before the age of 40.

This generation has been called an “echo” of the Baby-Boomers in that just as the Baby-Boomers represented a significant population increase, conceived in the post-WWII euphoria and stability, these children of Boomers also represent an incoming population wave, due to the numbers of their parents. There was a wave of increased school attendance during the 90s and post-millennial years. Universities more recently have been attending to their needs.

Just as in every other generation mentioned, this Echo Generation, also called Millennial Generation, shares many of the characteristics and values of their parents.

Similarly, they mirror the drug use of their parents. There was a great to-do in the press during the Nineties about the increase in drug use among the young, particularly in high school. Furthermore, in typical WWII-Generation style, the media and Republicans in Congress attempted, during the Nineties, to scapegoat Sixties-Generation President Bill Clinton on this issue of drug use.

For though during the Nineties the WWII Generation was in the process of leaving the scene, those elderly of them left were conducting a fierce rearguard battle to save what they could of the culture they knew and created. In their desperation, they risked any cost in terms of outlandish scandals, government costs, and loss of social progress and governmental effectiveness.

Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that the increase in drug use among the young—which significantly enough involves predominantly an increase in the use of marijuana and, as they say: LSD…It’s b-a-a-a-a-ck!—had to do with the fact that the parents of these young people are indeed the people of the Sixties who themselves experimented with these substances.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am in no way saying that parents, in general, actively teach their children to take drugs—whether we are talking about the alcohol and cigarette use of the WWII Generation or marijuana and LSD use of Boomers—yet children are influenced by what their parents do or have done, even if just in the fact that the parents are more tolerant of such usage, having done it themselves. I say this because it could be countered that even the Sixties Generation, as parents, were engaged in the public antidrug campaign. Yet when they did so they were doing it out of a fear for their children’s physical welfare, not from a severe moral perspective that these drugs are the royal road to hell or from such other paranoid attitude, as was most often the case in the parents of the other generations discussed so far.

To return to the point, though not enough has been said or written about this “echo” generation, these are some of what has been noted about them: Beginning in 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton, the youth vote has swung back to going for the Democrats. There has been an increase in activism and idealism among the young in the last two decades, surprisingly this increase was noticed as early as when this generation was in high school and grade school. Polls done on their attitudes as children and adults showed a strong increase in their concern about social and global issues.

In fact, the issues that appeared to concern them the most have to do with racism and the environment. It is no coincidence that in the peak of their influence as young adults, there was an astounding wave of participation in Obama’s campaign, largely by this cohort, that resulted in the first African-American to attain the presidency.

This group also has fears that the future may not be very bright or as good as it was in times before them, particularly in terms of a ruined ecology due to environmental assault and/or nuclear disaster, yet they, like their parents, also are more likely to activism and taking up causes in the face of such dire possibilities.

These values of the Echo Generation are understandable, not only in that they reflect those of their parents, but also in that in the most recent decades the Sixties Generation—and indeed it would tend to be the more idealistic of them that would opt for the low pay that teachers currently get—predominates as the teachers and administrators in the primary and secondary schools that taught the Echo Generation.

The same, however, cannot as much be said of the universities, with Millennials attending, for reasons having to do with cutbacks in educational funds, the lingering success of the WWII Generation in turning universities into career factories as opposed to truly educational institutions, and, with the cutbacks in funding, the lack of job openings for Sixties Generation applicants and the resulting continued influence, bolstered by the institution of tenureship, of pre-Sixties professors—those of the Fifties and Fallow Generations, and a few remaining, very old, WWII folks.

Still, the Sixties Generation influence on these youth in college existed because of several contrary trends. The Echo Generation’s numbers swelled university attendance, requiring additional hiring somehow, whatever the funding constraints, and those of the generations preceding the Sixties Generation passed from the universities into retirement, or the beyond.

The candidates for the openings that did come about at the university level not as much those of the Fallow Generation, the Yuppies, or Generation Xers, but were instead members of a Sixties Generation who alone, among the generations mentioned, valued education over money and careerism. They had been waiting a long time, diplomas and experience in hand, for their chance to return to the universities—this time as the instructors and administrators—and eager to change its course back to true education, as it was when they were students in the liberal-minded Sixties. We see the effects of this in Obama’s election and the phenomenal numbers of demonstrators coming out to fight back union attacks and budget squeezes in Wisconsin and throughout the US. Though these are not attracting media attention these outpourings are continuing unabated. My analysis provides insight into why this is occurring now.

Different Drugs, Different Worlds

This has been a brief overview of salient characteristics of generational cultures of some past and current generations alongside a description of that generation’s predominant drug use. I simultaneously unveiled in some detail what we know about the effects of these particular substances on consciousness and attitudes. Finally, I discussed the behavior and beliefs that can coincide with the use of these drugs, as they affect consciousness in different ways, creating different kinds of consciousnesses, different perspectives, indeed entirely different and distinct ways of perceiving the self and the world.

This discussion of drug use and generational cultures might be complete enough at this point. Any of the many connections not specifically made should be readily apparent and the information being brought together this way is suggestive of much more. What I do not think needs to be spelled out is the obvious: For example, how alcohol and nicotine use could be correlated with a generation that could put a Hitler into power, create a holocaust, and carry out the most destructive war in this planet’s history. It should be obvious how marijuana use could be correlated with the alienation, pessimism, and defeatism of the Beats. It should be abundantly clear how the use of LSD and marijuana among Sixties youth could correlate with a disgust with normal society and culture and thus the creation, from scratch, of a counterculture, with a pacifism in regard to war, with a reemergence of a lived and individual spirituality, with an emphasis on real communication, with an attempt to create real community and relationships, and with much more that has been associated with them. And it should need no explanation how cocaine use could be correlated with a manic economy and irrational, overoptimistic schemes, and failed business ventures.

Painting the Faces of Generations

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I should point out that, except for the WWII Generation whose drugs were legal and easily available, the above is based on generalities and trends of a minority of the people in the generations mentioned. Yet it is that distinctive minority of any generation that paints the face that generation presents to the world. It is the differences in generations and the new ideas and perceptions that make up the intellectual currency of a period and which rise above the familiar scenery to be spotlighted by the media and press.

The “Beats” did not comprise the majority of their generation and not all of them took marijuana or even had the horrifying perception of our normal unreality that is possible on that drug, yet a number of them, larger than any previously in any other generation, did exactly that…and those who did were often compelled to express those perceptions and the accompanying ideas, in literature, poetry, theater, and the like, that would influence the reality constructions of the rest of their generation and would come to characterize the palpable ideas of the era.

So it is as well with the Sixties Generation, the Yuppies, and even Generation Xers and the Echo Generation. It is the differences between generations that is worthy of discussion. And it is my point that those differences are unusually correlated with the distinctive drug use of that generation and the effects that those drugs have on one’s perceptions of reality—a point that I have not seen explored before.

Drugs and Culture War

Finally, I wish to emphasize that these drug-influenced perceptions create the worldviews of generations out of which they create their generational cultures–the stark differences of which can fuel culture wars.

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Four:
The King Won’t Die“

Footnotes

1. Just as in the alcohol use, the “positive thinking” fad continues—both of them much abated, of course, since the World-War-Two Generation gradually leaves the scene.  Astonishingly, even in this postmodern era, one World-War-Two Generation author admonishes, in huge text no less, in the title on the cover of his popular book:  “You Cannot Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought”!  (yipes!)  [return to text]

2. An extremely funny exposition of the effects of marijuana is contained in an album put out during the Sixties titled Child’s Garden of Grass. While its intent is completely comedic–at which it succeeds masterfully–it succeeds more than anything else I know of in depicting, to both the experienced and inexperienced, the most common effects of this trickster drug.  Enjoy it below (seriously, only when you have the time to really “grok” it) as it has been reproduced for sharing on youtube.

There are a total of ten parts to “Child’s Garden of Grass.” The ones that follow part one above can be accessed by clicking the youtube link on the player.  [return to text]

3. “Like people trapped in spacesuits trying to communicate with each other through the layers of barriers between them” is the way one person described it, as reported in a book by Kenneth Keniston titled The Uncommitted, which delved into the psychology of one segment of Sixties Youth.  [return to text]

4. The events and statistics about this concerted effort are detailed in my book-in-progress titled The Once and Current Generation: Regression, Mysticism, and “My Generation”…stay tuned.  [return to text]

Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Four:
The King Won’t Die“

Culture War Part Two, Matrix Aroused, the Sixties: How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers

Matrix Aroused – Topics

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”

The ‘Why’ of “Obvious Truths”
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

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, and Scapegoat a Generation

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, “Culture War, Part Two: Matrix Aroused,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

(Link) View more American Politics Sound Clips and American History Sound Clips

America’s Lying Times, Beginnings

Talkin’ Bout My Generation

Whatever Happened? Whatever happened to Sixties youth? What has become of the values, aspirations, ideals, and energy that manifested in those turbulent but exciting, angry but supremely hopeful years?

There was a time, after all, when the influence of the “baby-boomer” youth generation was everywhere to be found. Their activities were broadcast daily on the TV news; they were making political events; they were setting trends in fashion and style which business did its worst to copy, package, and sell–attempting thereby to cash in on such powerful enthusiasms.

Suddenly, faster than their appearance, this generation of youth faded from significance in the early Seventies. At the time, commentators were falling over each other attempting to fit a rationale to the relative disappearance of youth influence and the comparative placidity of events.

A common explanation that surfaced in those days was that many youth leaders, particularly activists, had begun being disillusioned about the effectiveness and results of confrontational politics.

Some argued that activists were beginning to “look inward” for the roots of problems, or of reevaluating and seeking to come up with better ways of eliciting change. As for the less activist sectors of the youth culture–those referred to by the originally pejorative terms “flower children” or “hippies”–many had moved out of the cities, often in disgust and equal disillusionment, to the countryside.

There they were reputed to be actively carrying out their “back to nature” values singly, in couples, and in communal groups. As far as the larger culture was concerned, they were invisible.

What happens to a revolution not televised: 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.

One could argue in response to this that demonstrations were becoming commonplace, so they qualified less as news as time went by. But this reasoning does not fully explain the precipitous nature of this decline, nor the resulting virtual elimination of coverage. In respect to comparable events of recent times, such a pattern has elicited the label “media cover-up.”

Killing “The Sixties”

It is therefore much more likely–and there has been evidence and published commentary to this effect–that 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.

Keeping the People Down

I myself have knowledge and personal experience of how a similar suppression at exactly this time was perpetrated on university campuses.

Enlightenment lobotomies…again. 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.

The total remaking of society, so such a generation would never arise again.  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 mainstream values–values, incidentally, that were 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.

Matrix Aroused

The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged

Some commentators speculated that established societal powers had been caught off guard by the initial fervor and tenacity of counterculture energy and demonstrations, but that toward the end of the Sixties and early Seventies there had been time to regroup.

Declaration of Culture War

A massively funded attack by “the establishment.” These established forces and economic interests began to implement a well-conceived, hugely funded, well-orchestrated, and highly cooperative counteroffensive against the new cultural values, which in their minds represented a dagger poised at the heart of their very existence.

From this perspective, then, the media’s active refusal to cover events could be seen as a small, albeit influential, aspect of a much larger effort–however unconsciously carried out–at suppression of the new values and reinforcement of traditional ones by the powerful interests that those values, if successful, either directly or indirectly put in jeopardy.

Creating a “conservative backlash.” 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. The same tactics are being used today to create a conservative Tea Party “movement.”

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.

Strong man truth–Big lies!!…big ones. As background: The Big Lie basically amounts to the idea that you can say the most outlandish thing long enough, loud enough, and from the highest pulpit, and eventually it becomes accepted fact. No doubt, its use can be traced to the earliest times of civilized history and is certainly evident in this century in the tactics of Hitler and Mussolini, where it played crucial and primary roles.

However, its more recent re-emergence in contemporary America and its rise to the heights of skillful political brandishment came in the hands, first, of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr.

Then later it had its most pervasive use, however awkward 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.  [Footnote 1]

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.

Creating Their Own Reality –
It’s Their World, We Only Just Live In It

The success of The Big Lie, and its eventual morphing into the The Big Web of Deceit, more easily termed The Matrix

The hidden puppeteers. Whereas Sixties 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. The wealth of these puppet masters got them any support they wanted for anything. These wealthy manipulators sensed a threat to the status quo, hearing about idealistic notions of equality, freedom, and such. But they also knew that their positions depended not on the actual enjoyment of the masses of their supposed “freedoms” but only of ordinary folks being convinced they had them.

Culture War, Beginnings: Trauma at the Top: “Our Youth Have Gone Crazy! They Actually Believe That Claptrap About Freedom That We Put in Schoolbooks To Keep the Masses Complacent! They’re Daring to Use 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.

Paying the piper, calling the tune.  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. Ultimately they could fund politicians and speakers…and radio and TV show hosts who would speak their Big Lies. 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.

No contest. It was no contest, especially as only one side was fully aware that they were at war; indeed the other side–most of them–had no inkling of the powers behind the scenes. That reality would of course be left out of the history and sociology books they had read–funded by the puppeteers of course.

Many 60s youth 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 on November 15, 1969. In this way the media had a big influence on taking the wind out of the sails of many of the youth.

Living Under the Big (Conservative) Lie

Others felt they must have been wrong because they had now, according to the media, become the enemy of those they hoped would see the wisdom of these values that basically came from them! That is to say that young radicals in general had come from middle class liberal family backgrounds. They always felt they were carrying out the values that their parents had taught them.

“First, We’ll Instill Doubt in the Masses, Thereby Creating Division”

These youth saw the country come awake to their values through massive movements like the antiwar movement and the cultural flowering, which older and middle class folks were increasingly taking on themselves. It was therefore disconcerting and confusing to be told they were actually at odds with a conservative majority, a “silent majority.” This wasn’t true, but that would not be obvious to them at the time. So thinking the country was at odds with the actual following through on the values of  their parents and the liberal worlds they grew up in, doubt was palpable.

“Next, We’ll Push Them Into Poverty, Thereby Eliminating Alternatives.”

For these youth, their response, unfortunately, was to try to reintegrate with the society they had thrown behind them, but now saw as the only one possible.

“Last, We’ll Compel Obedience”

Still, this cadre of youth retained their values into later life. 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. To some extent they succeeded, as we see from the careers of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part Three: Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures”

Footnote

1. The results of this are discussed, with a fair amount of humor, in my article/audiocast “Naked Republicans.”

“Naked Republicans – Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish“

For the author’s reading of “Naked Republicans,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here (36 minutes):

(Link) View more American Politics Sound Clips and American History Sound Clips
You might also be interested in the 4-minute clip taken from “Naked Republicans.” Click on the link to the audio site below or click the audio player below that:

“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

(Link) View more Silly Mickel’s Calling The Noble In Spirit: Wake Up Sound Clips and Michael Jackson And The Authentic Life Sound Clips

Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Noteworthy Comments

1.  Mona Kranke  An interesting sight. A good article! And some facts, I have to think about.
But I don’t understand, why you decide, that the lying and dividing started in the early 70s.
But – excuse my poor English – possibly I didn’t understand all completely …?
Or do you mean this worldwide movement – you can watch between 1965 and 70 in the whole world – a movement of “Unity, Equality, Love and Peace”, in all the different societies? This you cannot explain with the development in the USA or the Western World (that is – over this very different!).
With the beginning of 1971 it was changing totally – during half an year the movement fell into pieces. Best friends become strangers to each other and even enemies. The left wing youth, the same people, that 1970 went together against war, for human rights and equality on demonstrations and wanted to change the world, were struggling between Maoist, Leninist, Trotsky-ist, Anarchist and other ~ists.
In China turned the cultural revolution – that begun as a progressive movement – into terror and the opposite of progress.
Nixon won presidential elections and bombed Laos and Cambodja – nobody asked why!
I was in an East-German jail from Xmas 1970 until Nov. 1971. I came free and wanted to visit my old friends – I was stunned! It was so crazy! The world around me had changed! The half of them didn’t speak with the other half and didn’t visit the same bars and events anymore! Only a few was not gone insane!
And I know, that the same phenomena occurred in the West-European countries – possibly besides Spain, that was under dictatorship of Franco and not in the same strength affected by this movement. I discussed many hours about this development with friends.

All the scientific explanations seem to be artificial constructions, if you look at the very different societies, that produced similar changes.
And the lying in the USA – sorry, look backwards to the consolidation of the states in the middle-west, the annexion of Texas and California, the deals during and after the Mexican war, always were the poor used and thrown away. And the left wing was much stronger before the 1960s. The McCarthy-Era left deep traces behind.
I remember big worker’s movement in the 50s and 60s, miner’s strike, transportation and docker’s strikes. I really don’t know, but for me it seems, as had this movement decreased, when the racial unrest in the mid of the 60s came up. Another reason could be, that the production was done more and more by machines. If at a workplace of 200m² is working one lonely worker, it is not easy, to organize a strong union. But it’s fact, that the strong workers movement went down, and some students, who claimed to know the world and the life, because they had read some books, came to the top of progressive movement. This will always be a dead end street! Students finish their studies and get children, leave the universities and change their residence and soon their mind.
You know the wonderful movie “Flashback”?

The media will have a big influence on all societies. And a crowd of students will never be able to build up a national movement for the future. I believe, that the leaders of the movement made the same mistake in the USA as in Middle-Europe. They discussed with their compadres and sent them out to agitate the working class.
Imagine this! You are the worker or 3 workers in a bar, the student tells you about the life … if this guy is a funny boy, you will buy him a beer and laugh with your mates the whole evening, if not, you won’t give him any chance. Those workers in the 70s weren’t the same like today! They thought a lot more than they believed and watched lesser TV. And the media was not so perfectly organized to make mindless idiots.
If Watergate occured today – what would happen? An article with headline in the NYT and other big papers. 3 days later a revision on page 3? At next month TIME would have an investigating story. No retirement, no penalty, no prosecution. In the name of security and the war against terror, wire tapping is come the normality!
Cheney did some things, that were much more serious and dangerous for the USA and the whole world. He doesn’t look afraid in any way …

2. Mickel Adzema  Thanks for your incredible, thought-provoking response. You know that of which you speak and open my mind to more of what went on. You have a story to tell that we all need to hear more of. And you add so much to what I have said, which admittedly, is more concerned with the events in the USA. But the “overseers” are a worldwide clique. And the movement, I know well, was, as you say, a worldwide phenomenon. There are many points that I would like to respond and share with you on that you bring up, too. But don’t have the time to right now. I certainly ponder your additions, and have some responses to share to some of my points that you ask about. Have you had the time to listen to any of the audio clips? I have elaborated much more on the text in them. But again, it has always been my intention to look more deeply into the worldwide movement and to do inquiry into the worldwide response by the powers elsewhere than in the U.S….though my initial inquiry has shown up that there is more connection between the elite of the many nations than among the elite with those of their own countries…just as in the 100 years war between England and France in which entire villages were given to be plundered, the men killed, the women raped and killed, in exchange for the release of a captured noble from the other side. And there is so much more of that ilk in history indicating that class warfare is not a national phenomenon but an international one, especially in this age, but also throughout history.

3.  Mona Kranke  PS: I read your article twice – it’s really very good written and thought – besides the “Beginning” in the headline – and – you can call me unscientifical – there are more influences than can be scientifical explained today!
And this is very good! – If “they” would know about the powers of mass behaviour, they would immediately pay as much as is needed to manipulate this powers … and let us pay for this manipulation, as they do with TV and religion today!
If you find this hidden energy – please, don’t tell us! We’re safe! OMNIBRAIN is watching us..
:-))

4.  Mickel Adzema  LOL. As well I know about OMNIBRAIN. I find a post of mine getting 1500 “views” in one day, and none the next, double digits in the 9 months of it having been posted, and the related posts getting no increases. I figure I let out (in the audio clip, which they didn’t pick up on initially) some of those “key words” they search for on computers to keep watch on us “troublemakers”! And I don’t write what I write without some amount of trepidation, as I said in my post on “1984 being spiffy these days.” But as Ghandi said, “truth is God.” And with so much on the line, including the continuation of life on this planet, I can’t think of how I can live my life without taking these chances. I know what has happened to those who have spoken out previously. I know I don’t need to elaborate on this with you. Anyway, thanks again for the cogent and humorous response. The only power and strength, outside of the Divine, that we have is to connect with each other and share our common experiences, insights, and SOLIDARITY. I feel unity with you, and that feeling fuels my sometimes wavering courage.

5.  Mickel Adzema  The link to the “1984 being spiffy” on Amplify is http://bit.ly/1984-Am

6.  Mona Kranke @sillymickel – Very good article! I’ll share and store!
The most people unfortunately try to ignore this isues or they’re panicking and get paranoid – followed by insane tendencies and ignorance of reality finally too! ;-(

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part Three:
Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures”

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Culture War, Part One: 1950s through 1970s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies

Culture War, Class War, Chapter One:
Smoke, Lies, and Revelations –
1950s Through 1970s

“Resistance is Futile” – American Class War Beginnings…The Fifties

I was born just before the collapse of certainty and traditional truths in America during the 1960s. Culture War, Class War is far more than my story, however. I can say I watched the developments that this book unveils and that I was an avid participant in many of its events . But this is America’s story, America’s untold story. I could not have witnessed all the things that are brought out here, nor could anyone. For much of this was hidden, and that is the first point.

But what is also here is much that many people have seen. But much of it is not remembered. It is discouraged from being thought about, because it is a reality inconvenient to those who orchestrate events. This book reminds us of truths we should not forget.

But when brought to mind, these truths lead to obvious conclusions. This book sheds light on these “inconvenient” but obvious realities of America’s past and present. We begin in the past, the 1950s in America.

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“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations—
Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times,
Part 1: 50s thru early 70s—
Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies”

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this chapter, click on the link to the audio site above or the audio player below. [Footnote 1]

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=mdjxyjgvjz

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Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies

For many the Fifties, with the Cold 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.

Dark Visions, Dire Warnings

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.

Prophetic, prescient presidential address

The most significant warning came from the President of the United States who had presided over this post World War Two 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. [Footnote 2]

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….”

“Resistance is futile.”

With Americans caught between opposing evils of confusion and anomy, on one side, and being assimilated by corporate culture (“resistance is futile”), on the other, many suffered through, or clung to traditional ways, especially the elderly, and ignored the assaults on the credibility of these institutions over time.

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.

The dream is over.

When John F. Kennedy 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.

The Black Angels music vid: “You in Colour”
No better statement I know of the birth of modern era in 50s-70s

The face of mine enemy, 1984

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 corporations and serving their 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.

Enlightenment Overthrown: The Purposeful Undermining, by the Wealthy, of Higher Education in America to Prevent Sixties-style Free-Thinking

Enlightenment Overthrown

(No Smarts for YOU!)

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 1973, 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.

Can’t have liberal arts, it’s got the word “liberal” in it.

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.

We stormed the administration building & found the documents—the letters from wealthy benefactors & alumni.

The Vietnam War protests brought the suppression/repression out in the open. They actually fired professors on my campus, not because they were radical or speaking out against the war, but because they were cutting back departments that had anything to do with the Humanities—even the social sciences, religious studies!!!…anything that involved encouraging students to be independent thinkers or to learn anything different from the elementary and secondary school propaganda we’d been taught before.

We stormed the administration building and found the documents—the letters from wealthy benefactors and alumni insisting on this change or they would stop their funding. This was a concerted effort by the wealthy elite that hit all the liberal arts institutions/universities in America. We demanded the Dean appear on the steps of the Administration building and answer to the charges and respond about the documents, as a condition of us leaving the building. He showed up, sheepishly, and mealy-mouthed his way through his responses to our evidence. He never denied it.

Some students chipped in (what little they could) to pay for some profs to continue teaching the next semester. We couldn’t use any facilities; we sat on the grass, outside. Of course, we could not afford to continue to do this; nor could the profs get by on the $1—$25 voluntary donations!

The result was that the Sixties Generation was the last educated generation. The result was that free-thinking generations would no longer be. They would not be encouraged; they would not be fostered; they would not be tolerated; they would not be allowed.

People like to dismiss efforts such as mine and those of my cohorts at this time as trying to dredge up the battles of the Sixties, to relive or redo the past. This ignores the fact that this battle is has not gone away at all but is simply being ignored…and consciously dismissed. It is as much here as 200,000 people were there in Wisconsin not long ago, though the media ignored and dismissed that in keeping with their insidious obedience. It is as much here as that we are currently surfing the tsunami of a WORLDWIDE OCCUPY movement addressing all the issues of this culture war, class war. Meanwhile the media exaggerates every Tea Party twitch involving handfuls or at the most hundreds of people and broadcasts far and wide every trivial pronouncement coming from their gang of cartoonish figures.

So yes, we are still fighting this culture war. For not only did it never go away, not only has our side not been heard, not only has the other side pounded our positions into rubble; and shouted down, ridiculed, slandered, and misconstrued our points to their own malevolent ends, but… We ain’t won yet!

Enlightenment Lobotomies – White Collar Slavery and the Slaughter of Smart Folks

Filthy Rich, Nobility, Peasants, Slaves

And before the corporations there were the rich of other economies—the filthy rich nobility that kept the peasants as virtual slaves.

The point, I guess, is that we are all taught something quite different about America, from kindergarten on up. So since it is all untrue, I wonder how different it is from the brainwashing and propaganda that we heard that totalitarian societies engage in, especially the Communists in the Soviet Union that were used as examples for most of my life.

But is it corporations that do these things, the enslaving? Let’s say it exactly so we can pinpoint who are really the actors. Is it not the people who own/run the corporations? So, that, in my opinion, makes it what one network (CNN, I think) who did a documentary a couple years ago on the obscenely increased wealth and power of this class (occurring during the Bush Administration) termed “the Filthy Rich.” I think it is high time we started being specific about who is running America into the dirt.

White-Collar Slavery and Rat Racing

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, mid-corporate, 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.

Slaughtering Smart Folks

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.

Enlightenment Lobotomies

But in America, we are better because we just seduce folks 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 people 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. [Footnote 3]

Truth’s Solitary Journey in America v.19.84

American Dictatorship, My Quest, No Nukes Is Good Nukes

1984 Comes to America – Slick, Gradual, and Perfect

So this look into American history notices a decades-long and increasing suppression of truth.

Since Kennedy’s time and because of the Vietnam War protests, I have seen an increasing web of deceit cover this land. I have witnessed things with my own eyes that have been changed when reported to the country and written into history books. I have watched the 1984 of George Orwell creep into America unnoticed—slick and gradual and perfect—as only the best minds, paid handsomely by the people with the wealth, can concoct.

American Dictatorship

A well-regarded book about Bush’s America published shortly after George W. Bush left office, and tallying the actions and events of the W’s 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.

Truth’s Solitary Journey

As for what follows from here in this narrative: This is the story of one person’s informed take on those times. This is the perspective of one person intimately involved in those times. For, Forrest-Gump-like, I 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 my whole life to be peppered with national and international surprises and upheavals, some positive; others mostly not—I could not look away.

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. In my quest for truth, I could feel, and was quite carried along with, the ebbs and flows of the tides of my times.

I had a life different from most—one which took me to live, to study, and to participate with groups and in places around and around the country for forty years. Many of these groups and places and the activities and thinking of them would be considered exotic or alien to most Americans. And when folks heard about these developments, for the average person 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.

I, For One, Can Tell You Why We Stopped Building Nuclear Plants in This Country…I Helped Make it Happen

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 Eighties. 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.

No Nukes is Good Nukes

The cessation of nuclear plant construction was something that was desired, worked for, and hoped for by people who knew the dire consequences of nuclear energy and understood the motives of the people behind nuclear energy who had no concept of that, or conscience. Keep in mind this all happened long before Fukushima happened, just as we predicted something like that would.

To put one leg of this narrative on terra firma I can tell you this at this time: Peter DeFazio, Democratic 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.

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 which was tackling this problem, Oregon Fair Share . 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 twenty-five plus 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 seen him on TV a number of times since Obama took office. I don’t consider it to be coincidence in either instance

So Much For Being Comfortably Dumb – How I Woke Up From the American Lie, 15 November 1969

Comfortable Ignorance of Grade-School Propaganda Gone Forever

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 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.

So Much for Being Comfortably Dumb

However, when I had my first personal experience with a major national lie at the age of nineteen–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 ever reported accurately of what one million people experienced on a day that would go down in history, anyway, but “censored,” 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 the 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 on November 15th, 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 fifty 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. [Footnote 4]

If a Million Appeared in DC, and the Media Didn’t Cover It, Did It Really Happen?

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.

Media Masters

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?

Where’d Wisconsin go?

While this is history not news, it is current news as well…though we can’t call it “headline” news for reasons that have to do with the media. Something disturbingly similar happened more recently regarding media coverage of the Wisconsin pro-union rallies. While the largest rallies in Madison, Wisconsin history were going on–an estimated 100,000 showed up on one day, 200,000 people a week or so after that–hardly anything about them was mentioned in the mainstream media.

Tea Party Patsies

Keep in mind that this same media has covered and continues to promote and “tout” (even) rallies of (often paid) Tea Party proponents attended only by crowds in the HUNDREDS! These folks in the photo below have friends in high places, obviously.

Convenient (For the “Filthy Rich”) “Truth”

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. We can only conclude that just the threat of interference will keep the media in line with the interests of ownership.

We Decide, You React.

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.

Rather Hear from Dan?

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 Mister Rather tell the story some time. It’s quite different from the “official” version.

President Al Gore. Sorry, I Was Dreaming About a Democratic America.

Dan Rather’s version, if it had not been undermined, might have led to Al Gore, not George Bush, getting the Presidency in 2000 (even with “filthy rich” and Supreme Court support at that time to begin “installing” our presidents). 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 of history as it relates to the media and their coverage. For on the days following what should have been one of the major events on American public record, 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.

Things Ain’t Bad Enough? This Leads Me to Uncover the Most Horrific, Hidden in Plain Sight, Truth of All Time

So, again, this perspective is rooted in my life experience. It rises up and out of my personal, passionate quest for truth; and it details a good deal of truth’s many aspects–personal, historical, social, cultural, political, especially spiritual, and so much more.

Unfortunately while this quest was and is personally gratifying, it 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 fearfully distracting themselves from, even at the cost of their lives and those of their children.

Continue with Culture War Part Two, Matrix Aroused, the Sixties:
How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers

Return to Book Preface and Blog Introduction: Culture War Is Class War Disguised.

Footnotes

1. From the Collection of Audio Presentations by SillyMickel Adzema titled: History Unspun—the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites

2. Eisenhower gave this address only days before his term was to end. The significance of Eisenhower waiting till he was about to leave office to inform the American public just hit me.

We wonder what has happened to Obama since he took the presidency. We wonder what happened to his ideals, his promises, the change he promised. We suspect something dire, for we have watched as Democratic president after Democratic president—especially Clinton, to some extent Carter—changed once they assumed the presidency. Jesse Ventura, speaking on CNN recently, said Obama was no doubt “taken out to the woodshed.” It just never occurred to me till now that those unseen hands might have even been there in 1961, too.

Certainly the forces of the military-industrial complex weren’t as powerful, bloated with power, as they are now. Still, why else would Eisenhower not speak about this until his term was just about over? If he didn’t feel pressured (threatened?) previously, why would he not have been making this an important issue? It was, after all, the summary statement, culminating viewpoint, of his eight years.

Also, if he did feel pressured (threatened?) not to reveal or let some truth be known during his time in office, yet felt it was something of extreme, even dire, importance, might he not have “risked” it at the very end, for the good of the country?…feeling that his conscience needed to relieved as he saw the end of his influence and of his own life in sight (he had gone through several health crises during his term that could have been terminal), that his legacy would be completely blackened, his influence totally skewed in a way he did not wish if he did not “spill the beans” at some point…the end being his last chance to come clean and the only time, perhaps, that he could feel he could go through with it without immediate personal, or some other kind we don’t know of, repercussions? There may be much more to this warning to the nation than had previously been brought out.

3. These are the lyrics to “Sad” by Nirvana:

Rare song by nirvana titled “Sad” or “Verse Chorus Verse.” Also known as “Sappy.”

Lyrics:

And if you kill yourself,
You will make him happy

And if you save yourself
Then you will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
And you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh….

And if you cut yourself
You will think you’re happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
Then you’ll make him happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
The clues that came to you, oh….. (x2)

And if you fool yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you will seem happy
You’ll wallow in your shit
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room (x3)
Conclusion came to you, oh……

4. While history records only 100,000 to 200,000 attended Moratorium Day in Washington, D.C., Wikipedia reports the preceding month’s nationwide actions and the D.C. event as follows, giving a figure of 500,000 for the November event. I explain in the text why I think even that figure is way low.

The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a large demonstrationUnited States involvement in the Vietnam War that took place across the United States on October 15, 1969.^[1] The Moratorium developed from Jerome Grossman‘s April 20 1969 call for a general strike if the war had not concluded by October. David Hawk and Sam Brown,^[2] who had previously worked on the unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, changed the concept to a less radical moratorium and began to organize the event as the Vietnam Moratorium Committee with David Mixner, Marge Sklenkar, John Gage, and others. against the

By the standards of previous anti-war demonstrations, the event was a clear success, with millions participating throughout the world. Boston was the site of the largest turnout; about 100,000 attended a speech by anti-war Senator George McGovern. Bill Clinton, while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, organized and participated in the demonstration in England; this later became an issue in his Presidential campaign.

The first nationwide Moratorium was followed a month later, on November 15, 1969, by a second massive Moratorium march on Washington, D.C. which attracted over 500,000 demonstrators against the war, including many performers and activists on stage at a rally across from the White House. Most demonstrators were peaceful; however, late in the day conflict broke out at DuPont Circle, and the police sprayed the crowd with tear gas. Over 40,000 people gathered to parade silently down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where protestors walked single file all evening, each calling out the name of a dead soldier as he or she reached the sidewalk directly in front of the White House. The people of Washington, D.C. generously opened schools, seminaries, and other places of shelter to the thousands of students and others who converged for this purpose. A daytime march before the White House was lined by uniformed police officers, some flashing peace symbols on the inside of their jackets in a show of support for the crowd.

President Richard Nixon said about the march, “Now, I understand that there has been, and continues to be, opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and also in the nation. As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it, however under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.”^[3]

Activists at some universities continued to hold monthly “Moratoria” on the 15th of each month^[4][5].

At the Moratorium, a quarter of a million demonstrators were led by Pete Seeger in singing John Lennon’s new song “Give Peace A Chance.”^[6]

Continue with Culture War Part Two, Matrix Aroused, the Sixties: How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers

Return to Book Preface and Blog Introduction: Culture War Is Class War Disguised.

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Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule, Message in a Bottle, Part Two

 

 

Culture War, Part Nine:
Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Part 2

My Reaction – About  Dictatorship and
a Legacy From Which America Will Never Recover

There you have it, the “un-retouched pre-Bush perception” from September 21st, 2000.

My reaction, at first, was that of being stunned, then saddened at what it reminded me of—the way things once were, what we had before it was stolen, destroyed.… But having had time to process and review the changes we’ve gone through and are going through, placed in relief against the assumptions of that former mind, something new has arrived.

Those were my fear eleven years ago. Not being Nostradamus, I’m sure my mindset was not unique; it was at least shared, I know, among many of my friends and colleagues at that time…probably even far beyond that.  Still, now knowing what I had said and no doubt felt and thought more extensively about than what I actually put on paper, I can only be stunned considering my dire premonition.

“Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Part 2:

A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events” by SillyMickel Adzema

“Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/srwkrsvcdz—MessageInaBottlePart2-Ent-Up

Bush Dictatorship

For since Obama took office I have been hearing these comprehensive evaluations and calculations in books by scholars, with enough clout and credibility to be broadcast on the mainstream and from several sources, that, first, the government under George W. Bush was run essentially like a dictatorship, by any definition of that. We are being shown how we lost our democratic rights, among so much else. The only thing that kept us from realizing this was the resistance by the media and the reluctance of the populace to face such a horrific prospect.

Basically, until Bush was out of office, hardly was there anyone with the courage to look squarely at what he was doing and has done and add it up. People who have lived under dictatorships can I’m sure understand that reluctance to point out such an horrific prospect while still under the regime’s thumb!

America May Never Recover

There is a second development that has caused me to be struck by what I said years ago. It is the calculations of a scholar who added up the damage left behind by Bush in America—economically for the most part, but otherwise as well—and concluded there was no way, ever again, that America could expect to have the relative prosperity, opportunities for the majority, not to mention standard of living, and so much more, that it once enjoyed.

Echoing like the fall of Rome

Essentially this person was saying that George W. Bush had managed to so “kneecap” America during his short…though long they seemed…eight years that America would never ever recover. This is an astonishing assessment, echoing like the announcement of the fall of the Roman Empire.

We haven’t always had the best of Presidents. But this person’s thesis, in the midst of the dire things coming out, and they continue to pile up, is being widely considered. While hoping him wrong, people are not discounting that he may be the only one getting it right. For it cannot be denied that few are brave enough or have strong enough stomachs to actually go piece by piece through the wreckage and add it all up and place it alongside the best assessments of America’s needs and responsibilities in the decades coming.

So it is with these things in my mind that I read that statement about Bush leaving a legacy from which America will never recover, which I had written eleven years ago and then forgot. And I am shaken.

But you are not me, and so there is the need for this explication as well as the need to completely leave the document as I found it, incomplete sentences and all. It was reproduced exactly in Part One, without even changing obvious typos or even confusions of grammar. I did not want anything to taint or draw suspicion around what you mostly have to take my word on.

I can only say that I feel no need to puff myself up nor do I care if you don’t see what I think is obviously there. But I still thought I’d give my best case possible to you for my credibility. For if I garner a bit of that, the reader just might see and understand the astonishment that I felt.

The Ignorance Excuse

Our Leaders Prefer We Think Them Dumb Than Culpable

This might seem to be overdoing it, but I’ve noticed that we live in a time where those in power, making these huge “blunders,” like to excuse themselves by claiming ignorance. It is quite clearly that they would prefer us to think them stupid than evil.

“Real funny, Richard”

I noticed one kind of use of the ignorance defense on TV a few years back. Richard Clarke, who had worked in national security in the Bush Administration, was talking about the widely held theory that our government was responsible for 911. He responded laughingly—which by itself is odd. But what he said is the exact way that those in power would prefer we think them stupid than culpable.

Richard Clarke’s response was a takeoff on the notion that, ha ha, government cannot do anything right. Government is the great scapegoat in this convenient societal defense mechanism; the US Postal Service is the prime example of how it is used. We ask things of mail service and those who forecast the weather that we would not expect in any other area. It is unreasonable, but society must have scapegoats, I suppose.

Social niceties are not profound political theory.

People need something to blame for their frustration when they are unknowing and denied information of the real factors affecting them. So we have these societal punching bags to collectively complain about which allows us to share our irritation, receive knowing support on it from others, bond with others in a shared laugh about it, and go on to other more understood matters.

But these things are not based on reason. They are in the category of those “obvious truths” I have been talking about—true sounding, but not true. Rationally speaking the postal service is about as reliable as a thing can get and much more reliable than what the private sector can do, and weather forecasters are far more on the mark than pure guesswork or the feelings in one’s joints would turn up. Still, both are remembered for their rare, but irritating occasional screw-ups than for all the times they are right on the money. It is just a social way of talking and bonding that we do in complaining about them.

Convenient-for-the-rich common nonsense inspired Reagan.

Yet, Ronal Reagan brought this common-nonsense to the level of a grand theory of government. He declared, “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem.” Jumping ahead, we see how idiotic that was currently in 2011 as we see government being stripped down to the bones and people suffering ever more because of it. Reagan based his government on this convenient-for-the-rich, irrational but widely held social ritual of complaining about things and using the government as an example of ultimate foolhardiness.

Clinton, to his discredit among all the creditable things he did, continued Reagan’s contrivance in declaring “The era of big government is over.” This is an example of the “triangulation” he was noted for—co-opting and holding the territory of his opponents and using the additional sway that move gave him to make gains in areas his opponents did not approve of.

Clinton gave sacrifice to the dragon of nonsense to get some good things done.

Unfortunately the drawback of that move was, first, that Clinton had to make tradeoffs to get his gains; he had to actually take action in areas no progressive would desire. So, Clinton “reformed” welfare, which is something that may cause suffering in our country forever. He did this so he could create the illusion of ending big government.

The second negative from this triangulation is that it gave credibility to these common nonsensicals about the foolhardiness of government effectiveness. It is nonsensical, as is done these days, to think that big government is a threat to one’s precious Medicare and Social Security! But this is the legacy of Reagan, and then Clinton’s, pandering to the irrationality of the masses brought on by decades of immersion in “obvious truths.”

So getting back to Richard Clarke. He laughingly brushed off the 9-11 conspiracy theories by saying that would entail a high degree of government coordination, which is hardly possible for our government (ha, ha, ha). This is a pristine example of the powerful preferring we think them dumb than what they really are…guilty.

The Ignorance Defense Is No Excuse

Another kind of use of the stupidity defense may have another culpable official saying “Well, no one, before the fact, had ever considered for a moment that people would take planes and crash them into buildings,” for example.

“No one beforehand would ever have thought…”

For that one, former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. It’s a statement she has made since 9-11, and even had repeated it in her last days in office. Never mind the well-known, and widely reported Intelligence that was released after 9-11 that had concluded that bin Laden had determined to strike in America using planes to crash into buildings, statements given to the American government many months before the catastrophe and which Rice herself is known to have been aware of months before the crashes, and which journalists record her having little interest in, despite several attempts at briefing her on it.

And she is only one of those who make the same claim, denying the warnings. The Intelligence on this was most damning, in that it was specific, in pointing to a lack of vigilance, and an apparent narrow ideological view which made them, apparently, not see all the evidence required to make valid assessments. But rather they were predisposed to certain conclusions and so scanned for the pieces that supported that.

We know in retrospect that is what happened, and we know how disastrous that view was. Which is why I am writing this. It is simply high time for people who knew better to stop letting these ideologues, whose very ideological bent was arguably the reason they failed so horribly, get away with the ignorance defense.

“Ignorance” means literally “to ignore.”

It is one thing to say that one did not oneself consider certain outcomes or possibilities, but to claim that “no one at all” ever thought these things…. Well, it is ignorance, literally, “to ignore,” that caused so many in power, ideologically bent, to simply see only what they wanted to see.

To know, yet to continue to assert ignorance, is defined as “lying.”

But, proven wrong, and shown and pointed out that there had been plenty of evidence to have led one to do things differently and to get it right, and to still claim that no one else knew, is defined as lying.

It may be human nature to lie after one has screwed up so badly, but it is not required of humans. And others have many times admitted they were wrong and humbly admitted their failings in not considering the very evidence in front of them. Bush’s Scott McClellan is one such person. He was the Communications Director under Bush, and wrote a confessional book admitting that he should have known better and done differently.

If so deluded by “human nature,” there are others who would try harder.

No, it is too damn easy to say “human nature.” People in such positions should, let us say, we would hope, have a tad more of the noble in them, a bit more integrity not less, or they shouldn’t be allowed to take such positions, which require at least the integrity and nobility to be working for the betterment, protections, and the increase of all of Americans, over against one’s own interests; and need I say over against one’s egotistical desire to try out on the world stage some ideological theory. Else, hell, there’s lots of folks—many are Democrats—who would have tried a lot harder under the same circumstances.

So, it strikes me as more than arrogant for people who created these situations out of their own ignorance, greed, and so on, to excuse themselves by basically painting everyone else with the same brush.

Guess what, Cheney, Bush, Rice, others would not have come to the same conclusion.

No, Rice and Bush and Cheney, who all engage regularly in this, “No one could have known” excuse, do not have the right, after being given (or after having taken) the reins of the most powerful governmental forces, to place themselves as innocent and humanly unknowing just like everyone else, as they perpetrated the kinds of deeds of evil that they were so ready to decry, and put down, in others, and now to escape their mistakes and their ideologically driven lapses of such consequence, to be making themselves feel superior and safe by saying, essentially, anyone in the same situation would have come to the same conclusion.

Ignorance not an excuse when you make every effort to not know.

Well, the facts are, as I will be pointing out again and again, that when you make the conscious decision to eliminate contrary points of view, even when there are more of them than support your bent, and having ignored reports, stifled opposition, and insulated one within a group of monolithic true-believers; all while that entire America and the world is requiring you to get it right; NO, when you basically set it up so that, after hearing things you don’t want to hear, you make damn sure that the only people that are around or will even be allowed in (Bush took it so far as to never allow anyone even in one of his town hall meetings to attend if they were not fully on his side), it seems to me, to be more than arrogance, I don’t know, to say that, having drawn one’s circle so small, and against the better interests of the American people that you would at least, having been given the job, to do it as well as any small businessperson and simply find out everything one can before making a decision.

We know you didn’t do your homework, but this is hardly grade school.

But now, why would it be? Why this need to go so far in denying the facts? Why the need, which as pointed out existed during that long period where it became increasingly clear that the Administration had gotten so many things wrong for lack of “doing one’s homework” that so many of the Bushies, like Rice, also felt this ignoble need to excuse themselves of their mistakes not saying they’d done wrong but, amazingly, adopting and engaging in the same kinds of excuses of common criminals, even a mass murderer to explain one’s failings.

Bushies using same excuse as a mass murderer—how does that strike you?

For as Charles Manson used to like to say, “how do you know what you would have done if you’d been in my shoes? How do you know that you’d not come to the same conclusions and actions after experiencing and learning what I did?” And adding, “What I’m saying is that all you smug people, thinking you’re so above the rest of us and so incapable of evil continually assert how good you are and to exaggerate with fake loathing and revulsion how different you are from these others? Why, except that you are aware of having some of these things inside yourself, a little bit of Manson, or Bundy, or whatever? You are aware of these tugs and pulls and so your protestations aren’t they mainly to try to fight back those things?”

And here he would laugh, “You see, what you people don’t want to admit is that we are all alike on the inside; and that includes the evil. That also includes the good, which you would deny that I have. In fact, you do not want to know that you could as easily done this as I did, under the correct circumstances.”

While, there may be some truth in what Manson and criminals like him have claimed, psychologically speaking, and his pointing to hypocrisy is certainly often merited, still he is talking about the human psychology and the imperfections of them. One can easily grant that humans are not perfect, but that does not mean that we’d all become killers in the same circumstances. That is something one cannot know. But what we do know is that different people can be in a particular situation and react completely differently: one may act nobly, even heroically; another may act cowardly, finding excuses, blaming others.

What I’m saying it that is unseemly to an n^th degree to hear those who have taken over our government through their claims to be better, be smarter and more able, and to be more ethical—and would that include a little integrity, even nobility of character. So for these people, who have driven this country into the ground, after claiming higher ethics, character, morality, all the rest, than their opponents, indeed, so high as to warrant their receiving the job of most responsibility and requiring the most integrity than any other one in the world.

If you’re so common, why put yourself up to lead?

So then, after all that sales pitch at the beginning their excuse for screwing up is essentially that they were just the average Joe, the C—student, who didn’t like homework, and it being “so hard,” that they made common mistakes—one’s that anyone would make. Well, 1) EVERYONE DID NOT MAKE THESE MISTAKES! And you showed yourself too incompetent in not even listening to them, and 2) if you’re so common, then how dare you place yourself above everyone else and lie about your character and so on.

If you were lying about all that as a political ploy just to win. .. so that you could, what? Have power? Help your friends and yourself become enriched, or whatever? Well the lives of all humans on this planet are affected by the decisions of that office. And if your intent was a selfish one, then the whole world suffered, for it was a job for them that you were hired to do.

It’s more than unethical.

Not doing your job, and lying to the American public to get the job, is more than unethical. It becomes treason when the office is used to extort from the American taxpayers, huge amounts of money to give to their rich friends and to corporations with ties to the administration like Halliburton, who made money hand-over-fist with no-bid contracts.

No, that kind of stuff is not the stuff of mistakes but is intentional. It is using the highest office of the land, and taking the hopes of us all, from the little girl who wants to see her Daddy again, the many languishing in hospitals for lack of health care …. The list is endless … it is assuming to be their hero, while spending one’s time dismantling the government and the benefits it provides for us all, which for several hundred years have been worked out.

To plunder government for selfish ends is more than a mistake of foresight.

And for one administration to trash and plunder that government for its own selfish ends is not a matter of “I didn’t think of that before.” No, it sounds like the excuses of criminals because that is what this recent bunch actually were.

So that’s an example of what I’m getting at, which is that, despite so many denials, especially by the people in power and their lackeys in the media—all claiming that they could not foresee this, could not foresee that, that this was truly unprecedented, and that nobody could ever have seen such and such coming.

Not a lack of astute people, it was a lack of intention.

What I’m proposing is that in fact many did see many things coming, not just unheard of and powerless me (although isn’t it significant that even I could pick up on certain things), that it was not a lack of astute people, but let us say an intentional leaving out of the conversation of policy, any and all minds who could have and would have advised more correctly and would have prevented much if not all that has transpired and which now leaves America in a crisis to top all crises, at the worst possible time when so many other things of global significance are on the line.

So, hey! Thanks a Lot, George Bush!

You might want to step back and enjoy the humor in this as I did. This is my little, oh, “thank you note” to George W. Bush. It is a satirical piece. A supposed admirer-fan-chum of George W. Bush encourages thank-you’s for Bush’s “accomplishments,” which, described glowingly by the fan, sound quite the opposite to the listener. The fan has the most admiration for the great caper Bush “pulled off” at the end.

A Comedic Monologue

This comedic monologue combines the actual facts of recent history with a simple, unspun speculation of them, coming from the mouth of a fawning admirer who, for that reason, is allowed to elaborate on the shady dealings. So Bush, it is intimated, basks in the glory of having his ideas for illegal dealings praised as clever and awesome, or even cute.

This is political satire that will have you laughing from the total incongruity and irony of the monologue, but it will also leave you more informed and thinking. This is provocative, funny stuff.

{the video}

And the audio only version of the above:

A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for the Great Bush-Paulson-“Filthy Rich” Caper
by SillyMickel Adzema

{audio embed}

About the audio and video above.

[From February 2, 2010] Yesterday the airwaves were abuzz re: the CEO of Goldman Sachs taking $100 million in bonuses and thumbing his nose at Obama in doing so. Other reports this week are confirming the sleight-of-hand and shadiness surrounding the TARP bailout of the banks: Specifically, that TARP money handed out by Paulson was not recorded, let alone accounted for or monitored; and therefore it cannot be traced or even determined whether it went to benefit American corporations, let alone Americans, and not foreign corporations or even private interests or parties.

With these recent developments coming to light, along with the tea-baggers and Republicans continued blaming of Obama for everything from being born, daring to take the oath of office with unpresidential skin pigmentation, to daring to reverse the direction of the country from the cliff that Bush had so clearly left us heading for, it seems it’s time to revisit those days of yore, those nostalgic last glimmerings of a time when we had a government solidly on the side of the people, that is, helping them in keeping them comfortably distracted from the sight of the truckloads of loot being removed from the Treasury to the coffers of the filthy rich and the huge, oftentimes, foreign or international corporations.

Let us return, then, to December, 2009, and President Bush’s last couple months in office, and recalling those halcyon days, render our gratitude anew:

And the text of the “Oh, Thank You..” audio and video:

A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for “The Great Bush-Paulson-‘Filthy Rich’ Caper” 

C’MON EVERYONE, JOIN IN NOW!: “Why, Thank you, George Bush!”

…………….This is my little, let us say, oh, “thank you note” to George Bush for all his “hard work.”

Also, in appreciation of the “Paulsie Scam,” which we will be dealing with forever….

luckily it’s been arranged that won’t be too long.

…………….

“Thanks George W. Bush for all your efforts and “hard work” which have led,

your decisions and your Administration solely to blame—

thank you for being “THE DECIDER!” by the way —
to leave us in the midst of so many dire and rapidly expanding problems, so that many people are not just wondering if they will have a job or money, but that even if this planet will make it through another fifty years.

So, hey, thanks for all the hard work and for relieving us and all our grandchildren of any money, and….

oh, I see, there probably won’t be any planet for the little dears to live on.

And everyone dead and all….

Why, gosh, Mr. W., you’re so smart, you probably knew that!

So that’s why you and your cronies went so far as to commit grand larceny even at the end, scraping out the last of any money in the Treasury—wasn’t much left for Obama to do with anyway, after your eight years of partying on high with your Halliburton and your god-only-knows faceless “filthy rich,” gang.

Must’ve felt like the ol’ times, eh, except for the cocaine. . .

Er, I mean, I didn’t mean to presume, I mean, you can have cocaine, who am I…

Oh! What a relief, glad to hear you did not partake like the others. It’s just that….

I mean George, friend, my Man here, c’mon there were some pretty weird dancing and stuff and things—right at the end there—that had me wondering and worrying…

Oh, I get it, no cocaine, but wink, wink, you’ve got your ways you say? Hmmm? Finding things better than cocaine and getting away with it?

Well, he he, I’m not about to judge. I mean if we can have Rush Limbaugh asking for drug users to be hung up by their finger nails, even as he’s got a constant drip for a codeine fix, and he gets away scot free, why shouldn’t you have your fun? You always said it was haaaard work.

But I gotta get back to that stunt with the Treasury at the very end. I mean many, many a lesser, “criminal,” shall we say, mind would never go back again and again, let alone in broad daylight and in front of the entire world! Gad!

Was this all your idea to totally take everything while you could? Somebody else’s?

Anyway, it was brilliant. First, you enlist the support of that guy Paulson. Er, now that I know more about him, being worth $700 million, like and, getting bonuses of $37 million in 2005 and then 16.4 million the next year before he came into office with you…..

Why, could it actually be that he was the one that talked you into it!!! Naaaaaaw?

Certainly, he’d have to be characterized as one of them “filthy rich” that you helped to create, making people wonder who’s really calling the shots in Washington. …

But, never mind, even if it was his good idea—and now I understand he’s had plenty of experience—being involved with the folks who did Watergate and all…way back in his early days… with Ehrlichman and all—so that—no doubt he’s got lots of good ideas, ya gotta give him that.

But, hell, don’t want to take any shine off your apples. No, it was you who chose him. And despite his background, managed to get him on your side and portrayed as one of the most well-respected men on Wall Street, at the time… I remember that well…. I’d never know about his background, and I was most respect…everybody said it was a big…a good pick for you? ‘Course that was the old Wall Street; ‘cuz we now know those bonuses and stuff aren’t too popular right now.

Anyhow, brilliant move, you put this man of yours on task for the high-pressured auto trading that you knew would be required to pull off such a heist.

So you had your guy Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs…coming to take this position of Secretary of Treasury for you. And now we find out that none of that money went where it was intended to go and it did not change the situation but rather exacerbated it! Brilliant! More on that later, but…

more on that later, but, Jesus! I gotta say though…pretty incredible!!? I mean, Paulson himself, gets like, uh, what was it…50 some billion to a German bank? That then owes…Goldman Sachs 16 billion, and so he makes off with 16 billion on top, is that like…

What a crackup this guy is being! I mean he had everyone fooled, and, in fact, there is nothing at all being said about his involvement or his possible effects on what happened, even to this day.

That’s smoothness even you and I could learn from , y’know, Mr. W and……..stay away from him, man…. He’s just tooo smart for all of us, ok, I think he’ll have……. He, he, I think he’s already had his hands in all of our pockets, he, he, I figure… (I’m sorry bout that)… But anyway…

Naw, c’mon, let’s, let’s…we wanta go over your accomplishments tonight, Mr. President, I mean…. I mean..the whole thing…y’know, going to Congress, there….

Getting them to tally up that un-be-leiv-able sev-en hun-dred bill-ion dollars! …like almost a trillion dollars…. I mean they could not get that high, I mean….

Anyway…so we heard how you guys gathered these guys together in Congress…I mean how it was done, y’know, it was like…well musta been like one of those movies….like Ocean’s elev…. Like an Ocean’s 33, yeah! And. Anyway, so you gathered those suckers, those guys, in Congress together, who had the money, huh?

And, he, he, he, y’know, like, we heard afterwards how you guys gathered, Congressional Leaders… and… without explaining exactly how it would happen—of course

Congressmen could not be expected to understand the workings of economics and high finance like a Paulson could. So, kindly Paulson and his deputies explained using analogies, how nice of them to bring it down to their level, so sweet of them….

Y’know analogies…like this is like this, this is like this, y’know, and…yea, like that….

I just want to say how cute you are, W.. I mean, it was just, soooooo you….

Anyway, the analogy they used was that if Congress didn’t cough up the dough pronto—perhaps those weren’t the exact words, my bad. But anyway, that the consequences—and tell me W. this was all you, right?—The consequences would be that of a “GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN” (tell me, that part was you, right?) a terminal global economic meltdown that would… (wait, I’m getting an inkling here… was this next part, Cheney’s?) “End modern civilization as we know it for the foreseeable future.”

Wow! It gives me shivers just hearing it. I mean there ain’t no auto salesman in his wildest fantasies that could come up with something so absolutely, well, disabling.

You guys really took those suckers in Congress “out by the knees”! How could they have had a chance!

And, boy, there’s that implied nuclear thing again…”the meltdown”; yea. Doesn’t have to make any sense; I mean economics melting, but hey close enough. How clever! I mean that whole image of mushroom cloud, why it just worked stupendously to get us into a war. And now, this being economics…

Oh, my God, I see it; it’s like a fifties movie—”Oh, please help, we’re meeee-ee-llll-tiiinggg.” Yea, super scary. Heck, anything like that from fifties horror flicks…just good stuff.

Heck, you know that most people believe that stuff anyway.

So, I see, you feed them what they always feared anyway.

Brilliant. Brilliant.

But that’s my George, the W. himself, going with what he knows. And, hey, why bother coming up with anything else, that card’s a winner for you, my man….

And c’mon, level with me, I just gotta know, won’t tell anyone else… Was that Cheney with the “end of civilization” part?

C’mon, he’s already living the Wild West out there in Wyoming, he’s probably thinkin Mad Maxin it and everything… I mean, c’mon…. C’mon, it’s got to be him, that’s just sooo Darth Vader, who else could think like that?

Please tell me I’m right…I feel like I know this guy and that is….well, that is just sooooo him!…

So Far Above Us, They

Well That Was Fun, But Seriously, Folks: Paulson, Goldman Sachs

Well that was fun. But, more seriously, we find that there was plenty of help for Bush in pulling off his Ocean’s 12 caper. Take Paulson. Respected, regarded, head of Goldman Sachs, the acknowledged best and brightest of the Wall Street analysts, savvy folks who at the beginning of the banking crisis, as brokers like Merrill and Lehman were crumbling, some never to be heard again, Goldman Sachs was rumored to have come out quite well. It is said that they, when nobody else saw it coming (there’s those words again), invested to protect themselves in case of a downturn; perhaps shorting or buying puts, I’m not sure.

“Goldilocks economy”!?!

But that even struck me as rather astute as I had been doing the same thing, foreseeing a financial collapse, and not taken up with the Bush Administration’s cheer-leading of its own economic policies measured in the stock market and led by CNBC analysts all, especially the slavish Kudlow and his claims that Bush had produced a near perfect “Goldilocks Economy.” This he repeated over and over, even as the market slid. And when it did it was always the fault, according to Kudlow, of someone who had it out for Bush and his policies. Seriously, hearing this guy daily, salivating on and on about Bush, you’d wish they’d just a got a room.

TARP handed out like candy

Getting back to Goldman Sachs, however, Paulson long gone, not even leaving records of where the money went, apparently just handing it out like candy to his friends. And we were told that we just had to trust him, for it was so dire, and yet so far beyond our ability to understand.

To collect a debt, steal money and give it to your borrower to give back to you?

Maybe so, but then when it turned up recently that a huge chunk of that money went from Paulson to a European bank (a German one, I believe, not that that matters). And that this bank turned around and paid Goldman Sachs $16 billion. To which I can only, sarcastically (what other attitude can one have and still remain comfortable while writing!!) add, well, way-ta-go there Paulie, good job, Paulie, now that’s one round about but rather effective way of collecting a debt.

Just who’s “civilization” was at stake?

Makes me wonder then just whose nuclear meltdown would be in the offing, just whose civilization would end. As we will see further on, these people are and always have been seeing themselves as SO FAR ABOVE US, and they manage to convince the rest of us that they are that (just look at how they convinced Congress and are going around a second time and are succeeding again!)

They are SO FAR above us that they truly, and I mean this sincerely for reasons that I will get into, they truly see their fates, fortunes, and futures as equivalent with all the rest of us. I.e., and now I’m tipping my hand a bit, like kings of old who might suffer depression and soon all in the kingdom would be claiming to suffer depression too (or would be obliged to say they did?).

We are Borg, you will be assimilated.

And, by the way, this is nothing like the kind of Unity of Consciousness I speak of later. No. No. Think of this more along the lines of “We Are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

Daddy power demands your soul loss.

And more exactly it is this 25,000 year old pure and simple patriarchal authoritarian daddy power and their ability, with all their underlings depending on them for survival, to require the soul-loss and the robotic obedience of a group, each of whom know they will fare better materially (and being kept, most often, at a mere subsistence level) any improvement would be dearly competed for.

How dear the slavish underling

And how would they compete, you might ask. Well, how dear to a king’s heart is the underling who it seems so loves the king that he also suffers whatever the king does. Now that’s a pretty slavish thing, as humiliating acts of self-annihilation go, the aping that one is so in unity with the king that indeed they will suffer the same. (OK, now you say it with me, “Get a room!!”).

Auto Salesman Paulsen

But this point is to explain the seeming inexplicability of the power of such people, even over against that of a Congress that was trying to show some spine at that time, even though it was still dominated by Republicans, even they were having qualms of this kind of railroading, which several decried—and this is where I got it from—as seeming so much like the tactics of a slick auto salesman.

Auto Salesman Example of Congress Extortion

“Tell ya what, I’m going to do. You just sign this paper here; it’s only got a tentative price on it, I won’t hold you to it, but this will guarantee that beauty won’t be scooped out from under you tomorrow morning before you’ve had a chance to come in.

“Now, I know you love that car; and, quite honestly I want to see this deal go through, because I know a good match when I see it; and that car will be great for you. Leave it to me, I’ll talk to my supervisor tomorrow, I’m going out on a limb here, ya’know. But if I didn’t make my customers happy, I wouldn’t be happy, for that is what it’s all about to me.

“Just sign here, next to that number, and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do as far as bringing that down so it’s more affordable to you.

“You know, I wouldn’t do this for anybody else. But you strike me as a man of class. And I just know that you’re not going to let some minor discrepancy or other get in the way of your getting the vehicle that someone of your stature really deserves.

“And that’s what I’m I’ll about, I’m here to serve you and to get you the car you deserve. No, don’t worry about signing, it’s not a contract, really. In fact, if you change your mind by tomorrow, I personally will guarantee you that I will put in any time necessary to find the one of your dreams.

“Now you couldn’t do better than that, could you? Really now. I guess I’m just a sucker, but hey, I don’t see this job as selling machines, but more like arranging marriages. Like the Matchmaker—you know “Fiddler on the Roof”—ha ha!

(“Yea, right there anywhere, will be fine… oh, that pen not working, well here I’ve got plenty, in fact here have a couple, give one to your kid from me.”)

“There you go, now you’re doing the smart thing. I figured you to be a smart person the first time I saw you on the lot a little while ago.

“Well, anyway, I know you want to get home to your family, and tell them the good news.

“Well, of course, we’re still going to work on those figures tomorrow. Let’s just say I’m pretty damn sure I can get my supervisor to see it more your way, so I’m assuming we’re going to have the deal that’ll make you happy.

“So g’won now you old charmer, before you get me to throwing in a second car in the deal just cause you’re such good people.

“Yea, it was good getting to know you too. So I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.

“Oh, yeah, OK, I understand you can’t get here till late afternoon, I just assumed nothing would be able to hold you back once you thought of it at home. Yea, g’night….”

Pause. Now salesmen talking loudly at the man as he retreats:

“Oh, Mr. Bonior, just one small detail, if you don’t mind.

“Now, I know you weren’t sure about that undercoating, but I’m telling you that it’ll add years to your car, and, like I said, that may be something we can throw in; and if not, well it’s not that much.

“So d’ya want me to have that taken care of before you come in tomorrow? I can guarantee to put my best guy on it first thing in the morning, so the only think you’ll have to think of is how luxurious it will be driving home in this sweetness.

“No, you say no? Ya sure now? I mean you look like a great couple to me (chuckle). Not getting cold feet at the altar are you? (chuckle, chuckle)

“You’re sure you don’t want it, not yet?

“Okay, tell you what I’m going to do. You ARE a hard bargainer, darn you. (he he). Look I’ll put my best guy on it, he comes in at 8am. I really think that when you leave here you’re going to want to take this car away tomorrow, not another day.

“Now, now, relax; I heard you, just let me finish. I’ve been in this business a long time and by this point I hardly ever, if that, miss one of these “love at first sight” affairs I saw tonight. So, hear me out, it’ll be the best deal of your life, call it my “wedding gift”:

“Like I said I’ll put my guy on it in the morning. But if you call and let me know before that, well, then I’ll just take him off it, and crack it up to I just didn’t know you as well as I thought I did.

“On the other hand, here’s my “gift,” let me have it put on for you and—like I said I can probably get the cost completely waived—but let’s say I can only can half of it waived. Well, I’ll personally split the difference on the remaining cost with you; take it right out of my commission. It might mean I make $5 on this deal, but what the heck. Like I said it’s all about making you happy.”

Mr. Bonior turns and throws up his hands and walks to his car.

“OK, great, sounds like we got a deal. So, see you tomorrow, you’re going to be glad you came walking in her today, believe me. G’night again.”

Back to the astonishing “Paulsie” scheme, as one person astutely put it, “When anyone tells me I have to sign on the dotted line that day, or else . . . well, never once has a situation like that turned out right.”

Someone, I don’t remember who, was way ahead of everyone else. He used the word, “extortion.” We found out later how close to or exactly like extortion have been some of the tactics of the TARP money’s recipients toward the very Congress that provided them the money.

Other Unforeseen Events (Who wudda thought?)

Once again, no matter the situation, and despite the outcries of the American Republican Administration, who claimed to have encountered one after another of unforeseen and unprecedented events, no one ever dreamed could happen before. Such was always the refrain: “Who would have imagined such a thing could happen….”

Other Examples of Incompetence by Republicans, Katrina etc…Leading Into Stock Market Crash

In case I need to use an example or two to remind some readers of the prevalence of that claim and the absurdity of it as well: We see, Katrina, the unholy disaster wrought by that hurricane. Louisiana is devastated, particularly New Orleans.

Katrina was such a horrible blunder, they had to cover up the numbers who died!

The Bush Administration responds so horribly that the death toll is eventually no longer being announced in the media. Claims that it might be in the thousands were quelled by daily counts that only slowly recovered the dead, so that as the toll rose into the teens and 20s and up to 50, it was telling all of us listening that it may not have been as bad as we thought in terms of the loss of life.

Not so, actually, as I told my wife, many people died in their attics, inside their homes, and they haven’t even gotten to those neighborhoods. Indeed, I listened and only heard one time, years later and as an afterthought how several thousand had indeed been killed in that horrible flood. Recently a sign put there by someone was broadcast on TV: “4000 died here!” No doubt I am not the only one noticing the extent of the tragedy there was covered up to diminish the degree of political culpability.

First thing, the media colluded to keep anger at Bush Administration in check.

So, two things we notice in this example. The subtle way the media keeps anger at the administration in check by downplaying the horror. They couldn’t have done it any better had they been directly in the payroll of the government as the forces are who obeyed Bush’s commands to not let there be any TV coverage of Iraqi soldiers returning home in pine boxes and that even the graveyards were not to allow open caskets. So there is this collusion that is hard to understand. We’ll look at that a little later.

Second thing, again the refrain—“Who wudda predicted…?”

But, the inane refrain is always, and everywhere, and loudly proclaimed on all the airways, the Republican lackeys, along with Bush himself, proclaiming, Bush, in an innocent voice: “Who would have thought the levees would breach? This is horrible for the families, and blah, blah, blah, (but now back to covering my ass again:) We had fully prepared for a big storm, but no on predicted the breach of the levees.”

Did he really think you would believe that?! … (Did you?)

There is no euphemism for that kind of outright lie, and he deserves no covering up from anyone; he’s had too much already. No, indeed, I myself listened to storm reports over and over again for three days preceding landfall and sure enough, there was that one thing that was of concern to all: that the levees would breach. It was described what a devastation that would be; New Orleans being like a bowl, with much of it below sea level so a breach would not flow back out on its own.

More was said: how the levees had been a cause of much concern for years prior to the storm as those in the city knew that they needed work and strengthening in a big way, for they knew that if the big one hit, it would be about as devastating as it turned out to be.

But we hear from Bush: No one expected the levees to breach. Truly astonishing was the degree of lying that Bush-Cheney and others in that administration proclaimed, and which, despite even the media making at least some minimal amount of noise about certain things not being exactly congruent with certain facts, and so on. (One could do a great study of euphemisms for the many and varied ways that the media covered Republican comments without ever, not once using the word lie, or liar.)

I promised two examples, so how about the gem I discussed earlier in which Condoleezza Rice, year after year, takes refuge in this idea that “No one could have foreseen terrorists using planes to crash into buildings,” despite specific warnings delivered to the U.S. and specifically brought to her attention, which said exactly that.

But remember, when one meticulously surrounds oneself with only true believers, and fills posts with of importance with people with questionable theology degrees, and routinely stifles dissent (as was viciously done to Valerie Pflame to get back at Joe Wilson’s speaking out), then how will you ever get any information except that which you already know; or better yet, how will you every learn anything that does not in fact reinforce your beliefs, so how will you learn anything different that you might need to learn?

Checklist—So How Did We Do? Economy?

I reread my words of a decade ago. Example,

I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.

What? Me Worry About the Economy?

Hmmmm. Supreme Court? Check. Environment? Check. Our good economy? Well that topic demands more than a mere “check.” In the overnight change and the way it was done, the way it should have been foreseen, the way there was collusion at all levels… happen and the obvious conclusions to be drawn as to who made it happen and why, based on all the foreknowledge.

Was it intentional to destroy a country’s wealth and bring its workers to their knees?

Was it intentional to devastate the richest country in the world and to bring its workers to their knees? As well as the American government, before all the nations of the world having to humiliate … homeless beggars pleading for a handout also on its knees? What kind of American would engage in undermining this country, an outright act of betrayal?

Another betrayal

Just a side thought that might have value for some: In writing that last, I was reminded of Judas selling out to Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. So Judas, not being a typical Jew, was not a very good bargainer. He only got himself thirty pieces of silver, but still he was going to sell out Jesus.

And I was struck by the {xxx appropriateness} and the potency of the template xxxx{of the movie} Ocean’s Eleven, high tech wizardry that could have been employed but wasn’t employed for the 911 caper. But this simple motive is still moving people?

Apparently so aligned with the human nature hardly changed. Thirty bags of silver?

Utopia undone

Anyway, back to the economy, remember folks at that time, still under Clinton and before Bush blew the budget surplus, that we were eagerly debating how we could use it xxxx {to improve our} world, including happy notions like universal solar for all homes, universal health care.

So many other things, so many ideas were bandied about, all real possibilities considering the size of the surplus which had been created by—this should be kept in mind for it is hugely important later, and now—the surplus was created by a moderate tax increase on the extremely rich and the creation of millions of new jobs, all tax paying jobs, combined with strict oversight of the class of government programs and the reeling in of any that hand the marks of beginning to get out of hand.

All those happy ideas about how to use the surplus. Yet nobody envisioned the possibility that actually occurred, requiring, as it would, that people of unnatural stupidity and intent to harm would not only manage to win an election but also take over government so thoroughly and eliminate intelligent input so thoroughly and seamlessly and obliterate all objection at any level, including that of the media, and therefore the population. Who would have foreseen such an abhorrent and elaborate possibility?

“Bring back the flat Earth!”

For one thing its abject failure recently apparent, its certainty to xxx{benefit} few if any, its guarantee of destroying huge benefits xxx{overall} that would benefit virtually everyone, and alongside that no media or public outcry? Impossible, it was thought. Who would have considered that? Who would have considered the surplus eventually being thrown into the “bring back the flat Earth” bin, essentially bringing back a disproven economics of only eight years prior xxxx{to that} when Bush, in his first term, the beginning of it, lowered the taxes for the filthy rich. {pic of insanity of Congress in doing the same thing and it not working out}

Einstein says, “The definition of insanity is…”

And so it was reviving the failed economics of eight years prior to that which had resulted in a great recession, a Clinton victory, and the reversal of that policy with the spectacular results I was reporting on.

So, in considering that possibility, a person would have to ask, has this person been asleep for twenty years? Or hopelessly self- and other-destructive? What?

Still don’t know the answer to that question.

Back to that time, however, still setting up the context that preceded the one of the last eight years. Clinton’s plan was simple and it worked. So, simple policy that ordinary folks employ in balancing their household budgets, not rocket science, applied sincerely by Clinton, had achieved what had been considered the impossible and as elusive as the Holy Grail: the quest of the Balanced Budget, which many a Republican President had claimed as a top priority and made a central plank in his election platform, but a term or two later, after absolute failure and in fact causing a tripling or quadrupling of the National Debt instead, had claimed was as elusive and difficult to achieve as the Holy Grail, and also blamed the Democrats, largely for programs instituted in the past, like Social Security and Medicare, and so on, which they knew coming into office, and which they slashed. But still they could not achieve a balanced budget.

Conservative goal achieved only by “free spender”

Then, in comes Clinton, from the supposedly “free spenders” party, roundly criticized for budget-busting and National Debt increasing policies. Somehow the media and the Republicans had managed to conflate the two even after twelve disastrous years of Reagan-Bush that had proved…and dear people if only it had been remembered…proved for all time and had become a huge national debate if not uproar when George W. Bush’s first act was to reverse the economic policies of Clinton and reinstitute those of Reagan-Bush, with everyone in remembrance of the debacle that had been once.

You’re unlikely to know this, however.

But this is not brought out in the media.

In a country with a truly free press, not owned by the very people who would benefit by such a reversal, this renewal of the disastrous policies of only a decade earlier would have been all over the place and the analogies would ripe for picking, like: “Bush elects rebuilding the Titanic exactly the same way as before. Claims we as Americans are not dumb enough to run into icebergs as Europeans are.”

… ok, I’ve gone back about fifty, seventy years….

How ‘bout them kindly corporations, though?

Or, how about: “Bush proposes eliminating Food and Drug Administration, saying it will save taxpayers’ dollars. Claims no longer needed because the kindly corporations of the current era no longer need the regulations of the past, which were directed against people of a time that contained more unsavory, non-patriotic, non-American types, not like the corporations of today.”

Even as I’m saying these ridiculous things I can’t help thinking how variations of them were used in pushing through the changes that resulted in the debacle currently. As one example, even Greenspan is reported at one time, I believe it was toward the end of the Clinton era, to have said…check this out…that we have reached the point of corporate and monetary discipline, wherein corporations can be expected to be self-disciplining.”

Boy does that gall me. Homes in foreclosure, Chase Bank, out of the clear blue sky tripled our interest rates…. Yea, ok….

Greenspan, yea, you’re “sorry” alright.

Anyway, back to this: “…self-disciplining and not requiring the regulations of the past, which, if now acting as restrictions, if loosened, and trusting in their self-discipline…” This is all Greenspan speaking, now. …”would free their creativity eventually benefiting all…” I’m paraphrasing of course, but certainly Greenspan has been named one of “the dirty dozen” by CNN. Dirty Dozen being primary ones who created the economic debacle currently….

Muddling through, and looking decades down the path for relief. Anyway, this sorry character, Greenspan, that is, has admitted his part in his wrongness of vision, advice, and recommendation. But that example, with the very words that Greenspan used and the video of it kept in the archives and his retraction afterwards, again in his own words, and captured unmistakably on videos is slam dunk proven xxx{facts} that this inanity existed.

Idiocy rose to the top.

But the question that comes up… yea, and inanity at the highest levels, too… but the question that comes up, Is that not just an isolated example? Wish that it were so. For this I have not at hand though I’m sure there are loads of written testimony and concrete examples on the books that correspond nicely that Bush’s idiocy rose to the level portrayed earlier, disbanding the protections of the American people, using inane ideas meant to pander and gather acceptability for disastrous policy reversals.

Oh, one more spoken one in evidence before I get to the less obvious but more xxx{egregious} one that has Bush fully opting for the reversal… remove all the protections deemed by legislatures xxxx{over many} of years to protect the average American from the tendency of the corporations in their greed and their pressures of competition to overreach with disastrous consequences for ordinary Americans, including their loss of life, health and finances.

With all their wealth, they couldn’t see Maddof coming?

What I’m speaking of has to do with the Maddof scandal. Called the largest Ponzi scheme in history, bilking so many of those who are in the know on Wall Street, or perhaps should have been. For they had amassed enough wealth to have xxxx{had it thoroughly checked out ahead of time and foreseen it. For there were many things about it} arising suspicion long before it had actually occurred, it is said.

But there seemed to be no end to the, “I don’t know how this happened. It couldn’t have…” again that refrain. Lacking insight, history, and perspective and having gotten your job partially because of having a lack of understanding of the areas you cover as opposed to a better understanding, well, these things don’t seem to have any cause…. Xxxx”{They are put out as coming out of nowhere very much like what we have been hearing from airplanes”} well then, that chemicalized chunk of frozen waste landing here as opposed to there.

Well that kind of, “well, somebody should have known” and “We don’t understand why they didn’t” got blown out of the water when a former SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) official investigator, or at least as would-be one, came before Congress.

C-Student, Bluto-Bush

Bush’s response is, He don’t claim to be an A-student. What the hell is it with Republicans all thinking they’re Hermann’s Hermits!?

Well before reiterating what transpired, let’s not forget those weeks of “How could this have happened?” spewed endlessly. The result of the testimony in Congress was that the SEC under Bush was told to lie low in investigating anything. And well isn’t this the way a C student would think? Essentially they were given the directive to look like they were busy, but not to really accomplish anything or to do their jobs.

Bluto-Bush

What are you in “Animal House,” Bush? Who are you? Bluto? Telling the xxxx{fraternity brothers} or any of that crap.

“Look, we got a good gig! I got elected President.”

Ok, maybe that part wouldn’t be Bluto. However…

And that means…now sounding like Cartman…

“I can do what I want!”

Now like Bluto-Bush,

“So nobody tells us what to do, and we’re gonna pa-a-a-r-ty! Wo-o-o-o-w!

“So don’t worry I’ve got it all worked out, that we’ll get the answers before exams so that we’ll look like we’re doing something. Don’t worry, you’ll get your checks. And in the meantime…might I say…

“There’s a keg that’s just been tapped in the kitchen…a-a-a-a-n-n-d! … “

…bringing the volume down low now, conspiratorially like…

“And for those so inclined *snif* if you catch my drift…don’t kill each other in the crush…be cool…well let’s just say *snif* the microwave and toaster, I hear *snif* have been employed in cookin up something not so much for the palate, but…”

*long, long, snif*

And at that many of the frats had already started dashing toward the kitchen.

Bluto-Bush, raising his voice over the clamor and hollering above all:

“Let’s just say that if the right is right then the right is white! There ain’t no better breakfast than that served on a mirror, yyee-oo-ha!”

Well, if you didn’t enjoy that folks, at least one of us did.

C-students all

So before attributing obvious blame, let us not overlook this example, this kind of example of what was rampant throughout the media at all levels for eight years of Republican dominance.

For eight years, Bush had let it be known that the SEC should not have to, in fact, should back off from investigating. Basically, the SEC was told not to do its job, basically the SEC was told to collect checks, to engage in busywork. And, it wasn’t the only agency that was disabled by Bush.

You ever notice how the ones claiming government can’t do anything right are the same ones making it that way?

But my point has more to do with journalism. For the question is, how could Bush have gotten away with all this? How could his dismantling of the functions of government, put in place long ago by people…well…no stretch needed here…obviously smarter than him!…gone unreported. In any other time, does it not seem likely that this sort of disabling of the SEC would have been uncovered by the Fourth Estate? Over the course of so many years? Were there no longer any investigative journalists in Washington? Were there just photogenic media personalities with little knowledge of the area of their reporting? Which is what Walter Cronkite had predicted was going to happen.

Well, the camera likes them.

Well, anyway xxxx{these photogenic} journalists

…without a clue about the Maddof scandal … …y’know, I mean, with all this evidence nobody did anything… lots of xxx{scratching their head} and wondering, and “Gee, I dunno”…

xxx{any of them could have conducted an} investigation that would have resulted in that time being used to enlighten the public about the unheard of government hand in undoing the government’s work instead of giving everyone the feeling that these things don’t have individual actors behind them…no one accountable for them…no one to blame, and no one to stop, and therefore life is just a random series of accidents…

Breaking news, this just in: Question! To my brain (di di di di di di di)…

…Well my brain had the breaking news so my brain had to do sound effects…

Anyway, question: Is it possible that the what-me-worry president’s philosophy…let’s say, encapsulated by “gee I don’t know how such a thing like that could happen and besides it’s hard work, so, as for responsibility, well…what, me worry? Ok? As for the source of responsibility, well, what, me worry? Got it all? Ok, it goes like this:

Besides, it’s hard work.

His philosophy is “Gee, I don’t know, nobody ever imagined such a thing like that could happen, and besides, it’s hard work, so as for responsibility, “What, me worry?”

Ok, understand now? You know, the befuddled C student’s view of the world. Learned enough to know the kinds of things that could happen, but not having studied enough or curious enough to have learned why they happened and crucially how they are prevented, if not wanted, or made to happen, if desirable.

For that would have gotten a B or an A.

The question remains, did he bring in a world of C students with him? Well, there is lots of evidence of exactly that happening in his government.

But in the media? Well, is it possible that he set the example of “gee, I dunno, I dunno” becoming acceptable?

Pretty convenient to gut education if insightful people would resist you.

Well, it’s not so outrageous when you consider that Reagan did something akin to that: Setting up the average no-nothing as somehow more astute with genetically predisposed intuitions without having to know, to check, to search, find out, or discover…may sound a little confusing, but you’ll see in a second…making the average shmuck feel like he’s college educated. Pretty convenient too when your policies include cutbacks in funding at all levels of education.

So Reagan’s scheme: Republicans know that educated people vote by more percentages more for Democrats than for Republicans. So, first part: Gut education; make education more expensive.

Also, continue to change education…as started in 1971 so…as I saw it happen…so it is swept of all kinds of content and courses that lead to insight, that lead to people becoming individuals, and instead fund highly specialized programs of ethically neutral technical information, forget the arbitrary nature of time-bound and ephemeral nature of those technicalities.

Trivial Pursuit became a popular game…and a way of life.

I mean, c’mon. If you need an example of that, I’ll give you an obvious one: There was one time when I was in school, before, just at the time when the first PCs were coming out, personal computers. At that time I was learning computer programming and I was learning it from huge machines and we were putting punch cards in them. Now, I could have spent years learning that kind of stuff. Reckon how useful that would have been today? Or how useful that would have been in a few years?

But that’s the kind of stuff they’re being taught. Y’know, the kind of stuff that when you go to a job they’ll teach you. But you’ll never be able to find a place that you’ll ever xxxx{be able to use that training in other than that job. The things you learn} only apply to that thing that they were doing there? Well, that’s what I’m talking about. The more specialized you got…and this is even at the junior … at the bachelor’s level… this is supposed to go on, if then, at the Master’s and certainly not until the Ph.D level.

So, they’re learning things that are fitted to a particular corporation, a culture, and a time, and they could change.

However that’s what’s being pushed and these are programs that are designed by the corporations in fact. So that they would produce the work pool that they could feed from. So they would get an already paid for, trained by the government, pool of employees. Something that they had had to do in the past.

Pander to the uneducated (to seduce them while picking their pockets).

Now, as for all those who don’t go into higher education for lack of resources and would not have gone anyway? But who would have felt inferior because of that? In the anti-intellectualism that you put out, something that is a technique of every totalitarian xxx{government} that has ever existed…I’m talking about Reagan putting it out now…they encourage the uneducated to feel smarter than if they had gone, and encourage them to look down on and despise the educated and what the educated come to discover.

Pump up their egos (while undermining their security).

If for example, like global warming… or the environment…in Reagan’s time. Or, the dangers of nuclear anything…again Reagan’s time…. Well you can appeal to the uneducated to simply feel better. Appeal to them to just feel better and to feel superior. And to think of the idiots who come up with that stuff as being people who sadly have scared the crap out of themselves with all of that book knowledge, when you, yourself have the intuition of the common, uneducated man to inform you of what’s what, along with, of course a Republican Party (and now of course blatantly in the media with Fox “News”) the Republican Party that understands you like a daddy would.

“And to hell with what they say the Republicans are doing to our wages and such. Hell, I just know that they’s good people, and noticing that I’m better than my smarter brother…cousin, father, sister, whatever…who went off to college and got their dang heads all messed up with words that don’t mean nothing, so…what, me worry?”

So, anyway, now that I’m back from…wherever that was, Kansas or something…Anyway…sometimes I feel like I’m in “Sliders,” y’know?… I feel like I’m in that show, “Sliders”…sliding from one place to another, one person to another….

Stupidity Serves Them

Yep. It appealed directly to those uneducated and make them feel better, that those idiots, those intellectuals, are so dumb that they’ve scared the crap out of themselves with all the book knowledge when you yourself have the intuition of the hardworking, uninformed man, along with, to reinforce, the Republican Party that understands you like a daddy would.

“And to hell with what they say the Republicans are doing to our wages and such. I just know that theys good people in noticing that I’m a smarter person than my brother…cousin, father, sister, whatever…that went off to college and got their heads all messed up with dang words that don’t mean nothing.”

Your beer buddy for president (!)

So, if you’re familiar with that, then you might have an understanding of how successful they were in putting out this anti-intellectualism in our country. Isn’t that how they say Bush got elected in the first place? Is that, somehow, anti-intellectualism was so popular that it was said that people would rather have a President that they could go and have a beer with than to sit down and have a discussion with.

So they were quite successful with that xxx{in making it} come true in politics. Well. To make us want to have an Obama, to make us want to have intelligent people xxx{to be able to handle things} better than xxx{just giving} to us xxx{so many} problems much much bigger than xxx{what they profess to be able to} handle.

In answer to the question I posed earlier xxx{, did the Bush Administration’s C-student mentality end up in the media or} encourage it in any way? I would think that observing TV there would be an indication that a lot of that was going on.

It was high school all over again.

And it’s kind of like…reminds me actually of a culture of the … what you might call the moderately popular kids at school, who may be C students, and they’d have their little clique and that. And they’d always have this like idea that their C status was of greater importance because there was more of them. So they had all kinds of put-downs for students who were A’s and B’s very similar to the way adults put down intellectuals. Apparently it never changes.

Let me get right back to it, now.

“We’re all … Alfred E. Neumann?”

So, this “what, me worry” … that’s a big topic, the extent to which that became our national mental state, became a template that was acceptable… that “I’m an idiot…” I get into that in other places.

Anyway, this, the Maddoff scandal broke. The journalists did not have any xxx{researchers} in their field, did not have any investigative journalists in their entire corporation to uncover the obvious occurring in all departments under Bush over many long years …. They did not have any investigative journalists in their entire corporation to uncover the obvious, which is occurring in all departments under Bush over many long years. That journalists without knowledge in their field were being hired for their lack of vision. Then they were being kept in the dark or something.

Anyway it showed the continuing complicity if not outright cooperation in covering up the Republican’s agenda as its failure became more and more apparent.

Drowning person fighting off their rescuer. How hard do you have to fight to get to help?

By the way, what happened at that Congressional Hearing: That SEC employee detailed how he’d become aware of the Maddoff scandal, and had begged his superiors to be allowed to investigate it and was turned down. Going back again and again to ask permission to look into it, even offering to risk his life by going undercover to do it. Nothing. No permission granted. Xxxx{No way} did the SEC want to know about the biggest ripoff in American history. The SEC assigned to oversee such activities absolutely refusing to do its job.

As I mentioned earlier, eventually it came out how Bush disabled virtually all of government that had put in place to protect average Americans from largely thievish entities who would affect them unknowingly from afar, like Food, Drug, and Water xxxx{safety,} without consequences. How he did it? He placed in the positions of power, of highest power, in these agencies people firmly entrenched with these groups they were supposedly regulating these agencies. Commonly it is called hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.

Checklist—So How Did We Do? Peace in the World?

Getting back to this checklist from 2000 after this long exposition about the economy. I said Bush’s election would lead to our

“…not just losing an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than these horrors. I believe we are in grave danger of losing let alone progressing in the freedoms we take for granted.”

Well, last time we got as far as the economy.

Next, our relative peace in the world. Well, check.

You Get to Scream Here

Shouldn’t there be some kind of resounding howl, perhaps a chorus of screams, maybe of screams of the hundreds of thousands of souls, people…Americans died…but other people, real people, died too.

Six hundred thousand Iraqis. Screams. Six hundred thousand Iraqis, four thousand Americans who are not here because Bush, which we see with no doubt now, as Chevron and Exxon go in, that it was for oil.

But so much is known and already said on that so I’m not going to go any further on that.

Checklist—So How Did We Do? “Horrors Worse Than That”?

So next, “but things far worse than those horrors.” In this regard I feel it is illuminating to record an event…I mean, I’ll mention, “far worse than those horrors” …we’ve seen so much…we’ve seen torture, we’ve seen stealing of elections, we’ve seen taking over the Attorney Generals office as if…. Making up laws, spying on American people. But, ok, enough said….

Let’s Start With Wall Street

Let’s back off from the administration a bit, as I want to now show an example of how this exact same mindset was coming out in the mainstream media, particularly in regards to the crashing of the stock market. This idea that nobody knew or could have prevented the debacles we’ve seen, we’ve seen not only in Republican government, but seems to be the common denominator among those who perpetrated the things that have led to our calamity. A big part of this occurred on Wall Street; and since I’ve been an active trader, on-line, off and on, since 1996, I’ve watched this whole thing unfold. I can only say, that, tuned in every day, and simply being aware of certain patterns of reporting, I could see deep trouble was coming, which I’ll get into in a minute. First, a salient example of the attitude expressed above (“nobody could have imagined…”) being used also on Wall Street as an example.

George W. Bush-league players

To set the stage, I feel it is illuminating to relate an event I vividly remember seeing on the financial news in America, on CNBC, one day, in October of 2008, as the DOW was experiencing 500 point losses in a day, unprecedented except for during the stock market crash leading to the Great Depression. [Footnote 1]

One of the expert trader/commentators—a person I’d often seen on the show—was being interviewed on the floor of the actual exchange, seeming to be surrounded by evidence of the carnage—there were actual strewn papers and such, just like in the old days, as I remember it, as stocks were tumbling (again!) with such rapidity that even the old call out system was being implemented, for some reason—for certain financial instruments anyway. And there had been the confusion and the outcries, and yes, even the panic that one would expect to see in an old movie about the Stock Market Crash.

An incredulous puffer-fish guy

In the midst of this all, this trader/expert was asked by the CNBC interviewer about his take on the scary and unprecedented retreat from stocks and those days of multihundred point losses, one after the other. This elderly obviously seasoned personality seemed to balloon out several sizes of his suit in his sheer incomprehension and his near perfect confusion. Still, raising his voicing, a little more squeaky and almost embarrassed, puffer-fish guy held forth, as if written on tablets, first, how “all the traders have lost money” and then, “Nobody’s doing OK….” But his afterthought hit me like a spear: He pleaded, “I mean who last year at this time foresaw anything like this coming….. I mean,” he said “anything at all, at all, like this coming up?”

At home, there was no way to restrain the howl of laughter that last comment triggered in me. While at the exact same time, I experienced this sharp pain in my belly, like I’d been stuck, well and good, by a spear. I couldn’t believe this “expert’s” comment.

Economics to piss on you

I pondered, is it funny, or horrible, that I had been making money hand over fist as I kept shorting the market, buying only puts, having fully expected this crash ever since Bush had put in his tax-cuts-for-the-rich policy in the first year of office? I expected this crash to come near the end of the W’s second term, like had happened to Reagan who had employed the same asinine throw-money-at-the-rich policy. Both presided over huge transfers upward to the already “filthy rich.” They did this

fully aware that these folks would not spend it to create jobs, but instead would buy yachts and—one big rage of the Reagan era—expensive art, which they bid through the roof, making headlines in those days, as one art object after another would break a new record. At the time, we all thought: “Great idea, Ron baby. Now you just tell me how money locked up in art will somehow create jobs and tinkle down on the poor?”

Would you remember your lobotomy? (If a tree falls in a forest…)

Yet here, only twenty years later, I see this seasoned elderly guy…obviously he’d seen more than I could ever have of the workings of Wall Street…yet he had not had a clue that this downturn could happen, nor apparently, had anyone, any trader, or any CNBC talking head, seen a thing. (Where were they 20 years ago? I wondered.) Still, lowly me—is it because I’m a Democrat?—lowly me, well did I remember the way Reagan’s “Robin-Hood-in-reverse” economics created a great recession, which brought Bill Clinton to power incidentally, but also how everyone was alarmed at the size of the National Debt, which, during Reagan and Bush The Elder, had more than tripled.

If they took away your memory, how would you know?

It wasn’t just me that saw this crash coming. For I found mentors in the market, who I picked because they also knew we were headed for collapse, and who even got laughed at and ridiculed publicly on TV for espousing these views. Still, I found these few not afraid to look squarely at the fundamentals, who were also not Republican cheerleaders propping up a Bush economy of giveaways to those not needing it. The market crashed, and we saw the many sheeple “supply-side” traders and “experts,” who had been in bed with that Administration and represented the special interests, suddenly realize that Bush could not keep the party going endlessly…anymore than Reagan could. Previously, I had watched as these same Republican-speaking mouthpieces for the rich and for the economics of greed had become over time the only voices being heard. Now, suddenly shocked that there were limitations on their thievery of the masses, these Bush league players could be seen running for the exits like a bunch of cockroaches when the light is turned on.

I also watched as these Republican-speaking mouthpieces for the rich and for the economics of greed were more and more the only voices being heard when the Mr. Ed chart markings of the DOW began that nodding, as if to say,

Continue on this site with
“Time Capsule, Culture War, Part Ten:
Message in a Bottle, Part 3″

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“Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Part 2:

A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events” by SillyMickel Adzema

“Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/srwkrsvcdz—MessageInaBottlePart2-Ent-Up

 

“Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 3” by SillyMickel Adzema

Message-Arrives-from-Nine-Years-in-the-Past-Predicting-Today’s-Events-Part-3”-by-SillyMickel-AdzemaSillyMickel’s-Calling-the-Noble-in-Spirit-Wake-Up–

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