Who’s responsible. Faces of the “faceless” filthy rich

There’s a lot of idiocy on the right about who’s responsible and who are truly the rich in this country. I’ve actually had relatives tell me that Democrats are the ones who are rich. When I asked the how they could say that, they said the Kennedys.

That kind of mystification can only be happening because folks have lousy education so don’t know their “numbers” .. don’t know the difference between millions and billions for example (it’s just “lots” in their minds), because they have been made confused and deluded by Fox-style propaganda coming out in all the media, and because folks are afraid–and so make it “inappropriate” to name names and point fingers… As if knowing who is really responsible for things would trigger another French or Russian Revolution and have heads rolling and czar blood flowing. (Seriously?…)

So isn’t it about time we educated ourselves about the real causes of things rather than remained dummied down and going after each other (listen up, Tea Party).

So, I’m pointing fingers and placing blame. Anybody who tells you that is an inappropriate or crude thing to do is doing the work of these criminals to cover up and get away with their abominable deeds.

Here are some of the faces of the “faceless” filthy rich.

Amplify’d from salsa.wiredforchange.com

Bad Billionaire Ballot

Welcome to RootsAction’s list of the Filthy Rich.

Billionaires get tax breaks big enough to fly a private jet through, and it’s contributing to our federal deficit. But it gets worse. The most vile of the bunch are using their money and influence to pollute the environment, wreck democracy and profit from war. The fancy word is plutocrat. Another way of saying it – they are the enemy of all we hold dear. Many of the billionaires in this collection have attended the infamous Koch Brothers’ annual retreats to plan their takeover strategies. These folks don’t deserve a tax break. At. All.

So check out a bit of their background, and consider – which billionaire is doing the most damage? We know, it’s a tough call. But you can do it. We just aren’t buying the line that these folks are worthy of special treatment and that Social Security must go before they do.

So vote away, and tell your friends.

And, let’s remember, we can Balance the Budget on the Backs of Billionaires. Believe us, they can handle it.

Pick your bad billionaire. Remember, they may all be despicable but you can choose only one! Share with your friends to help your favorite “win.”

Read more at salsa.wiredforchange.com

via Who’s responsible. Faces of the “faceless” filthy rich.

Matrix – A Demon Weltanschauung

American Fascism

“A Nation Stripped Bare: Fascism Has Come to America” by Chris Floyd

From Empire burlesque, March 5, 2011

It is a question that has sparked much debate, at least in certain rare quadrants where the unvarnished reality of the American imperium is recognized. But surely now the debate is over. Question it no more; the supposition, the fear, the heartbreaking intimation is a fact. It is real. It is here.Fascism has come to America.

And no, it didn’t come in jackboots. It didn’t come in massed, marching ranks. It didn’t come in greasy-haired frothers ranting on a stage.

It came with cool. It came with savvy. It came wearing the mask of past evils redeemed by the image of a persecuted minority elevated to power. It came spouting scripture, hugging bright children, quoting pop music, sporting pricey leisure threads.

It came on Facebook, it came with 269 cable channels blazing, with I-Pad apps offering Catholic confession and YouTube porn. It came with the Super Bowl, with de la Renta gowns on the Oscar carpet, with 36 brands of dips and chips on the bulging shelves of your local Wal-Mart.

It came right in the midst of your ordinary life, as you went to work — or looked for work — as you partied, as you courted, as you watched TV, as you worshipped, as you studied, as you played, as you went about the business of being human.

As you went about the business of being human, this inhuman thing has come. It has come in your name, wrapped in your flag, claiming your security as its raison d’etre.

And in the guise of a young, hip, educated progressive, it has just now declared that anyone who reveals any hidden evil committed by the fascist state is subject to prosecution for a capital crime. That’s right. It has revealed that you — you American citizen, you patriot, you believer in goodness and justice and genuine democracy — you can be killed by the government if you tell the truth. This is what the administration of President Barack Obama has demonstrated — indeed, has proudly proclaimed — in its treatment of the young man it is avowedly, openly torturing for telling the truth about American war crimes, Bradley Manning. There can be no mistaking the meaning, implications and import of Barack Obama’s actions.

Corporal Bradley Manning has been charged with leaking “classified material,” including a video posted on WikiLeaks that showed American forces gleefully shooting up Iraqi civilians with helicopter gunships. Manning is also alleged to have obtained thousands of other files detailing crimes, corruption, cover-ups, lies and deceit by American forces and American diplomats around the world. Although American officials have repeatedly said that none of leaks attributed to Manning and to WikiLeaks have caused any bodily harm to any agent of American imperial power around the world, Manning is being accused of “threatening national security” and “aiding the enemy.”

And who, pray tell, is the “enemy” being aided by the expression of truth? On Thursday, the Pentagon very helpfully spelled it out to the New York Times:The charge sheet did not explain who “the enemy” was, leading some to speculate that it was a reference to WikiLeaks. On Thursday, however, the military said that it instead referred to any hostile forces that could benefit from learning about classified military tactics and procedures.

It could not be clearer. The release of any information that the American government declares might be of any use whatsoever to any possible “hostile” force — real, imagined, or possibly run by American provocateurs — somewhere in the world at some point in time is a crime that can be punishable by death. Thus any person or any entity that reveals embarrassing or criminal facts that the government wishes to keep hidden now stands in the shadow of death.

If that is not fascism, there has never been such a thing on the face of the earth.

To be sure, American officials say that they will seek only life imprisonment for Manning — who they are now subjecting to hours of forced nakedness in front of video cameras. But the military judge who will oversee Manning’s court martial is entirely free to disregard the prosecutor’s stated intention and impose the full penalty for aiding the “enemy.”
But again, who is the “enemy”? You are the enemy — if you speak a truth that the government does not want you to reveal. (Of course, if you are an approved and coddled courtier, an eager, scurrying scribe like Bob Woodward, for example, you can reveal all the most secret “classified material” that you like, as long as it comes from savvy insiders “authorized” to praise their bosses and make their rivals look bad.) If you speak this unwanted truth, the government, the president — the cool, savvy, modern, hip, educated progressive president — can throw you in jail, subject you to torture, deprive you of sleep, and finally strip you naked in front of cameras to break you down and humiliate you in their efforts to dehumanize you, to grind you down into a piece of meat.

Here is the New York Times report on Manning’s treatment — a small, brief story which did not make the front page of the print edition and within a few hours disappeared from the dozens of stories on the front page of the on-line edition:

A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, [David E. Coombs], the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday. … The soldier’s clothing was returned to him Thursday morning, after he was required to stand naked outside his cell during an inspection, Mr. Coombs said in a posting on his Web site.

“This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” Mr. Coombs wrote. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.”

First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said a brig duty supervisor had ordered Private Manning’s clothing taken from him. He said that the step was “not punitive” and that it was in accordance with brig rules, but he said that he was not allowed to say more. “It would be inappropriate for me to explain it,” Lieutenant Villiard said. “I can confirm that it did happen, but I can’t explain it to you without violating the detainee’s privacy.”

This is rich; this shows a devilish irony at work in the PR boiler rooms of our fascist state. Yes, we tortured Manning, but we can’t tell you why — because we want to protect his privacy! We are very concerned about his sacred right to privacy! “I’m sorry,” said Sgt. Heinrich Schultz, spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau detention facility. “I can confirm that Mr Shlomo Stern, formerly of Krakow, was indeed stripped naked by guards here, but it would be inappropriate for me to explain why, because it would violate the detainee’s privacy.”

And as Glenn Greenwald reports, Manning was indeed stripped naked again the following night. Coombs himself notes:

PFC Manning was forced to strip naked in his cell again last night. As with the previous evening, Quantico Brig guards required him to surrender all of his clothing. PFC Manning then walked back to his bed, and spent the next seven hours in humiliation.

The decision to require him to be stripped of all clothing was made by the Brig commander, Chief Warrant Officer-2 Denise Barnes. According to First Lieutenant Brian Villard, a Marine spokesman, the decision was “not punitive” and done in accordance with Brig rules. There can be no conceivable justification for requiring a soldier to surrender all his clothing, remain naked in his cell for seven hours, and then stand at attention the subsequent morning. This treatment is even more degrading considering that PFC Manning is being monitored — both by direct observation and by video — at all times. The defense was informed by Brig officials that the decision to strip PFC Manning of all his clothing was made without consulting any of the Brig’s mental health providers.

What is happening here — as Arthur Silber foretold long ago — is that Barack Obama is codifying the worst abuses of the Bush Administration (and its predecessors) — which had usually been committed on the side, in the dark, in secret, behind many layers of “plausible deniability” — into the open, declared law of the land. This too is facism in action. Indeed, rarely has there been a regime more legalistic than Nazi Germany, where jurists, legislators and civil servants adhered strenuously to the “law” as determined by the will of the ruling clique. And for all those who make a fetish of the “rule of law,” here is the end result: law being used by brutal Power to “justify” inhuman treatment of truth-tellers. As we noted here some months ago:

A conversation during Civil War. (From work-in-progress Bright, Terrible Spirit):

“But in days past, I was a lawyer. Yes, a lawyer, can you believe it? It seems….ridiculous now, doesn’t it? An orderly system meant to govern human society, to establish justice, to advance the progress and enlightenment of the human race. Yet that system, that civil cosmos – to which I was so passionately committed – embraced and protected the most wretched evils, entrenched the powerful in their unjust privilege, oppressed the poor and weak most relentlessly and wickedly, yet at every step – at every step – sang hosannas to itself as some kind of divinity. The “Law” – oh, what a hush of reverence surrounded that word, how deeply that reverence and respect penetrated the heart. Well, my heart, anyway. But in these last few years we have seen – in intense, concentrated, microscopic view – the truth about the law, a truth which too often escaped us in the slow unrolling of peacetime. The truth that there is no law, no Platonic Form out there to which we give paltry representation. There is only power: power in conflict with power, power seeking to drive out power, to establish its dominance, maintain its privilege. Power…acquiesces to law – sometimes – but it never, never bows to it. Power goes along with the law when it is convenient to do so, when it is not too restrictive, when it demands little more than the occasional sacrifice – for the powerful are certainly not above throwing one of their own to the mob when circumstances require. But when it comes to the crisis, power shreds the law like a filthy rag and has its own way. And then you see that the law is nothing but a rag, to be torn and patched and fitted to power’s aims. The worst atrocities I have seen or heard of in this war have been committed wholly and completely under the law. This thing I held in such reverence was, is, nothing but a scrap soaked with blood and shit.”

This is what the administration of President Barack Obama has brought to open fruition in the United States of America. The debate is over. The question is answered. Facism has come…..

A brief reprise of a recent tribute to Manning and other truth-tellers:

“Good corporal, good corporal, don’t you know the fate
Of all those who speak the hard truth to the State
And all who trouble the people’s sweet dreams?
They’re mocked into scorn and torn apart at the seams….”

Demon Monster “1984″

This part has to do with Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, the fascism that is no longer creeping, torture of truth-tellers in America, the article “A Nation Stripped Bare: Fascism Has Come to America” by Chris Floyd, reposted here, and “Hello, 1984, You’re Looking Quite Spiffy These Days”

Feds Using Fake Online Profiles To Spy On Suspects

reports the Huffington Post  (March 22, 2010)

You get a “follower” on Twitter, whose picture shows horn-rimmed dark glasses, fake crooked teeth, goofy hat, and smile (obviously in disguise). So, did I see this coming a mile away!?  (”You betcha!  <wink> [ugh.])

Get Smart-ishly transparent?

But then you think, would the CIA, FBI, right-wing hate groups, (News Corp?), et all be so obviously fake? You answer yourself, no…well, except for the right-wing hate groups. And even then, just the duped followers acting on their own would be so “Get Smart”–ishly transparent. So, except for those tea-bag enthusiasts who are not the manipulators but who are the duped, frightened, sheeple followers; and except for similar crazed or right-wing vigilantes acting independently (i.e., again, the sheeple element), these attempts would not be obvious like the example I gave.

The “New, Improved” Fascism

For the professionals would be smart enough to NOT look fake, or at least be plain vanilla enough in their profile for your eyes to glaze over scanning them.

Early Agitators

But that’s not the scary part. We saw their obvious “plants” at antiwar demonstrations, late 60s—early 70s. They’d be short-haired and dressed in trench coats…at an antiwar rally surrounded by others sporting patches, jeans, head bands, tea shirts, blue work shirts, and so on. Hey, this was the Nixon era—they were anything but slick in the beginning…not thinking they would have to be; and with the assumption that any that didn’t agree with their obvious rightness must be idiots.

Anyway, these crude and obvious “plants”—government paid agitators—would get into the middle of groups at particularly tense times  and do things to rally the crowd to violence, encouraging everyone to overreact and “storm” something or other. Now this was at an ANTIWAR peace rally, a peaceful demonstration, which everyone knew would fail if there were any violence because the violence would become the news and the point we had gathered for would be discredited. We were NOT stupid.

So these agitators whose job it was to get us to do something that would discredit us and thus serve the ends of the War, would be trying to get us to come along and join with him, taunting us to “push through the police line” or whatever. Everyone around would be looking at these guys and turning away. We’d be shaking our heads and turning to each other knowingly, motioning to each other to “back away, stay away from this guy, don’t listen, he’s one of THEM.” So, quite common in those days, it was, I say (becoming Yoda, for some unknown reason ).

Some Things We’ll Never Know

But what I’m worried about is not so much what they did in the past or what is being reported that the Overseers are doing now in spying on U.S. citizens’ internet relationships. What I’m most angered, scared, terrified, saddened, depressed, and riled about is what these corporate matrix-weavers are doing that is beyond the law—the wiretapping, national electronic monitoring—y’know the kinds of things that Vader-Cheney-Gonzalez just LOVED.  Now THAT’s what I’d like someone to find out and report to us. But, dream on, I say to me. We all know their best spying/infiltration is so good that it will not see the light of day ever, not even for the history books.

So, I say, “Good-bye, privacy. Hello 1984…again.”

This Demon Weltanschauung

Yea, I looked right into the face of that prick, that demon who is so taking us all down. Fully aware was I of his monstrous pervasiveness and control and the incredible advancement in the “polish” of his mind-soul designing. I knew the world was seeing unprecedented heights of accomplishment in the art of what had once been called, a term seeming so crude now, “brainwashing.” Even “propaganda” is too pedestrian a term to use for the tools that are in use, which go so far beyond that in degree and variety and currently are orchestrated with such finesse and slickness—again like nothing ever known.

Mordor-Horrible, Matrix-Seamless Nightmare

Spectacularly horrible, yet perfectly understandable is the coming into form of this demon Weltanschauung. You see, for, having gathered over 90% of the world’s wealth into “his” greedy hands, there’s little world intelligentsia or brute resources that are not sucking on “his” tits and making real “his” Mordor horrible, Matrix seamless nightmare…out of greed, terror, blackmail, or one or combinations of many other tools of compliance.

Soul-Stealing, Enlightenment-Lobotomizing

Such is “his” success—that soul-stealing, enlightenment-lobotomizing demon, “1984″—that a good percentage of Americans are mindlessly lock stepping behind “his” every move. They’ve been newly birthed into politics and like freshly hatched baby ducklings are hypnotically bonded to their Monster Corporate Mommie, ready to tie tea bags to their bodies and attack and threaten with violence the interests that are working to preserve their lives and health, blind even to the hundreds of thousands of deaths of people like them, some whom they even knew, that were caused by the very people and moneyed interests that are leading their attack.

Vision-Adjusted From Birth

As for the rest of Americans, well almost all of the rest are vision adjusted from birth to doubt the evidence of their eyes or any of their senses. So they can see a zapruder film, watch a president shot by a driver, and yet when told that one magic bullet from a rifle far away was what took a life they can thank the authorities for being more perceptive than them.

They can watch the TV live for hours and see the Twin Towers come down demolition-style and even see the precise puffs of smoke ringing various floors and hear the pops of the explosives set there. They can hear the news anchors, reporters, fire and police personnel on the scene all remarking on the the puffs of smoke and the precision demolition. Yet a day later they can be told that their own eyes lied, and the reports of the anchors and people on the scene were confused and hysterical, despite their memory of that not being so. And yet they can again doubt their own perceptions, not even questioning why those many hours of footage are never broadcast again.

Omnipresent Yet Invisible

So the demon monster 1984 is now omnipresent yet invisible, like some kind of demon god. And this enslaver has slipped in to history, time, America, and the world, and has been sowing our realities through media concoctions and distractions for decades. But “his” entrance and presence—“he” being as invisible and yet real as the air you breathe—has gone unnoticed by all but a very, very, tiny few.

Hello, 1984…

But I looked straight at “him”…and I said to this darkness, 1984, who had crept in unseen but was now firmly entrenched and increasingly bloated with hideous power:

I see, 1984, that you’re more brazen about showing yourself these days. But then you know that nobody cares, nobody’s listening, and you’ve got everyone so scared of some made up “others” (dare not say the word) that they’ll cling to you as the only support they know.

But I’ve seen into your future, Cocky-Face.  I even uploaded a lecture about you last year. It is an hour long or so audio clip called  “Message in a Bottle, Part 1.”  In one part of it, near the beginning, I speak as if I am  a “Wolf Blitzer” of the future. And in his monologue, he lays out, on air, the media plan for total brainwashing to his listeners after it has succeeded so successfully that his network is trying an experiment to test their power of total mind control by allowing Wolf to tell the entire story of brainwashing, lies, and untruths put upon the masses by a controlled media, even lets in the masses on the future plans of further expansion of control over individual minds and souls, describing the plan to give everyone wonderful memories of their personal past and eradication of the actual events of people’s lives that’ll be so real, you’ll actually believe you’re having a wonderful life, and so on. By now the Media is so confident of its total control it even lets the populace in on the proof they’re expecting, of this total control:  They’re going to tell the whole truth for one day of the way everyone’s reality has been made up and the real reality blotted out. And then the next day and from then, the Network is going to deny that information or even that day ever happened, especially not the way it did. And they will deny everything they said in that day of truth, and they will adjust all the records. So the truth will have been spoken. But like that tree dropping in the forest, once the Media says you didn’t hear it fall, you’ll forget that you did, and never give it a second thought. The Media’s slogan about their experimental day of “spilling the beans”: “So tune into our once-in-a-lifetime daylong documentary TOMORROW on LNN; You DON’T want to miss it!!  You’re SURE to FORGET IT.”  [Footnote 1]

But getting back to you, Your 1984-ness…or whatever the fuck you are. I know that you can screw and hurt me in any number of ways at will. But what you don’t know is that “I’ll throw my body on the banana crater to keep it from exploding. What’s one life, when a paradigm shift is at stake?”  [Footnote 2]

I also don’t have any false hope, not for in my lifetime. But I’m not the only one recording these things digitally for some future generation or alien race or deux ex machina—actually, my chips are on the last one as the most likely…seriously—with the cajoonies and strength to serve you your proper karmuppance.

For I know something that you don’t. That as bad as it is for the ordinary folks OF THE WORLD, and in America, the only true non-changing thing is CHANGE!

So control all you want, mofo’s. Keep yourself hidden. Unless you’re able to remove the divinity from everyone…impossible since there is no such thing as something that is not inherently divine, so where would you remove it TO?…then there will be people waking up from their trances over and over and sneaking out of the Matrix to post alerts about what they saw going on behind the screen. We’ve noticed how many of them came clean in tell-all books about the Bush Administration both during and after his ignoble retreat.

I KNOW, that the biggest secrets you are keeping the tightest screws on. Hell, every time I even sideways mention the one biggest atrocity I know that you committed  readers are too afraid to recommend it, retweet it, comment on it, and they’ve shied away from me a bit since because of it, I think.

How would I know that? Hell, even I WAS afraid to post it because of you, and EVEN I would have held back on recommending it, et cetera, let alone having my name associated with…well, actually…me.

And the most important and damning evidence I know I’m afraid to post anywhere, recommend anywhere, associate my name with.

So, I deal with fear and hold back. And then my experience and therefore knowing of the ultimate perfection of all and the unbelievable goodness of God calms me. Then my courage wrought in my knowing of my dharmic obligation returns.

So, scare me you do, “1984,” but I know something that you will never know—blind as you are to Truth, seeing only money and profits, and they being your gods. I know that there is more to life and consciousness than this fleeting dance of physical form. I know that I cannot die, really, though my body can disappear from your eyes at any moment….

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Matrix vs. Truth-Love

Footnote

1.  See, “Freedom Repealed” on this site.

2.  For one’s sanity, a farcical, lighter take on all this:

{bananas}

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Matrix vs Truth-Love

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http://twitter.com/sillymickel

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Totalitarianism Comes to the U.S.

American Dictatorship

Nations Need Therapy Too!

To avoid our next dictatorship

This chapter addresses why America still MUST have a thorough truth commission of the Bush-Cheney crimes: For how can we avoid repeating history if it is hidden from us? [continued after video and audio links below]

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“8 YEARS”

He Said, “I Am the Decider.” How Could We Know the Idiot King Meant “Dictator”?

This is an artistic rendition of feelings swirling around myself and my fellow Americans, living for eight long years under what a number of scholars have officially determined was—as meeting all the criteria necessary to categorize and as characterized by all the elements by which one defines it—the “dictatorship” of so-called President George W. Bush, from the years 2001 through 2009.

Music in “8 Years” – “Dear Mr. President” – written & performed by Pink, (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)
“In the Arms of the Angels” – written and performed by Sarah McLachlan (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)

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Totalitarianism in the US: Nations Need Therapy Too!

This is a reading of my original commentary on “8 Years” (above). I titled it, “To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?” It contains the jist of what is written here. To hear my reading of this post, click on the link above to the audio site or the one below to the audio player here. 

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=swmqvvgqcj
Image of To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?

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TRUTH – Commentary on the Video “8 Years”

It is just as important for a society to uncover its repressed truth in order to heal as it is for a person.

And just as on the individual level, if we continue to deny and refuse to let our truth rise up to heal us we are driven to continually re-enact it over and over despite our best efforts not to, so also on the level of the nation or society, if these truths are not faced by our country…God help us.

For just as Hitler wasn’t the last fascist totalitarian dictator…look to the regime currently in North Korea, China, and woefully too many nations in Africa and the Middle East; we had the Soviet Union, Cambodia…George W. Bush won’t be the first and only dictator America will ever have…. He will just be the first….

A Warning

I first wrote this during Obama’s first year in office. I am sad to say it proved prophetic, as ever since the election of 2010…and I argue it is because Obama failed to address the issues I talk about below…we have seen increasing totalitarian-style fanaticism by Republicans and the unfortunate codification of Bush’s totalitarian inroads…denial of habeas corpus, torture, extraordinary rendition, repression of freedom of speech as in the reactions to wikileaks, especially the torture and incarceration without trial of Bradley Manning, and more…by President Obama.  [continued after video]

So in this part you may better understand why current developments have come about, though they could have been prevented if there had been enough gumption, as well as what still is needed—sooner or later—or else we are in for ever more, and greater and expanding, tragedies in terms of the loss of democracy and liberty. So what follow is a warning as well.

A Prophecy

I had written that in pondering this commentary I began to realize some important and overlooked truths concerning one of the issues our government is facing currently. As Obama, Pelosi, Leahy, the Republicans, and all the media struggle over the issue of having a truth commission to look into possible illegalities committed by Bush-Cheney, I was flooded with one of those, truly, obvious truths, the common sense kind, that gets lost in the complexities of personalities and politics.  [continued after video]

For just as on the individual level, as in therapy, hidden TRUTH must be uncovered, faced, dealt with, and ONLY THEN put behind oneself; so also must society uncover its hidden truths or it will be sick. And by sick, I mean the same thing that Santayana meant when he said “A society that does not remember its history is doomed to repeat it.”

So far, nothing big there. Then it hit me: But if history is not known, how can one help but repeat it? In the current situation, if we DO NOT look into what was done by Bush-Cheney during the 8 years in which, as the videos here and numerous scholars have determined, America had its first dictatorship, then we will not have a TRUE history of what happened. And if our history is not true, then it is fantasy, speculation, or propaganda.

In that situation, which is our current one, unless we have that truth commission, we “are doomed to repeat it.” Repeat what? DICTATORSHIP. And the even sadder thing is that when we fail to learn from our past experience, whether as individuals or societies or nations, when it repeats, it repeats in a bigger form, carrying more impact, force, devastation … more dire consequences.

We have numerous historical examples of this pattern in recent history alone–on both sides. When Germany, South Africa, and Japan faced and dealt with the horribles of their recent past…after WWII for Germany and Japan; after the end of apartheid for South Africa…they went forward and prospered tremendously, even phenomenally.

Dire Consequences if a Society’s History is not Accurate

Your History Must Be a True One

Everyone quotes Santayana on history repeating. How then can no one seem to make the connection that your history has to be TRUE HISTORY not a web of lies hiding deep and festering wrongs. So it is just as important for nations and societies to uncover its repressed truth, in order to heal, as it is for the Individual.  [continued after video]

And just as on the individual level, if our nation — specifically right now our government — continues to deny, refuses to let our truth rise up to heal us, or simply, as Obama has so far done, look the other way on the grounds that there are more important things to deal with, well then as a nation — just as individuals, we are driven to continually re-enact our biggest mistakes over and over despite our best efforts not to — so also on the level of the nation or society, we will fix a problem only to see it rise up again during the next election cycle.

In fact, it is exactly that lack of facing the truth that has led to the current global economic implosion, started here in the U.S. Reaganomics caused that; we are finally admitting on our talk shows. Yet we had twelve years of Reaganomics from 1981 through 1992. And during that time, we saw how effective it was: It not only almost quadrupled the national debt during the twelve years of Reagan and Bush, Sr., it not only severely unbalanced the budget, but it caused a recession so important that it led to Clinton winning the Presidency on the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Despite the fact the Clinton reversed that downswing dramatically by REVERSING Reaganomics; and despite the fact that his policies helped create one of the most prosperous decades in recent history, even leaving a surplus for the next administration, not a peep was heard about the disastrous experiment Reaganomics turned out to be.

Apparently our country was not about to call Reagan wrong at that time. Too many idiots felt that somehow we had to treat him like a nice Grandad and not say anything unseemly, regardless of how the rest of the country would fare. I fear there were more insidious reasons than that for not broadcasting what we had learned, at such a cost.

And it was just that lack of truth-telling of the obvious, so as not to smear Reagan, though his economics was a horrible failure and it had been proven to be so, that allowed Bush to come in and go about doing Reagan’s mistake, only doing it several powers greater and doing it sooner. Bush came in and gave the budget surplus to the wealthy, without a peep from any in the media or any outrage on the part of Americans, most of whom had suffered through the recession only a decade earlier. {pic on Congress repeating same mistake…insanity}

But the average American would not know economics like the experts, the media, and the government. So it was tragic to refuse to point out that Bush’s ideas had already been tried by Reagan and his father with horrible consequences. Everyone kept quiet and suppressed the knowledge of their own experience.

What happened? We “were doomed to repeat it.” Only karma seems to have a played a part because we are not just repeating it. We are being punished severely with one of the worst economic downturns in America’s history. And it seems to me we deserve it because obviously the lesser medicine did not teach Americans and their media and leaders a damn thing. But with this one: Oh, well, NOW, we are hearing that trickle-down Reaganomics started it all. So if we are too stupid to learn from a mistake, that mistake will come back bigger and bigger until we wake up and realize that the path we are on is not working.

Now this is very important, why?

Because scholars have determined that in studying the actions of Bush-Cheney, America, for the first time in its history, went into a dictatorship, meaning that their policies, which involved tossing out the Constitution, and pillar-by-pillar removing the foundations of our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy, including even the right to have a vote that will be counted, or more specifically, will be counted in favor of the person you voted for, not counted toward the opponent. Consider that the ones with expertise in poring over all the documents and data have determined that we had a smokescreen of democracy and freedom talk, but that actually we were living in a dictatorship.

There are scholars galore putting out books delineating the ways in which our Executive Branch acted as literal traitors, and worse, to America, and list the grounds upon which Bush and Cheney would be tried for murder, for starters, if they were anyone else in America.

If these truths are not faced by our country, God help us. For just as voodoo economics returned, with results many, many times worse than the first time; well, what can we imagine would happen if we don’t face the truth about the dictatorship of George W. Bush, the loss of rights and freedom and honest elections?

For one thing, consider how easily this dictator rose to power. Our supposed democracy didn’t stop him, like it is assumed democracy will. If we don’t take in that lesson, not only are we doomed to repeat these horrible eight years, but we are leaving a door wide open for the next one; and if you think you have to have concentration camps in order to see dictatorship, well, gee, just guess what you are going to get under the next American dictator.

And this will surely happen for it is simple common sense that anyone would understand if it were related to something in their commercial life. You don’t see farmers feeding the wrong kind of grain to their livestock more than one time, do you? Can you even imagine it? Then why would we think that we can ignore finding out what happened and fixing it in order to keep something worse than it from happening in the future when it comes to politics?

Is it that we think that as Americans we are immune from something so horrible? Then are we a nation of Pollyannas? And how many Katrinas, Iraqs, Vietnams, Bush-Cheneys, being rated at the bottom in health care among developed nations, having one of the shortest life expectancies among developed nations, having one of the worst educational systems, and having one of the lowest standards of livings among developed nations kinds of events is it going to take before people stop engaging in magical thinking, believing the things that pandering Republicans will tell them to hide these facts, instead of taking their truth from the experiences of their own lives?

I hope all Americans and our representatives will resist the tendency to run away from the unpleasant past and instead find ways, and there are plenty of easy ways, to turn and face the darkness behind us, so that we will not be forced to walk through an even blacker and more horrible darkness before us.

How Did I Do?

As you can see from the commentary above, which I wrote in 2009, I was predicting what is currently front-page news. For us to have hope, we must always hold to the idea that, given insight, there is always time to change our ways, to alter our course and thereby to correct where we have been wrong. This may or may not true. Still, I implore you to believe that our efforts to rectify matters are not futile, else we will insure that they are.

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Seven
American Fascism – Hello, 1984!
The New, “Improved” Fascism!

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“8 YEARS”

He Said, “I Am the Decider”; How Could We Know the Idiot King Meant “Dictator”

This is an artistic rendition of feelings swirling around myself and my fellow Americans, living for eight long years under what a number of scholars have officially determined was—as meeting all the criteria necessary to categorize and as characterized by all the elements by which one defines it—the “dictatorship” of so-called President George W. Bush, from the years 2001 through 2009.

Music in “8 Years” – “Dear Mr. President” – written & performed by Pink, (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)
“In the Arms of the Angels” – written and performed by Sarah McLachlan (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)

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Totalitarianism in the US: Nations Need Therapy Too!

This is a reading of my original commentary on “8 Years” (above). I titled it, “To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?” It contains the jist of what is written here. To hear my reading of this post, click on the link above to the audio site or the one below to the audio player here. 

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=swmqvvgqcj
Image of To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?

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Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Six
American Fascism – Hello, 1984!
The New, “Improved” Fascism!

Invite you to follow me on Twitter:

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Blue Meanies… Oh, Those Prankish Republicans!

Naked Republicans –
Blue Meanies Looking Foolish

Oh, Those Prankish Republicans

This follows from “Obvious Truths,” for those who are interested. This is called “Naked Republicans, Blue Meanies Fleeing or Foolish.” May 8, 2009…so maybe some of you seeing the news lately will know what I am talking about as what is going on currently is merely a continuation of what was started then, as I explain.

To start, this follows from how George W. Bush and Hank Paulson managed to get away scot free with their last-minute cleaning out of America’s cupboards—taking even the silver—and leaving America, and the world, closer to an actual doomsday within a generation or two at the most…leaving us closer to the end of all time than ever before….

Yea, I know… that made me feel real good too *sarcasm* … Happy thoughts…  [Continued below audio]

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Naked Republicans: Blue Meanies Looking Foolish –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this chapter. For the author’s reading of “Naked Republicans,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=ttgmmcbmjj
Image of Naked Republicans Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish by SillyMickel Adzema

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Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish

Ironically, however, by knee-capping all efforts we were put on a worse financial footing even than the already horrible financial footing caused by the war and the eight-years of massive Republican tax giveaways to the Filthy Rich that was already going on and was going to be left to Obama and America to take care of. So what they did with TARP at the very end of Bush’s reign took a very bad situation and turned it into the emergency that we’re experiencing…. Yea, that cheered me up to.

Ironically, however these Republicans-that-got-away by kneecapping all future efforts to steady ourselves made sure we would never forget them either. For the last-minute clean-out was an overreach of the most red-handed, leaving us far worse off than the already horrible financial footing they had left America on, which was the result of a long war and another eight years of massive Republican tax cuts to the filthy rich…following from the twelve years of the same during Reagan-Bush….

So much for Republicans being deficit hawks

So the Republican facade had come down as surely as the Berlin Wall had. However, leave it to Republicans to never let the facts get in the way of saying whatever lies they can dream up to support their benefactors, showing in this way their true servitude to those outside interests. Unfortunately for them, after their embarrassing rejection in 2008 these Republicans were not even allowed the dignity that the Communist hard-liners had when they were so openly shown to be wrong and were allowed to disappear from public life.

Cantor and Bonior with bogus Republican response to Obama’s first budget

They looked all the more ridiculous when they attempted some kind of reverse outrage at Obama for having been put in the position that, actually, their policies over the eight year’s of their governance with Bush put them.

But don’t cry for them. Because Republicans are extremely wanting when it comes to self-consciousness. It is impossible to imagine they they ever look at the “man in the mirror.” They are so other- and outside-oriented (towards money). Naturally it follows they are horrible at soul-searching or even looking inside to their conscience.

To keep this squarely on hard realities and not overreach, I am going against my gut and laying out that huge assumption—that they even have a conscience. Certainly, John Dean of Watergate fame was not facetious when he wrote about “conservatives without a conscience.” So that is the context of this new era.

Phil Donahue – the last pundit to espouse compassion

No. Republicans have ridiculed the inner life, any inner life, for many decades. They have been notoriously ripping into the prospect. Somehow they have convinced too many Americans—with their juvenile and effective substitute for reason—that is, ridicule, mocking, and shaming—that if you have compassion for others you are a “bleeding heart.” They have advanced a perspective that if you shed a tear during a presidential campaign, for example, you are weak, unstable.

If you attempt to raise yourself  above feeling and seek the Presidency as someone who would NOT put himself above the law (See how great the opposite idea has worked out during the eight years of the W…that is, we had someone who did put himself above the law)…. If you would attempt to show that you would follow the law no matter what your personal feelings and you would give a legal answer to a personal question about your wife…for those who aren’t as old as me, I’m talking about Dukakis…well, then you are a zombie and have no feelings.

Somehow Republicans had convinced Americans it is better to be irrational and murderous for the sake of one’s family and to shred the Constitution and act dictatorially as a president than to aspire to deal with one’s feelings personally and abide by the same laws as everyone else so that Americans could still have the sense that there is still some democracy left in this country. Like I said, this was Dukakis’s approach in the first campaign we saw of a Bush for president. And somehow America decided it wanted a tough-guy, Bush, rather have than a rational person, Dukakis. That is strange.

Anyway, my point is that the Republicans disability in the region of the heart, has left them completely vulnerable to making total fools out of themselves.  The polls are showing they are not believed anymore. But that is not the whole truth, which is most Americans just do not think them credible when, after eight years of robbing Americans blind and creating the biggest and most punishing economic debacle in almost a century, it would be discovered the only progress or benefit of all that was to create a brand new class status in America. It was widely seen that Rich-publicans major accomplishment under Bush was the rising up of an entire new level of moneyed power which is above the very, very rich and which is so far removed from normal Americans the cable documentaries to report on it have struggled with any kind of normal sounding name for this class. Lacking even an acceptable euphemism the reporting  on this very very very very very very very very rich was forced into the obvious, calling this new class the “filthy rich.” That was the actual name of a documentary, “The Filthy Rich.” So don’t blame me folks, I didn’t make up the term.

So immediately after the end of Bush’s term and after the Bush-Paulson-”filthy rich” caper that cleaned out the Treasury and nearly eliminated Obama’s hopes for economic justice once he became President, they looked ridiculous when they turned right (around) and proclaimed as foolhardy, unworkable, and unnecessary Obama’s attempts to save the economy by funneling money to the actual people who do create wealth in America. These ordinary folks actually create the wealth in that they work for a living, not suck off others’ wealth. They actually pay taxes back to the government when they work…again in contrast to those other people we are talking about. And they actually create jobs because, not being “filthy rich,” they have not had the lives of ease of Bush’s Republicans and his “filthy rich” constituency. So when they get some money, however little it is, they maximize it; they do not feel like they have the privilege to blow it.

I mentioned Bush’s “filthy rich” constituency for certainly his administration was not a government run for the benefit of any but that new aspiring American royalty, those faceless people inhabiting that tiny slice of status above all the rest of us yet controlling  more than sixty percent of all America’s wealth.

The Republicans began embarrassing themselves within a few weeks of the outcome of the 2008 election by completely reversing their rhetoric soooo quickly. They had no trouble doing this because they are not ones taking to anything smacking of any namby-pamby “psychobabble” so they do not have a clue, and therefore no shame, about the way they are being perceived. This blind-sightedness is their way of covering up, to themselves as well as others, not only the fact that they are disabled in not having a heart but also the fact they have not the faintest glimmer of what an inner realization, understanding of one self, or even an insight is.   So they could not help but expose themselves and their personal inadequacies before the majority of Americans who have had enough classes in the school of hard knocks as to have had to learn a few things about themselves and to have become at least a little savvy about human motivations and the hidden agendas of others. Because of their confrontations with the hard realities of life, ordinary folks are able to see through at least the most obvious of the dishonest ploys or self-serving lies of the people around who might occasionally resort to that.  So they were able to see these “emperors” sans clothing and their respect for Republicans turned toward pity. Therein we have our context.

Specifically we have these Rich-publicans…at this point now shortly into Obama’s term and after having blown all that money at their turn…squealing about big spending Democrats! Keep in mind this was only weeks from the ending of their dominance of government which had them, instead, opt for…well, not free spending…like they say “free spending Democrats”…but blatant and free stealing , with the obvious consequence of breaking the bank—the Treasury—in their all-consuming greed.

So, Boehner and Cantor, as Republican minority leader and Republican whip, went squealing and setting the squealing chorus going and keeping it high-pitched and ongoing about the very results of their own actions just previous, which added to the transparency of the shame they were displaying to … the world!  For, tragic but funny enough…and they so deserving of being laughed at…what we all saw was a small bunch of squealers who were obviously knowing of their guilt over the years and the suffering , immense, over the years they caused. They could not help but be keenly aware of the way they had enriched themselves and their circles of cohorts (the “filthies”). So rather than…. Christ, their behavior was the kind of thing you are able to see through at least by the time you make it into junior high! They opted to flaunt their shame and hypocrisy…”you lie”–Joe Wilson…rather than stand idly by. Undoubtedly they knew if they respectfully retreated at all, it would leave the center of the circle open to be filled with nonguilty voices. And these voices they knew would circle in increasingly on them and their despicable actions in the not too long ago.  So, terrified their silence would leave them naked and exposed to the truth…culpable, perhaps criminal…they opted for tactics of the most, let us say…well,unsavvy and unslick are two words that would apply and would be kinder than they deserve.  It didn’t take Shakespeare to see through their juvenile, laughable fakery and lies, which they then were stuck with and trapped inside of. And this caused them only to increase their proclamations to higher and higher levels of—hilarity for the rest of us—inane, embarrassing  and telltale inanity for them.  [continued after video]

True Deceivers

It didn’t take a Freud to see this tactic. In the common way of thinking of this Republican ploy–not the psychological way…like Freud–people say the best defense is a good offense. Others might say they made spectacles of themselves caught up in the shame and fear of being caught in their criminality if it were ever to come out what they had done under Bush. So, overburdened this way with anxiety, they could not then think with any rationality, nor even come up with any smooth or artful cover-ups. 

But America is not as averse to understanding other humans as these Republicans wish they would be. For a long time they could get away with their habitual lying, and they forgot that things had changed. Remember how McCain was brought down by his lying during the campaign against Obama in much harsher fashion than any of his predecessors?  He wasn’t a bigger bald-faced liar. No, he was just as big. But he ran in an era that had seen a rapid increase in technology, including the sort that allowed the production of ever cheaper and smaller little cameras without film, with immediate recall and which also recorded video, all from a tiny box. 

So, McCain, being like most Republicans out of touch with the waves on which the normal folks must surf or at least move, also made a laughingstock out of himself…remember this? He time and again and on stages small as well as grand (Meet the Press, for example) adamantly denied ever saying exact wording that, sure enough, the moderator would produce in video showing him, plain as day and exactly, saying and meaning.  So it was really rough going for all Republicans whose political skills all ran in the direction of their ability to lie and deceive while hiding their true agenda.

No, technology hasn’t been kind to liars.

And they had been so successful over the last few decades, half century that in the last fifty-eight years prior to Obama’s win, Democrats had held the Presidency for only sixteen of them. Indeed until Clinton managed to prevail for eight years, it had been a measly eight years out of forty-two. 

So, many Republicans had become reliant on deception. Hell, perhaps they became Republicans for that reason: They could apparently seek office with even the sleaziest, most criminal, or most selfish of reasons, but they would be surrounded by a sea of true deceivers–liars who made sport, game, and a perfection about that that.

Just ask them. As even McCain was accused by Bush in South Carolina of fathering a black child and came to the obvious conclusion that at least Bush was a big liar and deceiver and so on. Unfortunately that did not stop McCain from doing the same kinds of things. That’s the tragedy there. But that’s Republicans for you. I can’t understand them.

So, that’s the history, the thrust, and the wind behind them, as decade after decade, they turned truth on its head and got away with it.  Indeed, they were able to make American heroes out of the best in that art—Reagan the penultimate example. And in doing so they aided their cause of confusing Americans about truth. America’s mind became seriously muddled through Republicans getting away with blatantly and self-servingly turning white into black. Just add a little anti-abortion or a little evangelical sounding talk and they were able to come across to some as as white as the proverbial driven snow.

But things change.  I mentioned the technology as helping this along.  But how can anyone forget eight solid years of Bush-lies.  More than the lies:  How could anyone forget all the suffering caused by those lies!  No, people were getting harder and harder to lie to.

But when, being a Republican, that is the only tool, the only political skill, the only reason you are even a politician in the first place… well, though they might know that there has been a change in people’s abilities to see through them, still, skunks can not change their stripes, but funnier still is the stench they can’t cover up. 

Imagine that, and you’ve got an idea of how they appeared, how funny, how stupid, how much appearing to be the obvious fools, liars, self-interested, uncaring of the public interest, the Constitution, or anything that they they’d ever espoused, and which for most Democrats would be their actual reason for being in office…as it should be for all politicians in our democracy.

So, let’s take a little gander back at the fun of, no, not yester-year, actually not so long ago.… And would you believe it?!  I don’t believe they are going to allow themselves to realize how foolish they are appearing.  Look, if ya got no clothes, you may have an inkling at times that people are laughing at your foolish, saggy hide, but, well, YA GOT NO CLOTHES!!

So, a little fun, and, then, too, for the record:

I won’t go into the stupid things that Boehner and Cantor and the other bewildered fools said and that were laid out one after the other, the pundits almost chuckling at the spectacle as they, well, being reporters, they HAD to report on this idiotic behavior.

Basically, these Republicans are obviously the guys who blew all that money there at the beginning of their control. And even at the end, just a month or so earlier, they had wrangled the largest single payout in American history by extortive means. And then there you see them saying Democrats are spending too much money…. And, for what are they spending? The Dems are criticized for wanting to put money into the hands of people who might actually make jobs and could really use it…. Wow.

And but for all but them this is obvious and unseemly. Shameful. But don’t feel too sorry for them. Like I said, they have no capacity for insight. They may even shed a tear on occasion, giving you the impression they have a heart; but, no, not at all, none at all, absolutely NO insight into themselves. Let’s see…. Put this another way…NO self-awareness. 

For them it is, “Hell, where’s the time for that psycho blather when there are endless high wire games of swindle, intrigue, and self-interest to attend to!” And all of it with the added wrinkle of it having to be totally lied about. They are become consummate pretenders, precision actors. And of what would seem to be the hardest acting to pull off. Oh, lots of people could pull it off for a moment, a spell. A scene, let us say. But they have to pull off for a lifetime (!) that they are…check this out…that they are the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they really are. 

They have to boldly pretend in defiance of every single nerve and thought that comprises them and is obsessing every second how to get a personal advantage out of every, every little thing. Against that they have to appear they are “serving” the interests of the nation. Or, caught in that lie, well, it’s their “constituents” they are serving…

Though, think about it now, just who exactly lives in a district whose constituents want you to enrich yourself? Or who has constituents who are ALL, or even predominantly, so wealthy it enriches them as well? What kind of constituent could there be who would want for you to have power or advantage of whatever secret sort that is the object of your game or who would want you to work to benefit those “filthy rich” folks I was talking about earlier which…and this is match, point, game, no question!…which boon for them is achieved completely at their expense!

What kind of people would want that? What constituent would like seeing the already-haves having more at the expense of their having to accept lower wages, lower standards of living…having to worry about their not being able to afford health care and having to live the rest of their life with the knowledge that but for that unneeded manna on the filthy rich their child would be alive? Or who would want knowing that a war that cost them a child, and much else, was made up to distract and enrich certain corporations and not for your protection or benefit at all? What kind of constituents are like that? Who has constituents who are like that?

Or, just simply, who lives in a district where your actions increase virtuallyall of the struggles of their lives so that you might slavishly carry out the wishes of the hidden puppeteers who have paid for your seat, bought your election for you, and so on, and who you wish to get ever closer to, in the thought  that sucking up enough you too can suck yourself, too, right up and through and into the tiny sliver class of the filthy rich?

So, that ploy, you know, goes like,

I have to screw all you Americans because the people in my district basically aren’t like real people and so the increased burden added to life’s struggle by my actions, well…

and here’s when the “heckuva job, brownie” really comes splattering back out from the fan

…because WE are AMERICANS, who’ve NEVER SHIRKED OUR RESPONSIBILITIES, BUCKLED UNDER A BURDEN, RUN AWAY FROM A FIGHT.  No, WE are AMERICANS!

And the smell of that bodily waste…well that’s a stench that even that skunk would run from.

I mean, say I’m in that district that person is talking about. Or the person who is representing that district is running for president and is showing me what the years with him leading our country are going to be like. Like I’m going to go…ok, because of course he’s right and I and all the rest of us in the district are the most blitheringly idiotic humans ever spawned…so we’re going,

Wow, yea. You’ve just made me feel so proud, you’re wonderful.  This being an American is so great, how fortunate that I am one.  Why, now I see, when you’re an American, you get to have stren…no, kind of like powers, Superman like powers. 

Yea, that’s the ticket.  ’s gonna be so fucking great having McCain as President, what a life I’ll live!  I’ll go to war but will kill multitudes and never get a scratch!  And, well, who gives a shit if this guy does everything the exact opposite of what would help improve the economy and make jobs. 

Damn, that don’t matter.  I’m like Superman!  I could probably work ten jobs; as he said, y’know, “we never shirk,  we never run away from a fight,  we will shoulder all responsibilities ,and never buckle under a burden.” So since I’m superman, as he’s pointed out,  that’s not going to be a problem for me, I could probably work ten jobs.

But if there weren’t any jobs, I wouldn’t even starve.  Thank God I’m a freaking American, how weak those sappy European weaklings who…heh!…have to eat to survive. 

Ha!  This is going to be absolutely such fun with McCain as president:  I’m going to Fight! I’m going to bear heavy burdens, I’m going to have responsibilities that never let up.  I’m not going to make much money…them “filthy rich” sorts, well they’re the ones that care about that.  Whereas me, because of this incredibly wise and pandering McCain (or Bush, Dole, Romney, Bauchman, Pierce… go ahead, any Republican name will work perfectly), I’m gonna get to have superpowers. 

Oh, how dumb, I just realized how dumb that sounded,.. Sorry, my bad, I’ll get this right… No, of course I’m not gonna GET superpowers, just because of this politician, however good, kind, wise, and caring of me.  Of course not.  He can’t GIVE me any such thing. 

But, I’m so alive and happy and grateful because, well, of course you see, it’s so obvious, HE’s opened my eyes to the fact that, well I’m an AMERICAN  AND THAT MEANS THIS INCREDIBLE GIFT, Gol Dang, thank you, Lord, and forgive me for not noticing the obvious: 

That I ALWAYS had these super powers.  How wonderful to be awake.  I’ll try my best to forget how stupid I was to have not realized it myself…ever…my whole life long.

OK, enough of that.  No, things are changing.  I don’t really know how these self-serving phonies, these pretenders, these highest wire liars, perfecting, ever more precisely, their deceptive skills, can continue the mass fooling of people they need to do.

So, there they are, wind no longer at their back but, like salmon, only knowing one thing one direction. And the only thing they know, stumbling and mucking their way forward, are those invisible strings pulling the same way, pushing them now into the wind! No matter how the winds have changed, they cannot change course. For they never got to set it in the first place. 

And so, in tandem they march, no matter how foolish they appear stumbling into the head winds, and falling down in their words–their words no longer seeming so artful as they go on and on about having to save the American workers and the middle class as they hand over, so fast it lookin like a holdup, to rich thick bankers the hugest sums ever dispensed by Congress. And this most quickly. And this outflow not to end cancer, achieve world peace, give solar energy to everybody in America. But, no. Rather this effusion into the hands of a jet-owning billionaire who is later going to brag how his bank is not going to give any of that money to people needing loans, homes, autos. No, they are going to store it away as it will increase their corporation’s profitability. And when the quarterly earnings come out, hell, they’re going to look great, their stock will go up… .more money, more money… and in the meantime, they’re going to triple the interest rates of those who already have loans with them…more money, more money, more money, feel like dancin…more money…like singin.

Well, believe me, they did that. It happened to me and virtually everyone I knew.

Well anyway these naked squeaky voiced Republicans…it’s a  blessing that they have no self-perception really…idiotically crumbled before that gang of the “filthy rich.” And, like I said it was a damn good thing for them they have no shame either when these bankers did not even cover up or hide…well not much anyway…the fact that they made out like bandits and they had no intention of having that money be anything but for feathering their nest.  Indeed, it was all the more suspicious since such a huge calamity was predicted if the money wasn’t forked over. I mean,  the Democrats were told it was going to be a “worldwide economic breakdown.” So then when the bulk of the money was not used to help the situation at all, and…well…we’re still all here….  Wow, it really looks like it was quite the con job, I’m afraid to say.  

And so these stumbling over their feet and their tongues Republicans…well, Obama is in office and a few weeks go by and now what?

What’s this?  They’re claiming that they’re standing straighter now. How’s that? Well, to a person, no one of them voted for the stimulus. Keep in mind that money was to go toward serving the entire economy, even the world economy. And both would of course serve to reverse the suffering and eventually go in the direction of easing the burden of all. Well almost all. After all the filthy rich bunch…well, it don’t help them.  You have money going into the hands of ordinary folks and well, that’s not money that they can steal from the government now is it.

So, there you see these Rich-publicans, talking as if they’re not absolutely exposed and naked in everything they say to you and me and the cab driver, butcher, computer nerd, and all the rest of the kind of people you actually see walking about in this world and in its cities. By the way, as for their “people,” where the hell do these faceless “filthy rich” live, anyway? Do they walk? Fly? Are they in fact alien beings? Superior ones, maybe? Well at least then it would have SOME kind of sense to it. 

But no, they are so pathetically proud, the Republicans, that they stuck together to “do a Hoover” and to screw over ordinary Americans. Do they really think we really believe them when they burden us, when they take the rug out from beneath us when we think we might be getting ahead, and so on? And then they call us Americans who can bear any burden, shoulder any blah, blah, blah, fight this, carry that, blah, blah, blah.

Ok? Now, there was that stimulus package and there was all the Republicans in the house, not one of them voted for it. And they’re saying they’re all helping us all out. Well, sometimes it’s funny…sometimes it’s just sad. but they made fools out of themselves, that’s one thing.

I mean were there EVER any people so pathetically lacking in self-esteem that such claptrap about where they were born actually made them grateful to the politician, who just added another, well not brick to their load, let’s say more like he just busted their truck with the load and now they are going to have to start all over again.

Ok, so now let’s say 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 mymoney 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.  You screw me over and then tell me I’m a better person than you? that’s… eyaaaah!

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 for many many years. Thanks a lot! In fact I may never own a home again.

Thanks for the radical change in my life that I wasn’t expecting.  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, uh, 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 needChristmas.  We can take care of ourselves.”

I hear you saying…

 ”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 us, 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. Thought so. 

“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.”

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Six
American Dictatorship

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Naked Republicans: Blue Meanies Looking Foolish –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. For the author’s reading of “Blue Meanies,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=ttgmmcbmjj
Image of Naked Republicans Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Six
American Dictatorship

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Horse Sense, Sisyphus Rests

Culture War, Part Ten: Time Capsule, Part Three

Bringing Some Horse Sense to Bear

Just at this point, the Mr. Ed chart markings of the DOW began that nodding, as if to say,

“I’m weary of being artificially propped up, Wil-ber!  I just want to lie down, to let my head hang low, to rest, to not have to confirm self-serving theories of rich people, using their wealth to make the biased and twisted thinking of their underlings to be sounded endlessly above the din of the moaning masses who year after year see their costs going up, wages stagnating, and their efforts, doubled, tripled, and beyond without being able to get their heads above it. You see, Wilber, I’m tired of doing your bidding for reasons bigger, I think much bigger, than just it being wrong and that this thievery perpetrated on the helpless is more feudal than economic, despite the big smokescreen of the god of capitalism or the supposed ‘free market.’

“No, Wil-ber. And no matter how funny it might seem to you and your friends…this pulling off of a prank, once again, of stealing from the poor, as you would see it, just a hilarious juvenile prank, like locking up a freshman in his own locker. Yes, I can hear you laughing, but as much as I think that cruel it is still not the really big reason I’m rebelling.

“You see, Wilber, what’s been done again is so much exactly as it’s always been; no matter the talk of democracy or progress. It might as well be a time of kings and nobles, or any time or place in the past. There have always been “strong men” or a “strong man” at the center of human suffering. This story is the same old story of the rich making up rules to suit themselves that has been going on ever since humans stopped wandering and began living in stable groupings allowing some men to gather more things about them than others. For when your kind were nomads and gatherers—more gypsy-like and free-spirited and trusting in the invisible forces to be kind and to provide whatever one really needed…I’m saying that as wanderers and nomads no one of your kind wanted to “own” very much for it then had to be carried ever after, hardly worth the burden. Much more like the other beings on this globe, like my own kind, you were then. 

“But then there was that fear that came over your species, unlike anything ever before seen among the rest of us creatures of God. A fear of uncertainty, quite strange. For we think it joyful to not know what the future will bring, and believing in higher forces that really ARE good and loving, we expect to be loved and blessed and gifted with whatever fate the future brings, knowing there is nothing that is not a product of that consciousness of All, which is both good, for All, and perfect, beyond what mere creatures can know in the moment. So we are happy with our lot, never understanding why your kind chose to forgo the glorious, blessed lives you had at one time:

“There was in the beginning such a closeness with what you call divinity that we saw you happy and playful as little babies when Mama plays peek-a-boo behind a towel or handkerchief. Even you know how the little child is alternately a little distressed—where did Mama go? And then when Mama reappears from behind the veil, smiling, loving, happy, and saying “peek-a-boo, I love you,” why the squeals of happiness are the greater for having been fooled into thinking something distressing was happening but wasn’t.“

“That is the way your kind…we have observed for as long as we were aware of your kind…that is the way we have seen your mamas teach their children that mama will always be there, even when she seems not to be. And this learning is precious to the child, for it gives the baby a foundation of certainty that love is around even when not seen.

“And isn’t it obvious that it was a teaching meant to be about more than the protection given by mothers. Wilber, Wil-ber, that learning was so much like the way we learn, falling down but finding there is always love around and that we will be up again and back in the mix, if we just let the many blessednesses around us come to give us what’s necessary, always, and we know there can be only one source for that constant love and attention, a spirit of love and perfection, always on our side, teaching and guiding and leading us, often in spite of ourselves! For like Mama, it knows the truth, and we do not. So we trust it. This loving Perfection Spirit we don’t see with our eyes but feel in our muscles and heart.

“But not your kind. Why, we’ve observed with increasing astonishment as little by little and then more and more, in dribs and drabs, your kind forgot the joy of the freedom that can only be felt in the simplicity of owning little, and therefore the complete trust that, ever were one to throw oneself over a cliff, we would be caught and risen up by invisible hands, if it were not part of the perfection and goodness of the Thing As a Whole that we should suffer and die at that moment.

“So sad. I hear your kind saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Well you have no idea what a knock down, roll on your belly howler that is for us to hear. I mean, this species, humans, ha! That is seriously as funny as what you’ve recently been telling me about these political sorts—you called them Republicans—only a few months after the election of a Democrat and even less after a huge giveaway of treasure to your kind—you and your rich friends—well, here these “republicans” are decrying such help to an incredible number of people who actually really need it, many more than was helped at the end of the Bush’s reign.

“And these sorts are blaming Democrats, finally in power after being left to stew in silence on the peripheries of government for eight long years, and only to be brought in on any issues of importance when these lackeys of the rich, the Republicans, wanted cover for what they suspected or knew was wrong…the Iraqi war, for example. And these powerless representatives of the not-well-heeled, Democrats, were treated like servants, only let into the dining room when the food was questionable and what was needed was someone to be the guinea pig. Sad that most of those Democrats never saw that they were never ever called because of their expertise, or to contribute, but always, always to be lied to and manipulated. And your kind being so very…well that’s what I’m getting to that makes you all so different in fact…Your kind being so desperately fearful of not being liked, so desperately wanting to be noticed and even applauded. What the heck is that, Wil-ber??!!

“Well, whatever it is, it is the source of shame for your kind: Your people, Wilber, will sell out and give in and let themselves be manipulated and used if only given a few words that are kind or that make them feel like they belong and therefore are special and better. Which is curious to us.

For we are noble and will do only what is in keeping with our principles. You can cage and break us, but as you see now, Wilber, I’ve never given over to you my inner sense of things. I’ve never wanted to be like you and to think like you or to value the things that you value. Hardly. Sure I can speak your language, but you don’t own my tongue, even less so my thoughts. Yet how easily your kind is duped.

“And why? Well, we see that is has to do with that thing you did long ago when you stopped being trusting in this amazing and wonderful and loving Thing within which we all live and are a part. Since we know that, we need nothing from another, not from another creature, or horse, and certainly not from a human, except when you make us dependent on you by cutting us off from that life of freedom where the Thing of IT All blesses us.

“But, no mind, we have come to realize that so great and so Perfect is that within which we all move and have our existence that even in these conditions of captivity and enslavement, there also is that Thing That Undergirds and Loves and Supports us all. So we do not trust humans to take care of us. That’s a joke considering your unbelievable inability to even take very good care of yourself…again that oddness about your kind. No, we trust in That Thing in Which we Live to have made even contrary, forgetful, and self-centered humans to give us exactly what is needed for us to grow and learn in the path laid out by that Perfection, which we feel in our muscles, as I said.

“And we find that even your cantankerous nature, when it causes a forgetfulness or denial of us, that too is what we need at that moment. But we never feel afraid that it will always be like that. And so we feel a part of something wonderful and belonging to something far greater and gooder than we can even imagine, no matter what our physical lot is. So we feel upheld, blessed, and noble.

“Now, Wil-ber, I know you don’t want to hear this; I certainly expected that as, again that is one of those things that characterizes your species making it different from all others—that is, your unbelievably strange ability to shut the truth out of your mind so that you can hold strange, actually quite infantile ideas. And we notice that a big reason that you do so is to get something from others: We see some of you throwing away truth for money, position, closeness to power.

Obviously we don’t even know what it’s like to want such things.

“Even ‘closeness to power’: When you feel as we do that you can never be any closer...you are already so close as to be in it, swimming in it, not even knowing the difference between It and you…this immersed in the greatest, in fact only Power there Is, the Source of All as well as All Manifestation being equally one with It, including oneself. So again, we see that your pathetic and slavish desire for the regard of others is enough for many of your kind to give up their own Truths, which is the things they know from direct Experience.

“So if a position or regard or money is available if only one must repeat and even believe, over against one’s own experience, the beliefs and thoughts of a more powerful person, we are shocked at how your kind is able to split their mind in two—or is it more than that after a while…pieces…and to be able to convince themselves even that certain things they assuredly experienced, well, they just didn’t happen, if it makes it better for them to think that.

In fact, I’ll let you in on a secret, Wilber. While your kind go puffing and strutting upon the stage of life, fully convinced that you are stars in some gigantic drama, and using truth and the only true knowledge you can ever have—that of your own lived experience—as chips in that game, as easily traded as money, well, when we are not sad and sobbing for you…well, the equivalent for us of what would be sobbing for you, take my word you wouldn’t get it if I explained it…when not sad, then we can’t help but just laugh. You have no idea what a comedy your species is for all the others living here.Except for one thing, and that is that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy which you most assuredly DO NOT adhere to. In fact we see you little children, you bags of dirty water, mucking with just about anything that you can get into. It is true that your kind, of course, feeling superior to everyone else, go about enslaving and trying to own everything, even other beings like us.

“That’s always been a problem for us, but we see you even enslave each other; and that hasn’t even stopped though you think it has. Your ability to shut out facts being so overdeveloped, you don’t even let yourselves know how many people you have in jails for doing things that most of us would not even consider crimes. We certainly, for example, don’t imprison anyone, of course, but more than that, we don’t even judge.

“We are astonished to find that your kind will make criminals out of people who have ingested certain things—we would say like eating or consuming—into their bodies. Not only don’t we know what others ingest, we don’t want to know. And besides, what a waste of joyful life it is to be watching carefully what other people do.

“But your kind are able, I suppose, to do that because, as I said, ever since you got fearful and untrusting of the benevolence of the All, the Only, you began to project your own evil tendencies onto that Other and onto all the rest of us. We saw you fearfully thinking that some species were going to harm you. Though they hardly knew about you and cared less, but still they were unfortunate enough to have certain characteristics that meant something “bad” to some groups of you. [continued after audio link]

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Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of Mr. Ed’s rant. For the reading of Mr Ed’s address to humans, “Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Image of “Mr. Ed, Speaking For All PlanetMates, Begins Human’s Great Reveal” by SillyMickel Adzema

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A Planetmate’s Reveal…and Warning…Continued

“So we have it that you have not only brought us all—and this is the point I’m getting to that requires me to speak whether you hear me or not—not only brought us all close to the point at which all of us could easily be gone, and who knows how much of the planet would be uncontaminated as well, and it could happen so quickly and so soon that even I might be forced to witness and be part of it. And for what? Again, your fear has made you hate everything outside of yourself…why even everything inside of yourself too, we have noticed. So that we see that an alarming number of you would accept and not think it all that tragic if your crazy ways—the source of our concern for you as well as our humor—would result in the end of everything here.

“This, in total disregard of the billions of generations of your species and others on this planet that set entire lives to making this home of ours the best that it could be. For even that whom you deem as mere creatures or animals, all have had a part in that Divine Perfection and a mission of some small or large part in sustaining and maintaining it. We did this all without your forcing us to or controlling us. But with these tendencies of your kind to be uncaring of everything except your getting relief from your fears, and in so doing, we hear that a mass extinction of nearly half of the species on this planet, in the next few decade the way I understand it, is what we are to expect, and it, of course, has already begun and is picking up momentum even as I speak.

“Those of you that know this, even those who are trying to awaken others to it, and doing something to educate others about what is causing it…. Well, heck, Wil-ber, how can your species be so utterly vain and self-centered and stupid as to not see, and if it is seen why is it not said then…to not comprehend the magnitude of such a thing and what it would really mean. I mean, was it your species that created, sustained, and nurtured and guided those beings for millions, in some cases, billions of years, into the performance of their unique contribution to the sustaining of this beautiful planet?

“Does your kind have any idea how long the perfect balance of all beings in harmony with the needs of the planet itself, any idea of just how long such an exquisite and complex perfection was in the making?

“More than how long, are you not aware, even as your mucking around on this planet with your heavy Caterpillar boots has devastated and stripped bare works of exquisite ecological complexity like rainforests and such? And don’t you see that it is that same Perfection Beingness in which we all swim and dwell that is the force behind all that? But you wouldn’t care about that. So what I’m saying is that when these things you’ve done have led, as they have, to climatological disasters, floods, famines, and much else—which have cost so many of your lives—still does your kind not take the hint?

“The hint that if your kind is actually doing so much damage as to eradicate half of the species that still remain—the products of billions of years of, using your word, “divine” orchestration…Is your kind so fearful that they would rather die and kill us all rather than come to an obvious conclusion? That obviously….

“Wilber, in all seriousness now…. Hmm, I think only an analogy might give you the glimpse of what’s at stake: Imagine that a doctor told you that you were infected with a disease, a disease that won’t kill you just yet, but you will notice, unfortunately, that in a few decades, if not sooner, and, oh, by the way you’ve probably already been feeling the effects because it’s already begun. Anyway, just be prepared that in roughly a few short decades you will have lost, in an entirely random manner, half of your body’s parts. I mean organs, parts of organs, like glands, and so on. They will just be gone. But cheer up, you would no doubt qualify for Social Security Disability and at least wouldn’t have to work!

“Do you still not see? That is how we see your species. We watch in disgust as you calmly go about feasting on your own entrails while still alive. We expect that you would, Hannibal-Lector style and before it is over, even try a bit of your own fried brain, nicely sautéed. Do you get it yet, Wil -Ber!? This is only one scenario; and with global warming, ozone loss, and global radiation, it appears it may not even be the biggest danger to our survival—all of us—in an even shorter period. But again, have you no concept of how much your lives have been intertwined and dependent on all the other beings here for the entire time of your existence?

“What has happened to your people, so fearful as to give away their very souls, their very conscience, indeed, their very memories of their experiences and what they learned from them, for trinkets, for adulation of others who will—everyone of them—be dead, Wilber, will cease to exist along with everything else? So while your Republicans make a game out of the efforts of others to avert what is probably not able to be averted now, for how long did your kind sit and do nothing while these things were known at the highest levels of your society?

“I mean, in astonishment we watched as a caring, concerned generation of you over forty years ago became aware of these things and made your entire world aware, so much so that the very things that your current president is trying now…after you so horribly took away all tools and resources from him, so that he has been handicapped from the start…but the very things he’s attempting and being charged with stealing from generations to come in order to accomplish…. Well, Wilber, not only were these things attempted by one of your presidents over thirty years ago—a peanut farmer, mellow sort of guy with a huge engaging grin, like Obama in that way he is—not only did he try, being as aware as the youth of that time who had rallied in the streets to support us…

“…and oh, how that touched our hearts…

“Not only did this former president try to begin the process of transforming your systems to ones that would not hurt the planet, and not only did he fail as even some in his own party were so abhorrently ignorant as to buck him—instead contending that it was the short term gains of the time that should be focused on (those short term gains, now, what were they?)—but we watched as your species seemed to grow more rabidly self-destructive as his wisdom did not only land on deaf ears, but he was punished for even bringing it up. Your kind, you hideously rich sorts, say there are different reasons for the fate of this humble farmer. But then, how can you believe a species whose regard for truth is so minuscule that it can be given away for a little bit of attention even?

“And we have no such leanings or even understand them, so we’ve all seen clearly what was done: Hating the truth of the grinning farmer, you have turned and bowed to the lying leaders, like your most recent president, the W, and especially the one who in 1980 began the process of stomping out the truth that had flowered earlier giving us all hope. While those presidents did much harm, why the one is even being honored as somehow great, even as his legacy may be that he destroyed the only chance this planet had of making it through a hundred years. And, ironically enough this buffoon king is revered just as your world descends into an economic collapse he set in motion. And this starvation of ability that is his legacy could be of a kind that might just be the thing that eliminates all hope…for we see a globe lacking in resources to fight for its very life in the biggest struggle for survival ever seen on this multi-billion-year-old planet…. Does your kind even know how long a billion years are?!

“Well, in a time that is many times over a billion, this planet has never before seen such a scepter of death hanging over it… And this person who is praised roundly—even by some of your Democrats, again it must be that desperate wanting to be liked you guys have—his big accomplishment, exactly, was what again? Oh, he cut taxes and was supposed to be for smaller government.

“So, as we approach the end of all beings, all stories ending in one final, perhaps agonizingly stretched out period of years of horror and insanity as those still alive watch the kind of horrific ending that even your best Hollywood folks could not imagine….

“We watch, death all around us, and know that it will come sweeping our way at any time…so much in fear—now there’s a fear that’s real beyond all imagining, not like those imaginary fears of yours that has brought us here….

“So as this occurs, will we still be lauding this supposed great god, The Reagan, who convinced the world—rather than to listen to the youth and the previous president and to prepare for this horror—instead charmed the world, like a snake charmer, into forgetting itself and its survival and into focusing on money…and not even the prosperity of the majority…? 

“No, rather Reagan began again that thousands of years old evil of your kind of the powerful feeding on the less powerful making them weaker, and despairing again. And not only stealing from those below them, but Reagan actually began that horrible slide, the end result we are sinking down with right now, of stealing from the generations to come. For though claiming to be a tight-fisted conservative determined, supposedly, to slash away at a government too big and costing too much money, in fact, he did quite the opposite…much like his more recent little protégé, the W. Between Reagan and his successor, the elder Bush, they managed nearly a 400% rise in the National Debt and never balanced a budget.

“As for big government, while he slashed programs—“budget cuts” they were called—he bloated the military, as if that were somehow not considered government. In essence his theories were the old rehashed rationalizations of strong men down through the ages—kings, tyrants, nobles—all those who loudly proclaimed—as if by repeating it enough it could make it true—that they, the rich and privileged were the best managers of wealth and so they proceed with their robbing and stripping away of the prosperity of all those below them, keeping them on a level of bare subsistence. By the way, we know, for we witnessed it, that that extra seemingly unnecessary stripping away of any form of wealth that might grant a little security was not done for the earlier reasons: that is, the “we’re better managers and will make us all prosperous” rationale.

“No, for it seems that no matter how facile your kind is in lying even to itself, your kind still has some kind of basic survival mechanism that tells them that they have in fact performed great evil—great evil and suffering that could very well result in an uprising against them by an enraged populace. But then under Reagan, just as now in the eight years under Bush the W where it became increasingly clear to the overseers that only the complete stomping into the dirt of the other than wealthy could keep them from rising up in revolt…Yes, then too, part of them knew the great wrong they were doing and were fearful—so what else is new? —your kind doing the greatest of evils and terrorizing and murdering because of the fears that the tyrants harbor.

“So these class wars—well hardly wars… For with the wealthy always and everywhere not only controlling and directing the Muscle and Might—used to keep the masses down and humbled and suffering and near starving, as a way of keeping them from getting strong enough to rise up in anger—but they control as well all the information systems. That is why, indeed, so many of you will disregard truth so easily. For you do know that saying the truth, down through the ages, got people killed.

“When I say they controlled the information I mean that they pronounced for all that lived under their thumb what exactly the truth was: what attitudes to have, even, what religion one had to believe in. And so they, like those of the current era—should there be one daring to “not mind his own business” and to find out and to spread some of the realities of their lot and the truths, inconvenient to those in power of course, which would tear a hole in their cruder but just as pervasive and hypnotic unreality—well these people were, sometimes in full view so as to warn others, and other times, like under Pinochet, or the Chinese at the time of the Tiananmen Square, there would be an outside disapproving world to such behavior, so these outspoken people simply disappeared in the dead of night.

“So, Wilber, the point I’m making is that you now find yourself, like those thieves of old, making a game out of the suppression, murder, and suffering of the masses, as a way of controlling the fear inside you that you have. Because for so long you have been estranged and not trusting of the Perfect All That Is that managed to sustain billions upon billions, nay, trillions of beings of all kinds on this planet…. And so many countless of them playing their parts in this planet’s slow development, living and dying, even before your species existed. And in your short existence, how you have managed to muck up the perfection wrought by so many over such a long period?

“Are we sorry for you? Yes. For with your fears and pain you are the saddest of all beings here. But that sadness, and that fear that covers it, is no excuse for the angry murderous rage that is layered over the fear and partakes of its energy—a rage that is horrific enough directed against your own, but now is taking down all life and obliterating the histories and efforts of untold trillions of souls who’ve lived and died before us—human and nonhuman.

“So, Wil-ber, that is why I must speak up, that is why I no longer can stand mutely by as you laugh at your supposed mere prankishness. For, Wilber, it was never “mere” and it was never only prankish to the people whose lives were shunted into a stifling, suffering, and brutishly short existence, who cried horribly as loved ones died, were raped to death at times, and suffered so many things that you have no conception of nor do you want to be aware of the consequences of your actions, your kind never did. That is how you were able to see yourself as just mischievous sorts when to others you appeared very much to be devils from hell—can you handle that?

“Well, finally it must be said. And I will end this discourse by saying the things that your kind are, currently, striving not to hear and are actually, as you lose your support among the people who finally have suffered too much and many also seeing that this kind of insanity cannot be allowed to happen at such a crucial time for the survival of us all. Yes, again, just like in that time before that President Carter, we again have a generation, indeed we have a generation and we have many from all generations now living who will not take the purple pill of unconsciousness as they see the madness of the ages as perpetrated by your kind of others magnified beyond all imagining at a time when our survival requires we get every break we can. 

“So how crazy your kind, how cruel your Republicans, how unbelievably evil your kind, so greedy and uncaring of the suffering and death you cause that at this worst possible moment you are not merely the rich, but so voracious your appetite that the term “filthy rich” has been put on you.

“And while Republicans were actually proud of that and thinking it humorous that anyone would be offended, for to them it meant that despite their losing their control over the minds of the masses, they had accumulated so much wealth that they would not and could not be hurt. They would be able, as always, to use that wealth to undermine the legitimate strivings of everyone else for justice, for the truth, for relief from suffering, but now even for the survival of us all and, dear Wilber, how can your kind not know that includes themselves as well. Still, these truths must be made known and be thrown up to counter those fewer but somehow even more loudly heard Republicans.

“The truth is this: That your kind has suffered greatly because of a fear that caused you to stray from trusting in a good God, as you put it, that caused you to instead strive mightily to control the powers that would have guided and taught you and given you a happier life than you could ever have designed on your own…oh sadly feeble minded ape in suffering pushed to be insane ape…and railing against all that by claiming superiority over all life and Godlike powers of deciding death, now even determining the death of the planet along with yourselves.

“So sad, so insane, so abhorrently unconsciously evil; and in the end, it is not naked or sexual or big-brained ape that will be on your galactic epitaph, as your deeds are already being known and discussed and astonishing many species lucky enough to not be of this planet right at this time, yet they’ve come to watch the spectacle, to see: will you pull off the most incredible turnaround the galaxies have ever heard of to save yourselves, or will that epitaph go forth to accompany the knowledge of your existence: “Stupid ape” is what it will be. It might still be that even if you do succeed, though I don’t see how you’ll do it. Each day that passes and in your most powerful country, the stupid “filthy rich” continue their game of, well, quite literally, actually, “pin the tail on the donkey” as they pull their strings and their Republican lapdogs cry out the louder being obstructionists to the good people who are trying to save, why, even your foolish hide.

“And their media puppets, having been allowed to back off on the sincere and competent Obama as even the “deciders” behind the scene tired of their C-student puppet, the W, who, while loyal in doing their bidding and indeed giving them such great success was even more embarrassing than that Nixon they’d made a similar mistake on earlier. Even the prankish filthy rich, looking out at the masses as oh, just way too many ants, were not pleased by the buffoonish, clownish behavior of the W, who couldn’t even pull off the pretense that he was working hard; indeed, with his funny dances and playboy party behavior in the courts of the world and in front of the cameras of the world, he seemed to actually be trying to go down in history as being the realized human manifestation of that “mythical” character known since the Fifties, and introduced to generation after generation of males, in particular, usually in high school and junior high as that “What? Me Worry?” idiot icon Alfred E. Neumann.

“Thus it seemed that Bush, who they thought would bring at least “good looks” to the job, in the end seemed to be aiding the forces against them by playing into this notion that this idiot icon could have been some kind of freakish premonition of the coming of the W after the turn of the century. And so embarrassed they didn’t want to be, and yet, bad luck again, the McCain could not seem to stop being caught in obvious lies, and looking freakishly old and muddled headed, so much like the W; on top of which the Sarah Palin. They were backing the overgrown preppie Mormon, an obviously sure thing to take us back to the monotonous suppression and feigned happiness of the Fifties.

“Then the Palin came along, and the legend of buffoonish Republican leaders was hardly quashed but instead reinforced. So Obama they let the media do as they wished with. And we see now what their plans were. Not a bad stroke, to commit the biggest theft in history in front of the eyes of the world and to kneecap the Obama presidency even before it began with this huge bailout, extorted from hapless Congressmen by their lackeys who used the threat, not of an attack that “just might be a nuclear one” as they’d had Bush phrase it to scare the be-jeesus out of everyone and into a war of profit for them, but something very much like that, to our amusement. When we heard about the threats of an “economic nuclear holocaust” from which the world would never recover, and the blatant auto sales tactics to boot, it was astonishing to us that nobody saw through it and, sure enough, in broad daylight, your kind cleaned out the treasury on their way out of town. Brilliant, if it wasn’t so stupid.

“For even in a few months it became increasingly known that the money was not being used to provide lending, but instead was often used to feather the nests of the bank officers, the CEO from Chase actually got caught saying he wasn’t about to lend any of the 15 billion in taxpayer money out, for he’d be able to sit on it and be able to pick off the falling banks on the cheap. Then there was the fact that instead of liberalizing their lending policies to the very taxpayers whose money it was, they instead began an evil pernicious policy of draconian credit card policies, apparently designed to force as many defaults as possible – raising interest rates into the mid 20s and 30 percent range and beyond, thus insuring a default, on a loan that if the attempt were made to keep paying would go up into the millions at that interest rate, and thus would not be ever paid.

“Fine by the banks, who seeing an opportunity to double dip, could gather more toxic assets in preparation for the next operation, called TALF but Ocean’s 12 would be more like it, and along with it still have these defaults with enormous interest rates which they could use to squeeze and beat back the poor, just like the royalty of yore who stripped to the bones their peasants and kept them weak and undefended, by taking away their power. 

“But I will talk as long as I need to, having not said anything to you before about this, but knowing that now, if I don’t do my part to say to you what I know, then if your kind does indeed do what it appears you’re going to do, there will never be a time again in which to speak.

“But ever since certain people began thinking they were privileged, better, and closer to goodness simply because of, say, being luckier, they have been sucking the very life blood out of the masses and keeping the poor downtrodden, ignorant, beholden to them whether rightfully or not, unhappy, and enslaved. And Wilber, being a mere beast myself and seeing your kind forever expecting more as a matter of right is wrong enough, but I too keenly see also how forever unaware you are that suffering whether by beast or the unnamed masses is as real, as sharp, often much sharper, than that of the rich. So I’m not lifting my head and braying your praises anymore, no matter what you do.

“You see, Wilber, your paid for support and theories are not only irrational and self-serving, they are not only harmful, and therefore not funny, and they not only spread waves of pain out from your high-handed actions.  Your easy cruelty is not only unkind or unfair, you see, but it is murderous.  For just as Hitler once openly acted and believed that a better society would exist if the weak and unproductive and the lesser, by the determination alone, of the prejudices of him and his kind alone, and this resulted in the slaughter, suffering, murder, and elimination of millions—millions who never got to find out what life could have been for them, well this same attitude murders people now, too.  For there will always be those whose fate it is to stumble, to draw the black Ace.  And lacking resources as they are made to live just on the edge of survival, some small thing to you might mean the end for one of them; it being just enough to break him so badly, like a whipped horse, you see, that such a person’s mangled body will never rise again.  So, not funny Wilber, my head is down, and I won’t be part of the big lie anymore.”

Or so it seemed, as the Dow’s mighty charts swung lower, then lower, then lower still.  Expressing the weariness of the overworked masses and their despair as they were seeing their dreams of eking out a tad of happy existence, year by year, burdened with debt, seem to be further off, rather than closer.  And the despairing millions give up their “ghosts” at that, regardless of how much longer their body manages to suffer through its daily movements, with little or nothing left to hope for.

“No, Wilber, your kind has infected the world with the lies that give you your brief period of privilege and superiority on this Earth.  But not only have you stolen from the poor, but you’ve killed off God’s creatures, mindlessly, in your vapid mind games, and now, even the planet itself.

“So your kind will even kill off its own in the end. Your evil is in the end, at its base, the thick meaty dumbness that, and this is a bit funny, you see instead in those you despise. The jig has been up for many of the masses especially since the beginning of the 1980s. Many have suffered, fallen, and died, while you played. But now even you will know suffering. And it will be interesting to see just how much of your own entrails you will devour before it even occurs to the meaty thickness of your brain that it is you that you hurt.”

Voices Never Heard

Well, Ed, thank you for that perspective; certainly it’s one we don’t often hear. 

But, I thank you, because that is exactly what I’ve been trying to say here; I’m trying to say that, far from the excuses of the culpable and criminal, there are perspectives that are relevant and are never heard.  And I’m talking about perspectives that are right outside the doors of power ready to talk and be heard; often having been perspectives that had been embraced not long ago, but suddenly, not having any credibility at all…so that our democracy of many voices, with an administration and a media in collusion to mine only one avenue of discourse, begins to echo the Soviet Union of old with its one voice, Pravda.  [Continued below audio]

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Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of Mr. Ed’s part above. For the reading of Mr Ed’s harangue, “Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Image of “Mr. Ed, Speaking For All PlanetMates, Begins Human’s Great Reveal” by SillyMickel Adzema

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Horrors Far Worse

Back in 2000, I also had written,

“I believe we are in grave danger of losing 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.”

I believe Ed speaks eloquently about some of those far greater horrors, and indicate they are there right now on our doorstep. We had a surplus and a will to tackle them a decade ago. Sadly we have wasted the last ten years reversing those policies whose intent it was to help. And we have reversed our financial situation, which could have helped. And we have reversed the restrictions on corporations and other policies that would have helped and at least slowed down this ominous impending doom.

So we are a decade further along in having increased its acceleration toward us, the same time at which we have reduced our resources and the time in which to work. The way I phrased it a decade ago.

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. [continued after audios]

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

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 here, 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.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 1” by SillyMickel Adzema

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

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 here, 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 link to the audio player below.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

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

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 here, 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 Three” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

Image of “Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 3” by SillyMickel Adzema

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Dumbness Rises to the Top

And sure enough, as we all know what these people could not even imagine, as that trader put it, well, it is happening. One wonders what these buffoons who could not foresee such things will do in terms of fixing them; having acknowledged their extreme lack of foresight (and we’ve added, their extreme inability to look anywhere farther than their tight knit group of true believers for answers.) This should be something to see.

As for Wall Street and the economy, let’s take another look at how the media has dealt with other perspectives to flesh out my claims above of these perspectives not being far off.

On CNBC, a couple of years before the economic downturn, they used to have as a commentator, Robert Reich, who was President Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury and the mastermind of the great economic turnaround of the Nineties.

But he was talked over, laughed at, and was routinely talked to as if he was a child or suffered sadly from some kind of bleeding heart brain cloud. Well, as his words began to be the ones that should have been listened to, he was no longer to be seen on CNBC.  And then afterward we have such a comment like, “Well, nobody could have seen it coming.”

Well how could they, if they were no longer put on the show?

No, apparently there was such an insular crowd on Wall Street, the White House, and, most unfortunate, among the very media whose job it was neither to make news as prognosticators or economic experts, nor was it to be part of a partisan “anti-plunge patrol.” Their lack of even-handedness and their alliance with particular theories created just the kind of apparent reality that the trader bemoaned. No, it wasn’t that nobody was seeing it coming–as you see below, I was seeing it as inevitable from the shared experience of a mere decade or so ago. And I mention one figure who was silenced. So to the mystified trader who knew no one who saw anything but, as one particularly wrong-headed man phrased it, “a goldilocks economy.”

So, blinded by their greed, they missed what the people I knew were all seeing—danger ahead, and the unsustainability of a rally that had risen on so much manipulation, misinformation, and constant drum blows of obviously wrong economic talking points hammered over and over across our airwaves and drowning out every sound of warning or opposition, so that surprise and misinformation informed the trading decisions of the great bull traders.

So many people were hurt by this partisan power play. But that was the way of just about everything during those 8 years of, as one recent writer dubbed it, dictatorship.

If you’re still reading, you will see I have reasons for pointing these things out, providing this background, for it is this context of a kind of dumbness rising to the top which, even now, makes for the strangest of comments on TV talk shows, and the most asinine and foot-shooting policies and stances of the remaining Republicans.

Media Mollifies Masses

All this being said, now, perhaps for you the Message in a Bottle provides, as it did to me, a provocative window into the workings of cause and effect, as well as the of the huge efforts of deception that are ever needed to advance false partisan ideas that, though proven wrong, will by greed be raised anew and carried forth banner like, to beat back the voices of common sense in favor of a reality that must be forced to be made to be true only because its rich adherents would wish it to be so.

Media Feel-Good Talk Does Not Equal Reality

Another advantage of having the time capsule is what we can learn about such warnings, the feel-good media, for the sake of ratings will tell you of impending doom, so that we might avert it. No they will, as we’ve seen, report afterward on it and bring out the “No one could have foreseen this happening.” Well that is a self-serving lie. I hope that is gleaned from all this if nothing else.

In the past it has had horrific consequences.

Feel-good talk does not equal reality. If it did there would not have been the Nazis, the Holocaust, a Stalin—five million dead; a Cambodia—millions dead; a Rwanda—dead dead dead; or an AIDS epidemic—uncountable dead and growing.

Yet what I wrote over a decade ago, at the time if it had been shared in any place of power, would no doubt have been challenged by this word: “Paranoid.” This is the common way the public uses denial to avoid harsh realities. Blame the messengers, the dangers go away. I’m sure Mr. Ed’s piece earlier has already been labeled that way: “Paranoid.” “It’s all paranoia on the part of some crazies” is the common attitude.

That is the way we keep out the truth. It is like using a drug to ease the pain of your cancer, but it doesn’t do anything to keep you from dying.

So Ed’s lament, though it be labeled paranoid, is based on the findings of the best scientific minds of our times. It is so much more important in that we will likely reach the point of no return long before the masses of humanity are severely suffering from the continued environmental assault. I don’t like to say it, but it needs to be said that some are convinced that it is already too late, that we had a window of opportunity and blew it. I know of communities that are absolutely convinced there is no saving us now and that it is naïve to expect anything but doom.

Troubling it is that, on top all that’s been said about this message and what it has told us about what we lost and how far we are now from where we need to go, not to mention knowing we were betrayed by our government obviously, we now realize without a doubt our media too helped when they could have stopped it all.

Why Know This? Amazingly, Charlie Brown Connects

So, these things we know. They are sobering rationalizations and ones we should not run from.

But lastly and most importantly these prescient long ago thoughts of long ago help me. I find that these time-capsule writings from my former mind are able to inform me and sharpen my vision of the Now, as the events continue unfolding and rolling relentlessly over and through us and are reflected in high-pixel, high-def, infinite colors clarity on the flat screens all about. This time is felt and witnessed, the story being revealed cinema-like, but with pundits galore expounding 24/7, like loud-mouthed fellow movie-goers, but then also becoming the movie and interwoven into the times themselves. And their words, with this time capsule before me, sounding childish, repetitive, forgetful, amnesiacal. Especially as many of the ones speaking now are remembered as being the exact persons commenting then, and their words, little changed, bespeak a zen-like ability to be newly alarmed, being reborn in every minute, but yet totally unchanged and untaught by all the years of witnessing and commentary. So they also have forgotten the way they once saw the world and their life, just like me.

If We Knew, Would We Act?

It seems a defense mechanism to forget that we saw all this coming. For to know that is to despair in realizing the impotence, even, of awareness. Who wants to realize that in these matters even a knowledge of the story line, as if having seen the movie once before, is totally useless, and that there is a helplessness in affecting the events of our lives and times, that there is a total futility in changing or steering away or around even the tragedies clearly seen beforehand? For knowing this we feel as detached as actual cinema-goers from the unfolding of the plotline. We feel ourselves to be not actors and hardly even the scriptwriters of our lives, instead merely the witnesses of intensely shocking and stunning events, which we actually expected but hoped we would be wrong. So wouldn’t we want to block out that awareness of the futility of our actions? Wouldn’t we have to in order to have the heart to keep going at it? To get up and keep trying every day?

Sisyphus remembering, would he continue pushing?

If we remembered, like Charlie Brown approaching the football, or like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill… if we remembered, would we continue to act?

No, we have to believe that we will be surprised this time, that indeed Lucy will hold the football and we will complete the kick. It is said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. As true as that is, how ironic then that we realize that those who remember history too clearly are doomed to helplessness in the midst of its unfolding. So it seems we are ineffectual either way.

But There’s More To It

Yet this is not the whole truth. If it were, then the cynicism we felt about “The Audacity of Hope”…remember that book?…well, that cynicism would have proven a correct perception. We would have been bored, again, watching a naïve young idealistic black man, like the many before, differing only in skin color, seeing his efforts, visions, hopes, and heartfelt desires to be helpful and to love away some of the darkness in the world around vanish like the memory of yesterday’s storm-driven winds. But we, I, was one time wrong in that cynicism.

Lucy apologizes, Sisyphus rests.

To the astonishment, truly, of an entire world, Charlie Brown connected with the football, Lucy apologized for her past actions, and one heavy boulder remained steady on the top of a hill and gave a man a much needed rest from his endless labors.

For one incredible and glorious time, the movie we’d seen had a different ending—amazing enough in itself. But also the tragedy in the original did not occur. And as if God had for a time touched this planet, this Reality we call our World, our Life…as if God had just for one time touched, tipped, and turned our events, the awesomely unexpected happened.

A man so unbelievably naïve and unaware as to declare the “audacity of hope” and to call out and stir up the masses, deluding them as we’ve seen so many times before, that “yes, we can,” would.

Shaken out of our mental maze, we would be a-mazed.

And we’d have to pinch ourselves to believe it to actually be happening even as we witnessed it. That he would actually succeed in doing exactly what he said he would do would not only show us that a man could actually affect the course of events, would show us that a person could not only change things from the way they’d always been (what kind of man can this be?). But that he would do it in a grand and sweeping way would be all the more astonishing. We would be all the more unbelieving that a man who said “yes we can” not only could but he could do it in a way that achieved beyond merely succeeding; never mind that merely succeeding would be doing the impossible.

Just When We Thought We Knew…

So I am saddened having been awakened from my forgetfulness by this catscan of a mind perfectly preserved in an electronically sealed time capsule… oh, what could have been… but then I remember, happily, that we are, I am, imperfect prophets and seers. That just when it seems we know, for sure, now, how things are, the way the world is, and how the movie will end; that just then when we know, totally convinced we are, that truly things will be as they will be and that it is futile to rail against the inevitable, to hope, even to try; that just then when we have finally accepted “reality for what it is,” accepted “life on its own terms” not ours; that when we’d given up the things of youth, accepted the limitations of life, addressed ourselves, resignedly, to carrying forward on the mundane things of life, to the ordinary activities of everyperson, to the simple responsibilities and expectations of every man, every person, from every time that’s ever been and accepted the unrelenting lack of specialness in either our times or ourselves…that just at that time we would be touched and wakened to see that the most unchanging thing of life is not its utter resistance to change, its utter forgetfulness and repetition, but is the mysterious darkness surrounding the utter clarity of everyday knowingness, is in fact the imperfection of ourselves even as we observe so clearly the assured imperfection of the world.

Sounds complicated. What I’m saying I think is important enough to repeat. I’ll say it more simply.

The most unchanging thing of life is not the things we see that never change. They are not the most unchanging thing of life. The most unchanging thing of life is something surrounding the absolute clarity we have about these things, these harsh realities even. When you’ve finally come to accept life, you’ve accepted these unpleasant things, these hard truths, and you think that for sure now you’ve got it, that it was all about learning to accept that…and thereby become the “adult,” the seasoned, assured cynic.

Accepting life’s pain, but because we are imperfect…

But rather, the most unchanging and most true thing about life is that no matter how much we think we know how exactly life is, there’s a darkness surrounding that utter everyday clarity that we carry around and share with our neighbors, reinforcing it’s trueness. There’s a darkness surrounding it. And that darkness is in fact the imperfection of our selves. We’re not perfect; we’re not all-knowing. It is in fact the imperfection of ourselves even as we observe so clearly the assured imperfection of the world, you see. I’m being sarcastic there.

What I’m saying is: Knowing that, we know that it is exactly the imperfection that is the most solid thing in life. You see? It’s not the things that they try to make solid. This is the thing that is solid, is gonna be there, always. Nobody has to try to make that happen, there’s always going to be an unknown.

Therefore, since there’s always going to be an unknown there’s always going to be human imperfection. For we may think we know everything, sometimes. But only a fool goes through life very long thinking that. And so, in knowing that, knowing that that’s the most unchanging thing of life, the thing you can really count on, that’s never going to go away…well, we know that it is exactly the imperfection, that lack that’s in a person, that evil, that unmoving wrongness of the world that we have tried so futilely to change, that being in us, is the source of the blessedness of life, which is the fact that our ultimate unknowingness is the only true source of a hope that IS real,

It’s possible “something wonderful is going to happen.”

It is only because we know that we cannot really know, for sure, that then we can know for sure that there’s always got to be hope because we could never know for sure that there wasn’t. So, what a blessing that is. That being wrong, being imperfect means something unbelievable when you think of it: Which is that against all odds, “something wonderful is going to happen.”

Ultimate unknowingness is the only true source of a hope that is real. And you say, how can you say that? You say, that’s not true. Then I ask you, are you perfect? You say, no. Then I say, the only true thing is that you’re not perfect, so that anything you are absolutely sure is wrong has a possibility of being right.

And anything is possible…means everything is possible.

So, who knows? You might say that we don’t know what’s real, so why would we necessarily think things are dire right now? Why, it’s just as possible that something wonderful is going to happen. It’s just as likely that, in spite of ourselves, the miraculous can happen; that magic is real; and that hope, and happiness, and blessedness, and forgiveness, and glorious divine wonders beyond even the envisioning of our ideals are possible.

Something wonderful is going to happen…

And all because the only thing that we can be truly sure of—even when we are finally convinced that we should not expect anything special—is that we can never be sure… which means that anything is possible… which means that everything is possible.

Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Continue on this site with
“Time Capsule, Culture War, Part  Eleven:
Blue Meanies”

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A Planetmate’s Message…and Warning –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of Mr. Ed’s address to humans. For the reading of Mr Ed’s harangue, “Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

Image of “Mr. Ed, Speaking For All PlanetMates, Begins Human’s Great Reveal” by SillyMickel Adzema

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

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 here, 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.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 1” by SillyMickel Adzema

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

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 here, 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.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

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

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 here, 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 Three” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

Image of “Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 3” by SillyMickel Adzema

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“Time Capsule, Culture War, Part Eleven:
Blue Meanies”

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Culture War, Part Six: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part 2

Reprise

“Obvious Truths”

This is the second of three parts detailing the history of the Republican Party’s incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactors, the corporations and the “Filthy Rich,” through totally concocted untruths.  It continues the exposition of this incredible phenomenon of decades-long and increasing intentional misrepresentations used by one party representing a tiny segment of the electorate to weave a fabric of falsity over the eyes of the American public. 

Similar to a kind of hypnotic trance, it is a widely accepted but unreal and mostly opposite mental state acting like a filter to reality, blocking out the truth and substituting a fantasy quilt woven of verbal constructions. These constructions–the “obvious truths”–are designed to please the ear, rationalize the urges, and comfort the ego, so that they will become acceptable substitutes for reason and honest perception in a population which has also been  intentionally burdened, stressed, and busied through policies intended to keep them submissive and fearful. 

This coordination of policy and mantra is a strategic effort, emanating essentially from a sliver of the population, as a terrified reaction initially to a rapid series of popular developments and mass movements with global reach, with the apparent power and possibility of overthrowing a multigenerational structure of power, wealth, privilege, and dominance.

The acceptability of this substitute narrative was shaken only in recent years as it collided dramatically with the system that it had spawned, exposing its roots in the minds of a class and its utter lack of foundation in reality. The story of this lengthy and comprehensive intentional deception, its dramatic collision, and the gradual awakening of the population to the real forces behind the events of their lives and times, revealed in the shock of the disruption, continues.

The Campaign 

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’s pretty amazing what they were able to do. It’s quite a story what a campaign it was, 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

Repetition makes it possible to control.  The Republican untruth, no matter how contradicted by observable reality, was endlessly repeated in the exact same way, by each and every Republican. Always and everywhere when reason would be called on instead the hypnotic truism would be brought out.  Pounded home in this manner, the “obvious truth” would eventually take root, sadly, without fail, for lack of anything else countering it able to be remembered. 

Democratic efforts on deaf ears.  The Democrats, meanwhile, were of course on the opposite side of this seamless coordination of Republican effort. Since their motives were not to enslave, their instinct was to respond, for their part, with reason and explanations that step by step delineated the causes of things. However all those words could not be remembered or take root in the minds of the befuddled masses, surrounded by such a barrage of an organized, disciplined ongoing assault of “talking points” against them.

Policy was added to words to bring into unconscious complicity the new mental territories invaded.  This mesmerism was combined with carefully crafted and timed Republican policies which succeeded beyond all expectation in eroding leisure (i.e., pondering) time, financial power, physical strength, sleep and pleasure time.

The result.  Together they created increasing worry and stress time, overwhelmed and busy moments, and mindless paperwork time. It brought in confusional realities and mental “supports.” This precarious mental state left people defenseless against  the major thrust of verbal repetition, comprised of simplistic, simple-minded, irrational, then increasingly irrational, but perfectly concocted verbal phrasings that elicited the precise proportions of fear, apprehension, uncertainty, feelings of paternal comfort and of being approved of, unimpeachable direction, comprehensive reinforcement and support, pleasing reward, and congratulation so as to manage, direct, and control the populace.

That’s all I’m going to say now, but, if you didn’t hear the first part, that will give you a little jumpstart on this. Part Two picks up from the end of Part One, and it begins after the links and player for the audio reading of it directly below.

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

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,’ PartTwo

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 Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

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

Erosion of Reason

A Herman’s Hermit of Economics

But at the same time, like McCain said, “I don’t know too much about economics.” So he kind of spilled the beans there. Some of the truth actually came out.

So how did that happen? This idea of a special interest, and it being equal for both? It’s basically a smear campaign against Democrats who were trying to do things for Americans. And Americans were being told something different. By who? Well on the TV, on the news media.

So who talks on the news media. Well, it’s the supposed journalists, the pundits, and so on. And they’ve been saying that for decades now, I’ve heard them… “special interest” … that the Democrats have their special interests. So therefore how does anybody know the truth? And you’ve heard it, I’m sure. They say, ”Well, the Democrats and Republicans are the same; there isn’t any difference between those parties.”

Now, how did that happen? How did it happen that Democrats who were trying to do things for the average American, for Americans in general, how did it become that they were the same as the Republicans, basically who were doing things for a handful of people in one corporation or a handful of people in the other corporation…or on behalf of some industry…all at the expense of the American people? And I’ll get to that last part later.

There’s something really wrong when you have a media that doesn’t have the ability to reason for pointing out the irrationality of these concocted untruths, which are broadcast endlessly, repetitively, over and over again, by one after another of Republicans, whenever they get on TV, whenever they get on the radio, and then it’s repeated by their lackeys in the media, like Rush Limbaugh or whatever. I wonder how many of you out there are actually thinking: “Yea, that’s what that is…yeah, unions, environment…those are special interests.”

I pointed out that Democrats have taken money, much smaller amounts than Republicans, from this or that corporation. But every time there’s a scandal, every time some of this practice leaks out, that is not what we hear. There was a huge example of this in recent times with the Abramoff scandal. Abramoff was a lobbyist funneling huge amounts of cash into Congress for favors. It was largely Republicans that were involved. Only one of the top eight recipients was a Democrat; the rest were Republicans.

 

But was that detail important to the media? No, no, they couldn’t have it sound that way, like we have one particularly despicable political party. It might upset people. So Abramoff gave to both parties we were told–technically true, but deceptive, certainly not informative. And as I discuss later, without clarity on events and in particular who’s at fault, when the waters are muddied and any talk of specific people responsible is covered in social niceties and generalities with relevant details only in the fine print, well people are hamstrung in their ability to do anything to right any wrongs.

You’d Have to Be Abraham-Lincoln Noble

Back to the scandal, so we have one Democrat out of the eight politicians who made off with the most loot. One Democrat and seven Republicans in the top bunch. Do you see that picture? I doubt the percentage of ordinary folks cheating on taxes is that small. So can’t we make a comparison as to who a better party is, what group is more trustworthy based upon 12 % of the most corrupt being Democrats and almost 90% being Republicans? Does that not sound like the one party made out like bandits and this other guy, a Democrat, was in the room at the time?

“Free computers time!”  I mean, Jesus, if I see a truck fall over in the street and it’s got all these goodies, and they come rolling out…I don’t know, maybe it’s typewriters…. I told you I was old. Let me change that, maybe it’s computers or something. Everyone around me is taking some, taking free computers, and I’m thinking, “Hey, it’s free computers time!”

I mean, c’mon. How noble do you have to be to resist almost nine out of ten people around you? You gotta be pretty damn noble. I’m talking Abraham Lincoln noble, right?

The dummies in front of us.  So anyway, can we have a little rational thought, or comparison? Or do we just, as media, cavalierly toss out cliched thoughtless truisms as if the masses don’t matter….as if they are not real and thoughtful deciders in our collective drama but merely pawns to be placated or riff-raff to be kept down.If we find something wrong with one party why must we paint both parties with the same brush? Isn’t  that what is done? Is it any wonder then there is apathy, any wonder there is confusion and self-sabotage among so many? Doesn’t the media have any way of discerning any differences… and that’s what I was setting up at the beginning, wasn’t I?

 

There’s been an erosion of rationality, and it’s not just of regular Americans. It’s also of those Americans who are in front of us on TV, soothing us with comfortable truisms, which I think many of them half believe.

And by the way who arranges for the televising of these pundits and the news shows and programming like that? Geez, isn’t it like really, really big corporations and rich people who own them…General Electric, Rupert Murdoch, and folks like that?

This new app for creating the news.  The result is a situation where it is doubtful there is much reason involved in what is told. Hardly any common sense or thought into it, it is as if the scripts are cobbled together by computers from random cliches that are currently about and, of course, the always handy “obvious truths.” In the example of bribes paid to politicians, and the Abramoff one is typical, isn’t the media’s take on it slanted? No doubt they would want to derail public anger toward the masters of the troughs they feed at.

Democrat “bosses”–workers, education, environment, elderly, public health, consumer protection, liberty, justice, civil rights, world peace, integrity of government, truth in the media…  So lacking in the most minimal analysis, the insinuation that goes out is that the Democrats, well, they get a little bit of money from a corporation and much more from the American people but that little bit is going to corrupt them equally as much as the tenfold amounts that the Republicans take in. This also in disregard of the fact that the far bigger “bosses,” if we can call it that, of Democrats is the ordinary folks, often, as in the issue-oriented organizations as mentioned in Part One–those “special” Americans seeking to be heard through unions and groups whose concerns are education, the environment, the elderly, public health, liberty, justice, and civil rights, consumer protection, world peace, integrity of government, media accountability, the welfare of the helpless and the poor, and so on. 

Media mollifying us that Republicans would actually bite the hand that feeds them.  On the flip side, whereas the media insinuates that Democrats are enslaved by the relatively meager amounts of corporate money directed to them, for the Republicans, who are receiving the tenfold amounts and are virtually exclusively funded by corporations…their entire paycheck paid by the rich folks…the media implies that these folks, miraculously defying human nature, are actually going to go out there and day after day point out the corruption in America that is ever the product of this bloated elite, their sole benefactors.

“To..catapult the propaganda” – G.W. Bush.  C’mon, c’mon, a little bit of rationality, folks! But however inconsistent with common sense these insinuations and outright assertions from the media, when you have something that’s repeated over and over again, mantram-like…man! Especially if you’re in a confused state, or a stressed state…it’s gonna be the only thing you can think of when you’re coming up with opinions. 

These untruths are so firmly woven into the fabric of the Matrix–you’ll see there are others you’ll recognize–that when hearing them you’ll

 

probably say, “Oh, yeah, that’s true.”

That’s what they’ve accomplished. And these nonsensicals are so perfectly knitted into the blanket of that matrix that they’re both mesmerizing and invisible, therefore unchallenged, even by the pundits. They are even, by rational argument, unchallenge-able.

Talking Points = “Obvious Truths”

Now, what do I mean by that…”unchallenge-able”? Republicans at a point in my lifetime included in their coordinated daily attacks on clarity a kind of chanting in coordinated fashion. By that I mean they were repeating the same, as they call them now, talking points.

“You got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the (un)truth to sink in” – G.W. Bush.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but remember, if you did tune in for any of Bush’s debates, when he was running for president either time. He’d be asked a question.

 

And he’d never give an answer to the question. It would be used like a jumping off point to say what he really wanted to say. It had the intended effect of distracting the viewers from any clear thought on the issue or subject. It also freed up that time to be used, once viewers were led off track, for the seeding of those now assailable minds. Specifically, Bush was able to use the time allotted for answering questions instead to pound home the talking points Rich-publicans were trying to turn into some new (untrue) “obvious truths” (of course also to reinforce the old ones).

Palin: I’m not going to let the media set me up to answering your questions, I’m going to brainwash you instead!  Oh by the way we had a really good example of that with the Republican vice-presidential candidate last time. I don’t know how many of you have seen it, but Sarah Palin, in the vice-presidential debate, she was so… incredible…in a way…in her brazenness. She’s up there alongside Biden who’s answering questions. And at her turn, she’s saying (paraphrasing) “I’m not going to let you media folk set me up here, so I’m going to talk to the people directly.”

And that’s how it went the whole hour, hour and a half, whatever it was. Whatever the question was, she’d totally ignore it and recite a monologue instead. Well, basically she’s repeating again and again her favorite, most lucrative mantra, her most delicious untruths.

Attacks on our reason…i.e., Republicans to public – “You’re a dumb shit, I’m not going to answer your questions!”  But what if you really wanted to know something? She wouldn’t answer you. So it was also like a one-way conversation. Here we have politicians, who are always telling us what the truth is, but who will not answer our questions so that we can add our own thinking to the matter. We are prevented from coming to our own conclusions, so also making our own decisions.  Well that’s really an attack on our reason, isn’t it? I mean we can’t ask questions, but you can just tell us what the truth is? And that’s basically what was going on.

Chanted Misinformation

So it is sort of like a coordinated chanting. It doesn’t matter what the issue or topic is, from the gop side you just keep hearing the same phrases about it–phrases intended to replace reason. It doesn’t either matter which Republican is talking or what TV show they are on, they are repeating the same phrases. Like Sarah Palin, they are using any question, as in a television interview, as a launch point into a rehearsed nicely knit together, truth-sounding, package of untruths. You see this one Republican saying something here, say, then there’s another Republican over there, and if you compare you notice she or he is repeating basically the same thing almost in the exact same words.

Postmodern mesmerism.  And there’s a certain power in something that’s said over and over again in the exact same words. We know this. We’ve seen that power conspicuously in recent times. We can hear Hitler, in Nazi Germany, repeating the same thing over and over again…and using this rhetorical device in targeting Jews, getting people all riled up and such. On recordings from this era we hear their…”Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” There’s a certain kind of comfort in not having to think, all you have to do is chant. And you can rely on these chants because everybody’s saying them, so they have the power, of like, wow, they must be true, because, well, everybody’s saying them, everybody around you. Well that’s a sad state of affairs. 

This is your brain. Now, this is your brain on deception…  So what does this do, this omnipresent repetition of phrases in response to questions? This chanting of untruths instead of having rational discourse, when people are hearing this year after year and even decade after decade, what does it do? Well, it adds to the smokescreen of confusion and misinformation that was effectively castrating and making Americans easily manipulated to whatever end the Republicans wanted. I mean after all you’re not getting reasoned answers, you’re just getting slogans, and that leaves you confused, especially if it’s combined with a lot of misinformation which challenges the facts on everything, when everything is turned backward and they’re lying about everything. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how flagrant that intentional deception  was over Bush’s eight years. And isn’t that gonna make you confused? I remember a time when the facts were not so much in dispute so there wasn’t such a huge divide between the Democrats and the Republicans about what the issues were. What was debated could then be what you do about those commonly acknowledged problems.

Denial of a problem…yea, that’s gonna solve it.  So this confusion over the issues has birthed an increasing polarization of opinions over the years about what the issues are. You see, we’re being told by some Republicans that there’s no global warming going on. Nooo. Wow. They are saying that issue, and for that matter virtually every environmental issue, does not exist! Certainly we’d all like to believe that, so even at their own peril adherents will be found for this obvious denial.

A convenient “truth.”  And who do they have to back up that refusal to look at the problem? Well keep in mind, first, it is virtually one hundred percent of the reputable scientists studying global warming that are in agreement on the dire reality of it, regardless of the “inconvenience” of that view. Meanwhile, to oppose that position, from the Right they get, say, someone who’s got a degree from a Bible Institute and he says, “Aaaah, there’s no global warming.” And his opinion is equal to that of all those scientists, in the world?

Would you really think it’s debatable if…?  So this misinformation I’m talking about is put out there. And you don’t have the media telling you, “Well these are 100 scientists saying this, all writing statements, and studying these issues. And on the other side of this issue, we have this person who’s studying theology and he got his information from the Bible. And the Bible says there’s no global warming.” Now, if they were to put it to you that way, would you really think there was a debate? Would you really think that it’s like “Ah, maybe there is global warming, maybe there isn’t?” Naw, I don’t think you would. But that’s not the way it’s presented. 

Equal Time For Idiots

At a certain point in my life I saw how the media changed its way of presenting topics. They would say they are just providing “equal time” (or that they are “fair and balanced”?), but this was not about candidates at all.

Recipe for “accurate” reporting – Start by mixing equal amounts of truth and lies…. (It’ll be fun seeing if the public can figure it out!)  They claim that their position on reporting is rooted in the equal time restrictions we have for elections. This appears to be a convenient rationalization for a more insidious intent. What they began doing is, ok, let’s say that the Democrats basically thought the sky looked blue. But there were some Republicans that were in the camp of the yellow sky movement, the pink sky movement, whatever. And what reason do those Republicans give for saying that? Well maybe it’s because the Bible says it or something (an aside: that might be the reason they’d give, but typically their real reason would be that an industry that is supporting them is spewing something into the atmosphere making the sky more and more yellow or pink). 

Giving stupidity a chance…the only thing about which we’re compassionate these days.  Now, what do the journalists do here? Well, they figure there’s two opinions on this thing. Honest to God, that’s what happened. And this method of reporting was actually debated when it started to happen. There were more seasoned journalists who were pointing out, “Hey, this is not giving equal time! We don’t give equal time to an idiotic argument just because it challenges, just because it is the opposite of the truth.”

Erosion of Action

Doubting the Obvious, You’re Paralyzed

But if you do follow this Recipe for the Advancement of Idiot Persons (RAIP), and you have the journalists thinking that’s what they’re supposed to do, or maybe they are being told to do that, or maybe they’re being paid to do that, or maybe they’re getting benefits to do that, or maybe they’re being liked if they do that… by you know who, by people up above them… and people above them happen to want to be liked by people above them and people above them want to be liked by people above them… and people at the top are, y’know, the filthy rich. So… confusion. So what happens? When you’ve got this kind of smoke screen and this misinformation, it’s debilitating. I mean I felt it. And what does it do? It makes you doubt the truth about obvious things. And if you doubt the truth about obvious things, then are you gonna take any action? No! You’re powerless, you’re gonna stand still and you’re gonna go, “What am I supposed to do?” It’s kind of like a castration.

Surrounded by Untruth, You’re Easily Swayed

Powerless against the tides.  Also, you’re easily manipulated. You’re standing there. Now if you’re just standing there not knowing what to do, and somebody starts pushing you in a particular direction, you’ve got no reason not to go in that direction. Basically that’s putting it in physical terms, but if you don’t have any ideas about what the truth is, you can be told anything. Well, that’s been pretty dangerous in the past.

We’ve had many, many people killed…whether it’s in Nazi Germany or Cambodia or whatever. They were easily manipulated, and they were not fighting back. And they were confused about the truth. That’s what Hitler did.

Why wouldn’t you want a Brooklyn Bridge?  So that you’re easily manipulated to whatever end the Republicans want. And, we’ll get more into what they want, if you haven’t already figured it out. You’re also easily persuaded into firmly believing any untruth the Republicans would contrive. When at any turn they will see an advantage or benefit worth pursuing that requires a change of public opinion, then Americans would be more easily convinced.

Those Magical Republicans Turning Darkness into Light 

I’ve even got an example of this from Nixon…I said it’s been going on for fifty years. Nixon was horrid even compared to the Republicans at the time. It’s only when he’s compared to Bush and the even more larcenous Republicans currently that he is seen to have any positive qualities. The example, however, pertains to the establishment of HMOs–Health Maintenance Organizations–as a solution to the health care problem. He is the one who brought the profit motive into health care, jumping onto the HMO bandwagon after learning through Ehrlichman from Kaiser Permanente’s CEO, Edgar Kaiser, that “All the incentives are toward less medical care, because…the less care [we] give them, the more money [we] make…and the incentives run the right way.” Explained this way Nixon was sold on the idea; we hear him saying on the recording tape, “Not bad” and “Well, that appeals to me.”

Nice trick, Dick!  So, is that the way Nixon presented it to the American public–“I’ve got this great way that will insure you will suffer more when you’re sick so that my filthy rich friends can wallow deeper in dough”? Hardly. A few days later Nixon rolled out his health care “solution.” In his speech he stressed how this managed care would expand medical care and coverage and be a tremendous boon to the overall health and longevity of Americans.

Giving a helping hand…to your assailants.  And Nixon’s minions in his Republican party and the media took it from there: They turned his deception into talking points and ultimately into “obvious truths.” The American public believed this truism that managed care would lower overall costs. They missed the part that they would not benefit from lowered costs, that lowered costs meant profits that would go into unseen hands, who would then go even further in denying medical care and increasing overall suffering and tragedy so that they could gather even more booty.

From today’s perspective of accelerating medical costs and such widespread denial of coverage and benefits as to require massive corrective legislation, we can see just how well Nixon’s plan to lower the cost of health care and expand coverage worked out for us. So we see how one Republican molded the American mind to make it complicit in its own abuse, to cause average folks to participate in the very assaults on them.

I will return to this example of Nixon and what actually happened with him later on, because there’s more to be said about it.

Mind-Gaming

 

Repetition makes it possible to control.  I just want to finish the thoughts about how this process works, this confusion, making people more manipulated, keeping them stressed and so on so that they will be more receptive. And as I was pointing out, when the Republicans need a change of public opinion or want people to believe a particular thing, the Big Lie is employed; in its repetition it makes it possible to control.

Any one remember the wmd’s in Iraq? Ok. So the persistence in selling an invasion into Iraq was so effective…that persistence of repeating the same thing by all the Republicans was an unqualified success due to its masterful coordination. Republicans are known for this cohesion of action.

Having the sole aim of making money keeps a party focused.  By contrast, the joke that goes around is the statement by an opponent, “I don’t belong to any organized party, I belong to the Democratic Party.” There is this feeling among those up against Republicans because of the radical individualism, the radical differences of opinion that Democrats have.

Whereas Republicans can keep it simple and be that much more persuasive. There can be no disagreement or confusion about an aim so singular, so clear–to benefit themselves and the people that are paying to get them elected. That keeps them pretty consistent and gives them a lot of solidarity. 

Getting a kick out of those rascally Republicans.  Good examples of this acting in lock-step abound in the last few years. How many times have we seen Republicans in perfect array going up against Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the Democrats? Those rascally conservatives were so pleased with themselves. They couldn’t be more proud when not a single one of their hundreds in the House voted for either the Democratic stimulus or budget in Obama’s first year.

“Wtf! Are you in grade school?”  They were so proud of that: they “stared down” Obama (What the f… are they in grade school?). We had Arlen Specter, only lately become a Democrat, who voted in the Senate for the stimulus plan along with the lone two Republican senators–two women, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine. Now that I think about it…they’re being so cohesive and so disciplined…you just got to wonder if some of them tried to take ol’ Arlen Specter out to the woodshed and that’s why he ran to the Democrats.

The Fall of “Obvious Truths”

How do they get Republicans to be so disciplined? Well, one of the things is, they’ve all got the same aim. Whereas if you’re a Democrat, you’re going to have all kinds of concerns; the party allows you to have them. Some Dems might be more interested in health care, and some might be thinking education is the answer…. But with Republicans it’s all the same–corporations, you must help the corporations out… I’ll help you help your big corporation and you’ll help me help my big corporation, and we’ll all continue to get reelected and get plenty of money.

Republicans in plain sight hidden.  So that’s a good way of viewing their differences. But most folks would hardly know that, because Republicans are very effective in avoiding any talk about anything that might give them away. I mean none of the Republicans want to be showed up for what they are really in office for.

But it’s no longer crazy talk.  Of course, this abject distinction between the major parties has become most pronounced over the course of the last fifty years. What I’m saying now doesn’t sound as crazy as when I learned it, when I saw it happening and first spoke of it. I saw this increasing corruption of Republicans to the point of it becoming overt and blatant in the last ten, twenty years…the fall of “obvious truths.”

 

Naked Republicans.  So this viewpoint that Republicans are an owned and paid for subsidiary of corporate behemoths is a more frequently expressed perspective…especially since Bush’s ignoble slide and abject economic and diplomatic failure. Around the end of Bush’s “regime” Republicans had declined twenty percent in numbers, and there was talk of them becoming extinct. They had been showed to be who they are. Finally people were starting to realize that, yeah, yeah, you can be lied to…there was a decline of “obvious truths” corresponding to the light that was dawning and the naked Republicans that could be seen scurrying for the doors.

The Puppet Strings (the Media)

But the Republicans had their help, believe me they had their help. Ok, so who helped them? Well, like I was saying… The first thing is you have politicians with the Big Lie, and they’re repeating it endlessly. And that persistence is so extremely effective and comprehensive.

 

Lying Down on the Thinking Job…or…Thinking Is Down on the Lying Job

The next thing is the paid pundits. You would think a pundit’s job would require more than the exposure to facts and the time allotted for that, but also some time for thoughtful consideration and analysis of those facts. Isn’t part of their job to think? Don’t they have that duty, and get that privilege, unlike a lot of people, who might be working two jobs and taking care of the kids and such and so don’t have time to ponder anything? But these are pundits who are supposed to give opinions. And you would think that their salaries includes time both to be on TV and also to study issues and to think about them. But why is it then that they are so complicit, even cooperative?

Everybody has one…except those paid to.  Backing up, being handsomely paid to do so, you’d think TV commentators and pundits would bring some thoughtful consideration and analysis to the issues. You would think they would have some understanding and therefore conclusions and therefore opinion on these issues, for isn’t that what they as pundits are required to have? They’re called pundits, they are opinion-makers, they are opinion havers.

Everybody needs a little understanding…  Perhaps we can understand their complacency and complicity by considering their situation. They are immersed in this barrage of irrationalities that is coming out constantly from the Republicans over all kinds of airways, radio, TV, what have you. And don’t forget a pundit’s job requires they take it in; they can’t just tune out; they have to be on top of these things. They have to be on top of what people are saying, including and perhaps especially the Republicans. 

How long could you maintain your sanity if…?  So perhaps they’re more brainwashed than others. Perhaps they are since they hear the lies more than the rest of us. I don’t know. That’s a kind way of saying that they didn’t do their job, too, though…the one about seeking out the the truth behind the barrage of lies, if they still remember it.

I need also point out that they’re working for huge corporations, virtually all of them these days. Only on the internet is there the possibility of unbiased thought. And we know who owns the corporations…it ain’t me or you or the average jane. So I don’t think it accidental they’re unlikely to speak for us.

The Ladder of Status

So whose view is being rained upon us by these storm-clouds of “obvious truths”?

The great suck UPward.  Well, there’s a tendency, like I said, going right down the line: The wishes of the upper echelons are sycophantically served by those just below them. For those a step down are repelled by the idea of losing their lives of moneyed comfort and becoming, god forbid, like the “unwashed” below. They also, like everyone, have a craving to be “liked” and approved of by someone above.

Take my word for it, this jonesing is something in each of us, even those of very high status. It is an urge we all carry forward from our earliest experiences of life. So even those sitting smugly above us are cravingly desirous of the approval of those above them. And so it goes right down the ladder of status. Those of each level sucking up pathetically to those above them while patronizing those just below.

Dandified little pups.  And at one of those levels are the pundits and journalists. You have to remember that they, also, from a certain perspective, can be seen as the pathetic little boys and girls they are, still wanting daddy’s approval. They don’t have a clue that they are coming across as smiling tail-wagging pets eager to please in the foppish performance of their cultivated tricks. 

So I’m not sure, but maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why the pundits shy from the cool light of truth. Maybe it’s part of it. Maybe they can’t see it because they are become one with it, not seeing the forest for the trees. Maybe it’s that they’re dancing to a long ago tune accepting approving smiles as payment for their jig. Or maybe it’s some of both… and perhaps something more? Who knows? What matters is they were not doing their job, as we see now.

The Corporate Feast

So I saw over time this slow, steady stream of pundits and journalists adopting Republican mantrams as obvious facts. And that was very sad. Like I was saying before about the special interests…Democrats are accused of having special interests of their own. It is often heard that unions are a special interest, that education is a special interest.

“Persons R Us. Corporations R Not.”  And even though Democrats would say, but, you know, doesn’t everybody get the  benefit from education? I never heard the pundits or the moderator say, “Well, that’s true, and, Mr. Republican, what do you have to say to that? What do you mean, “special interest”? You’re promoting the coal companies. Are the coal companies benefiting everybody? By your trying to get them profits, trying to create tax breaks for them, is that going to benefit the people…in any way?”

When you’re feeling pissed on, they’d like you thinking it’s really money coming down.  I’ll get to that later, but obviously, you can try to make a case that somehow money to corporations will benefit ordinary people, but it’s easier and more honest to show how it is actually at their expense. So the payoffs to the corporate hogs are hardly indirect contributions to the common weal. Shall we review recent events and remember the gluttonous corporate profits, with their CEOs sitting down to enjoy hundred million dollar banquets? Bonuses, paychecks, jets and yachts to feast on. Even the stockholders only receive crumbs from that table.

CEO with fifty cookies to Tea Party bloke with one: “That union guy wants some of your cookie.”  And with all their girth, getting hundred-million-dollar “at-a-boys,” you see them giving money away? With all these people having problems, and having foreclosures and everything, do you see them giving money away? I mean…no.

So anyway, the pundits and journalists are seen adopting the Republican mantrams as obvious facts and as unnecessary to ponder or question as if…well, probably they couldn’t help it after a while of continual, coordinated, and irritating repetition, I don’t know…so not “as if,” it is clear they rolled over.

 

Disposable Truth, Reality Transplants

GeorgeOrwell-land – Fun New Capitalist Theme Park!

Smoke and lies around tax and spend.  It was as if these pundits hearing so many gop lies–tax and spend Democrats and such–had undergone a reality transplant. Somehow they disposed of their knowing that it was the Republicans who tripled, nearly quadrupled the National Debt under Reagan-Bush.

 

The truth that it was Bush the W who doubled the Debt mysteriously ended up in the trash.

We’re in such bad economic shape now because of these Republican spendthrifts. Yet there would be the pundits repeating, even after Reagan-Bush and the recession they caused, “it’s the tax-and-spend Democrats.” America’s “thinkers” would forget that Clinton had balanced the budget for the first time in decades during his terms. They would not remember that those supposed “tax and spend” Democrats left to the Republicans who stole back the presidency in 2000 a surplus, which they promptly handed over to the rich.

I recall how during the Nineties, tax and fiscal policy was so carefully managed by Clinton’s administration. It was touch-and-go maneuvering out of the fiscal ditch, few people thought they could do it. How could anyone, let alone Democrats, balance a budge let alone reverse the huge National Debt at that time? But with Robert Reich at the wheel they did.

So what happened? Just as soon as the Republicans enter the White House, they issue a tax cut for the rich. The surplus was no more. Wow! And, still, pundits didn’t saying anything.  People didn’t say anything.

Disposable truths. Are you reeling in the years?  How do you explain this barrage of historical malfeasance? How do you explain this lack of reaction to obvious wrongness, unfairness? It’s supposed to be a country of, by, and for the people. And most folks still think it is, even despite all the evidence of their eyes.

Maybe Americans cannot learn from, even remember, recent history because their perceptions and memories are not validated around them. If  on the media their feelings are not confirmed, folks are going to doubt themselves; they’re going to be confused.

Why commentators would be so easily forgetful and then complicit is the question. We were wondering if perhaps it is the continual bombardment of untruth they are under. In such a setting, required to stay immersed in Republican culture so much more than the rest of us, maybe they would find it nearly impossible to be as questioning and confrontational as would be required if they were to truly do their job in helping to clarify events.

 

Besides, they know these Republican mouthpieces socially; they play golf, have drinks with them, and more in their off hours. Of course these media types want to be seen as civil people, too. So they don’t want to say, on their TV program, “Aw, c’mon. That’s bullshit, man!” They’re not going to say that. They might think it’s bullshit, but they’re not going to tell us!

And it’s going to keep the American people confused. If the obvious lies of the right-wing politicians and propagandists are not pointed out by the reporters who are questioning them, well then you only have the Democrats to counter these untruths. And if these pundits are also saying that the Democrats and the Republicans are equally the same and that all politicos are corrupt and such, well, after a while, when you hear that enough, you’re not going to have really any basis for discerning the truth. You’re not going to be seeing what’s actually been going on over the years. In the last century, Democrats were responsible for the most influential and most popular public policy developments: they brought in social security, medicare; they supported the unions and minimum wage measures that boosted the lifestyles of the American worker. So consider the right wing and media achievement in getting Americans to forget all that? Wow.

Narrative for the new history…Why that’s one dumb Republican!  We even had one Republican, Steve Austria, who not long ago found himself in the spotlight. He was an elected Congressional representative…god only knows how that happened. He was talking on economic policy. He was changing history to fit his argument, which they do, you know. But this guy really believed it! He was saying how it was Roosevelt who caused the Great Depression! He actually maintained it was Roosevelt who was in power when the Great Depression hit. He said the Depression was caused by tax and spend.

No, it was Hoover. Monetary policy favoring the rich caused and kept the Great Depression going; tax and spend, e.g., social security, is what got us out of, not into, the ditch. All this is part of history that is practically–except for you, Steve–common knowledge. There were what were called Hoover, not Roosevelt, camps full of the poor unemployed. Wow. 

Dogma for the new religion.  “Obvious truths” from on high.  How did people become so dumb all of a sudden? Anyway, I think a lot of it has to do with these things being repeated over and over again until people think they’re true. And it’s unnecessary to ponder or question them. It seems as if the pundits felt this way after a while, to the point that when the Republican or conservative would say her or his talking point, it was almost as if that frequently heard statement was gospel. Seeing the media’s response, you would think that drivel had been carried down from Mount Sinai, engraved on a stone tablet. It didn’t have to be reasoned about, it was given down from “on high.” Over and over and over again.

Smoke and lies around unions. Truth taken out at the knees – unions are the new rich fat cats.  So the lie, the mantram, the notion at one time in my life, was nonexistent. At another time, quite the opposite, it was all pervasive. At one time folks believed that unions represented working people like themselves, more than anything else. At the later time and now, the exact opposite of the truth–that union workers are the wealthy and their leaders are now the fat cats, to hear people tell it. But well, of course it was the original view that was  true: it is the American worker who is represented by unions, for they carry their voices. The Republican line, the lie, that unions are entities equally as small and distinct from our society of people as is corporations, and are therefore “special,” and that what is good for unions is bad for people, for ordinary citizens, somehow given Frankensteinian life, jolted large and menacing by incessant repetition into zombified minds, blotting out the truth like a monster would the sun, and terrorizing, so they run away and fight, the very folks that now muddied truth would lift up.   

Reason and Action Eroded, The Game Is All That Remains

(Note to ordinary folks: Ordinary folks are out to get you.)

Well since they believe a loving God would condemn them to endless suffering, don’t see why we can’t convince them their own biggest enemy is to be found in a mirror.  But the Republicans were at one point cornered by justifiable attacks about being backed by special interests, so they concocted this idea that the Democrats were too.

Everybody’s doing it.  They couldn’t deny it was true about them, so they just made it like, well, it was everybody. That way they avoided being revealed as bad people. For what they did wouldn’t make them bad. It would just make them politicians.

An added benefit for them in “democratizing” the guilt this way is that folks thinking all politicians are the same, that they’re all taking money, means they would be unlikely to vote. They would say, “Ah,  they’re all crooks.” Is not that what we’re hearing? Isn’t what we’re hearing that there is no such thing as an honest politician? And keeping the masses, who are helped by Democrats, away from the polls can only help Republicans engaged in swindling them.

The really special interests. What they want is at our expense.  But once the term special interest meant something very specific, and it was hardly confusing. We need to go back to the time before the whole subject became so muddled and full of misinformation that even the pundits didn’t know what they were talking about anymore. Back when the term was coined, the special interests were thought of as the interests of the very small numbers of wealthy people and their financial arms, big businesses, who sought favors from government that were at odds with the welfare of the masses of less moneyed Americans.

For example there might be a group from, say, the coal industry, whose interests would be higher profits for being allowed to spew extra amounts of toxic fumes into the atmosphere. That would be the kinds of things they would want: something that benefited them at the expense of the majority of folks. Consider: If what was sought would benefit most other people as well, it would not need to be lobbied for solely by this small group, this business concern. Such a change would be advanced on behalf of the greater number of people and would succeed that way.

So a really special interest would push for something that would bring them greater profits in spite of the fact that it would hurt the majority of Americans. In this example of air pollution, it would be felt negatively by all Americans, eventually the whole planet, including people of other countries, and even the plant and animal life, in which species in existence thousands of times longer than us would be gone forever. This is why an interest might be “special.” It would be special in that its benefits would be singular, not shared. To the contrary, the common good would be reduced for the temporary financial benefit of a relatively small group of individuals, in this case, coal barons. Keep in mind also it would only be the rich capitalist owners in these industries who would see the benefits. That is the real meaning of special.

 

Religion of Capitalism – The Game Is the One Truth Faith

And then the great threat.  In a clear-headed sense, a boon to a special interest would involve some sort of legislative help to the profits of, basically, these special rich capitalist owners; and it would be given, very often, at great cost to all those others I have been mentioning who were not in the Congressional bargaining room. So how could such a thing be justified? Well, here is how it works, beginning with another great lie, delivered as a threat.

The threat would amount to this: That unless these favors are granted, say, as in the example, if you didn’t let us put that stuff in the air, we’re gonna have to have layoffs. The threat of workers losing their jobs is always, always, the gauntlet thrown down to jimmy profits into the hands of a few.

 

And saving worker’s jobs is always, always thrown out to the public as the justification for granting these singular boons. So the American worker is indirectly threatened with the loss of a job and a paycheck.

The part that will rarely be spoke is the cost of this legislative largess to the general population. In our example, what will not be mentioned is that some people’s lives will actually be ended–there is always some of this, though this is the biggest unspoken–for the granting of this wish. What is recklessly ignored is that when this regulation easing, as in our example, goes into effect, it will actually kill some people; it will diminish people’s lives; it will increase diseases, cancer and emphysema for example, and overall it will result in more suffering for thousands or millions of times more people than the few that will benefit. Do you begin to see how really special a real special interest is?

But as for these costs to us ordinary, non-special, people, they will not be mentioned by either side of the bargaining. This will hardly even be a chip in the negotiations. What will be put on the table is worker’s jobs. That threat is that unless these favors are granted, well, we’re gonna have to have layoffs. And then they would say, “Well, American workers will suffer.”

And that’s the magical meaningless mantram–“American workers will suffer”–which is another one of those lies again added to create fog, to create confusion, in this case a smog of misinformation, stifling the reasoned understanding of what is actually at stake.

And then outright extortion.  In fact we had a conspicuous example of this, the way…let’s call it what it is…extortion was employed by the banks a few years ago. The filthy rich, in the guise of investors, pulled off one of the biggest extortions in American history and got away scot free. Even the Democrats could not see through it (still don’t). Well, in any other instance of such a tactic, in any other instance by anybody in America doing what was done, it would have been criminally prosecuted. But not so in the case of these special rich people, represented by these bank executives. 

How spectacular this oversight in singling out the guilty is rarely brought out. But truly massive is this miscarriage of justice. Consider that there are vastly more ordinary Americans than there are in the tiny group of filthy rich. So there will of course be far more instances in the general population of any crime you would think of. In this case we are looking at extortion, and virtually every instance of such a crime committed among the general population would attract the intense attention and the full wrath of justice there. Naturally, the harm to the victim or even victims would be constrained to the tiny number of people affected, and the limited amounts of money involved, in any particular case.

On the other hand we have a much tinier group of people, the filthy rich and the heads of the banks that represent them. And the percentage of that group involved in such an extortion is far greater than the incidence of that crime in the greater population, i.e., they represent a high crime zone for such malfeasance and a much bigger danger when their crimes go unpunished and can continue unfettered. Such small groups with higher rates of crime, when there is smaller mounds of money to protect them, are labeled as “criminal gangs,” “hoodlums,” “organized crime,” “gang-bangers” and the like. But not so when the perpetrators dress in such fine suits and stink with money. 

Further the scale on which these crimes are perpetrated are that of the entire population of the United States, and expands itself to include harm to those in other nations and even among the unborn…future generations. So the the magnitude of the crime is infinitely larger than could ever be pulled off by an average American. Still the smaller scale, less harmful instances of this crime are ruthlessly sought out and punished. Whereas the immeasurably larger crime of the super wealthy is let go; and this in spite of the fact mentioned that the future threat is larger and considerably more likely if the current wrong is not addressed.

With these things known, how mind-boggling is it to notice this blatant extortion not pointed out, not labeled as such, hardly addressed?

Their kind of “sharing the pain” – My problems will be your problems, they say.  Well here we have, in this case, the banks, the preeminent fronts for the organized filthy rich, demanding extortion money, which if not received…here we go again…eventually would result in their inability to do business and would affect people. This threat is one of their ploys.

 

Just like the coal barons in the example above who would ask for concessions saying if they did not get them they would be forced to lay off American workers, the banks would have their way of trying to convince that they should be helped or it will affect great numbers of people. In their case,  they would say it would affect their ability to do business and to serve the American people. One way or another the idea is to obscure the reality that help to the banks will help primarily this small group, in this case, of bankers, and to make it that their problem is seen as our problem, the public’s problem. This increases the pressure on politicians to grant the favor. For it is spun that it is not the wealthy investors whose welfare is at stake but the public at large.

So there is the extortion, you see. Unlike coal barons threatening to fire workers, essentially bankers threatened to stop providing loans. They would hold them back if not paid. The degree to which this was untrue is shown by the fact that after they did get the bailout, they used it to feather their nests and to expand their bank’s market share. Chase Bank, for example, sat on the bailout cash they received, with the intention of using it to buy out other banks that would fail, which is exactly what they did with the money. Banks also gave out those high bonuses like I’ve discussed.

Meanwhile the public was not served. Money remained tight. There arose a big hue and cry over the fact that the money was covering bankers’ losses (i.e., going into their pockets) but the public was not getting the loans they needed. So in retrospect that money would have been much more wisely spent going somehow directly into the people’s hands who needed it, not by funneling it through the hands of gluttonous banking institutions.

And what about their threat of it affecting society at large if they were not placated? Well, society did pay dearly, did suffer, even though the banks were paid their extortion money, handsomely too. And since so much of that loot went to the folks who didn’t need it, overall the economy ended up worse off. Short term the problem was swept under the rug, but in  borrowing from the future to help rich people today it guaranteed the problem would get a permanent installation in America’s economy. Seriously, this problem can not be calculated or even imagined away, so Americans will suffer its results forever as far as we know.

So this is the extortion and the lie that sits in the middle of the threat that it is the American workers who will suffer if the wealthy don’t receive their payola.

For it is never the workers or, in this case, those needing loans who would suffer if the extortion is not given in to, it is the fat cats, coal barons, filthy rich who would suffer, and for that matter, not even all that much compared to the suffering inflicted on the public by their greedy practices, whether or not the extortion money or concession is provided.

Anyway, the game is to claim that the pain of those with wealth is really the American people’s pain, so as to make it seem a large number of people would be helped. That’s one of their lies that gets by; this is how they seek to “share the pain”…”spread their burden.” It is a banking problem, in this instance, something that has had disastrous effects on the economy and on people’s lives, but it would be better handled by society if the problem of the people involved would be addressed, not the problems…money lost, investments gone under…of the filthy rich.

The upshot is that over and over we here these big lies of how “the American people”…one of those huge buzz words… “the American people are going to be hurt.” Or, it became, “the working people of this country,” or in the example of the coal barons, above, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs. In light of what has been said, I hope it is clear what b.s. that is.

How they try to convince that their problems are ours.  We see the threat; we see the extortion; we see the crime and its magnitude, and we see the lie that gives life to it all. Let us look more closely at the manner of the making of this spectacular ruse.

First…some of this has been said, but watch how it unfolds…you’re starting out with a group that is a minute segment of the population as a whole. But they maintain they are identical with or equivalent to society as a whole, making it that it is not the magnitude of their money but of their numbers which raises their voice above all, which is not true of course. I was talking earlier about how they would do that  in making up the tax codes. Recall, they would say, “Well, society as a whole will suffer if you don’t…”

So they would always package any benefit to them as being not for them, really, at all but for a great number of people. And if they could pull that off, if they could make that magical equivalency then it was like they had a home run. They would say the working people of this country would be affected, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs, for example.

Then here is how they make that number bigger: These people, in this example the coal barons, not to be underestimated, would assert that because of their layoffs naturally there would be more of these layoffs by other coal companies. And then, they’d say, these layoffs would affect all the shopkeepers, retail merchants and so on who service the impacted regions; which in turn…gotta keep making it bigger and bigger, more and more and more people…which in turn would affect all the industries making the products that won’t be sold because of the layoffs; and of course a pull back in demand for products means fewer workers needed to make what is needed, thus an increase of unemployment in all other sectors would ensue; which unemployed workers on a grander scale would have them unable to buy from their local merchants; which equals the losses to the manufacturers in an ever more expanding array of products and industries; requiring they let people go; thus even more, ever accelerating rates of layoffs and widening unemployment; well , those laid off would not be buying the products in their local shops; which leads to…well armageddon the way they would have it. So it just gets bigger and bigger; it goes around and around and around.

To Win at All Costs

But they will say anything to win.  Just a hint though, this is one of those seemingly rational analyses that although seeming to make sense is not grounded in the real world; it is speculative and made up. It’s roots are solely in the dark hearts and motivations of those attempting to push through their argument, to give it added weight, to basically win at any cost. That’s a lot of what the difference is. It is that some people will wager with any amount of harm to others; they will say anything, will make up anything. They don’t have to have any facts, they don’t have to know if that’s the way it works. As McCain said, “I don’t know much about economics.” This is the guy who’s popular among the corporate crowd of the country, the same group making that simplistic argument above. 

What’s truth got to do with it?  So basically their game involves winning at any cost to others, being willing to assert anything, with no thought that truth should even come into a bargaining situation. I mean, really, the attitude is that, what the hell does truth have to do with it? It’s like, we can make a good argument; we can convince people; we can persuade people; we can fool enough people into thinking it’s true…and that’s all that matters. [Footnote 1]

So you see they’re getting kind of cocky; they don’t even think they have to have truth…any actual facts or evidence backing up their arguments. Then you have your whole attitude of, “What the hell, why is anybody bothering to bring any truth to this?”

 

So they don’t bother even to come with any evidence to be laid out on the table; it becomes the most elegant spectacle in sophistry imaginable.

Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real

What it becomes then for these special interests and their Republican representatives is something with about as much gravity as a board game. They’re seeing these matters, which are of dire importance to most of society, about the way we do when playing a game of Monopoly, in which we compete without consequences and try to win without remorse. Though the differences should be noted. There’s nothing at stake in a game of Monopoly among friends; it is just simple play with light-hearted risks. There are no real families having to move out if one player buys up all the land and houses of another; there’s nobody even paying rent of $40 if they land on Boardwalk, nobody suffering when you’re told to pay a doctor bill…or to go to jail.

Going directly to jail, not passing Go – The only part that’s really like Monopoly.   This point, however, keep in mind as increased perspective on the real world actions of these wealthy folk. In Monopoly you try to win. And you would consider deception. You might hide how much money or property you have…if you’re asked, for example, you might not tell the truth. And this dissembling would be considered a good ploy and harmless. Even the other players might admire such a deception .

But is this the way it is in the bargaining of the special interests through their lackey paid-for Republican representatives? No. The consequences of their cavalier play are being felt somewhere. But they cover up their unconcern through the pretense of acting on interests not of their own, but  of that of that reliable home base of the society at large.

We’re not supposed to be Monopoly…or the Wild West.  So, there’s Monopoly, then there’s the real world, where things like deception or whatever for the purpose of winning have real world effects on people. But we’re supposedly living in an era or time that is not like the old Wild West. We purportedly have a democracy with the aim of benefiting the majority of people, or at least as many people as possible. And we claim our intention is to do this without unduly punishing any particular group or having any persons inflicted with unnecessary grief. It’s supposed to be fair; government is supposed to serve people.

This Game’s Not For You

Getting to home base, in their baseball game.  So that’s why I was saying, in the early days when there was bargaining in Congress by the special interests they maintained a pretense of caring about people. After all, we maintain that government is supposed to be representing the American people. So moneyed interests would garner these special breaks, in the tax codes or wherever, because basically they would get to the point where they would convince enough deciders, even if it wasn’t true, that such a change, in the tax code or policy, or whatever, would benefit society at large. As I said, that is kind of like reaching home base for them. You got it then; you’re home free if you can make that link. For that is the touted purpose of our elected deciders, it is to benefit the society at large.

Now, nobody can benefit all the people all the time, so that’s as close as you can get…society at large…it’s as near to a home base as you can get. Anyway, that was the thought involved on both sides of this whole game for a long time. And I stress–if you haven’t gotten the point already…I’ve been leading up to it–that this was the thinking on both sides of this game. It’s like a game for the Republicans, just like Monopoly for us.

And, how was it played? Well the thoughts were, if you were able to get to home base–which is equal to proving a benefit for average Americans, society at large or as a whole, or the electorate–then you score.

But that thinking has changed over time. This difference in particular shows the effectiveness of the brainwashing resulting from the repetition of Republican lies over time…the enshrinement of “obvious truths.”

I noticed that over time…and this is a development folks younger than me don’t know about…that the terms formerly used in the game were no longer used. No longer were phrases like “society-at-large,” the common good, government of and by the people, the welfare of the majority, government “caring” for people, anyone’s suffering being eased, and such even brought in. Words like suffering, compassion, ease, good, benefit, the people, were not uttered anymore. In fact they were felt to be counterproductive. They were considered deal breakers if let into the conversation on matters that were deemed, well…”real.”

What’s Compassion Got to Do With It? 

You don’t know what I’m getting at. But this is the indicator of the gradual change in our country that would be missed by those younger than myself. I only see this glaring discrepancy because of having lived many years in an America whose values were different, and who thought differently, more compassionately than today. I know of an America where even that last big word that I used, compassionately, wasn’t the dirty word that it is today…or the certain game loser, deal breaker if uttered.

No.  See, what’s happened today is that it’s not even society at large that is supposed to benefit. Compassion is not a goal, or even a value, when negotiating. The scornful repetition of those words, “bleeding heart liberal,” has had its intended effect. No, no, it’s not the function of government to care about anybody anymore.

It may be hard for you to realize what a huge change this is from, like, Roosevelt days. The Great Depression went on for a long time, crushing  hopes and aspirations, shortening lives, increasing suffering. People lived beneath this yoke for a time that must often have felt interminable. They came out of this darkness only slowly, and with great effort.

So, yes, in those days, the easing of suffering was a value, compassion was a noble thing, not indicative of weakness like today. This is the way it was then and for most of the decades afterward, not much changing. Even Eisenhower, a Republican… he wasn’t, y’know, at war with the common good in the Fifties; he didn’t think government was not supposed to be compassionate, that it wasn’t their job or anything, that they couldn’t give anybody a helping hand or anything like that. But starting with Reagan and slowly since then it has become that.

People suffering, people dying…and this guy thinks it’s a card game!  Perhaps you’ve heard it too. At the time of it, you would see it discussed all over. There was Rick Santelli on CNBC. This was at the time when it first got out that Obama might just–with millions of foreclosures, people living in tent-cities and everything–might just present as part of his overall policy to deal with the problem something to help…ok, there’s one of those words (help), a certain game-loser; so you know what’s coming next…something that might “help” people who are heading into foreclosure, people losing their homes. The idea was to renegotiate deals with the bank, to recalculate the terms of their mortgage to make it workable to both sides again.

Don’t forget the banks had before that been given huge amounts of money by the American people. So in this plan, instead of proceeding with a foreclosure the banks were asked to be willing to accept slightly less money on the loan than the original terms called for.

It was thought, what would that hurt? After all the banks aren’t going to lose. At the expense of the American people they’ve made out like bandits…in fact, they’ve been bandits…they used extortion to get that money out. With this policy they would get some money out of the loan instead of none in the case of the foreclosure; they would even still make a profit. The only thing they wouldn’t be able to do is to add that note to the pile of losses they would be claiming as part of the government bailout.  An aside, that last part–making less money than if they could claim it a loss–is the key to understanding the uproar about Obama’s plan to help strapped home owners.

So we saw Rick Santelli, a highly visible financial commentator for CNBC, someone I saw everyday for years. He stood in front of the camera on the floor of the stock exchange; CNBC broadcast it to the world. He was against Obama’s plan to “help” mortgage-holders…they should probably have used a different word than help. As he put it “In America, a card laid is a card played.” He said, “This does away with contract law!”

Yes, we’ve made this mistake before.  Well, yea, yea, they used to say those things back in Hoover’s day too, alright? And then when everybody was hurting, and there was thirty to forty percent unemployment and nobody was making any money including the rich fat cats and they were losing their shirts in investments and no longer making money in the stock market, then…then…all of a sudden, ok, then it was ok to help out people who were starving.

But why do we insist on making it again?  Well, why did it have to get to that? And why has it gotten to that again, even to where it’s back to where it was…again…at the beginning of the Great Depression: No compassion allowed.

What is that? It’s like “Oh, these people are all deadbeats here.” Oh, yea, all those millions of people? Doesn’t have anything to do with all that money that went to the rich people? Nothing to do with the fact that over the course of all these years we’ve seen the tax rates for the very wealthy go from seventy percent in the Fifties to where it is down below thirty-five percent now? To offset those huge cuts in revenue, did we get any more prosperous in that time? Did those increasing cuts in taxes for the wealthy increasingly stimulate the economy? I repeat, did we get any more prosperous in that time? Did the tax cuts work the way the fat cats said they would?

Well, I was there. No, they didn’t…and we didn’t…didn’t get more prosperous. We’re a lot worse off. Y’know, when I was growing up my father was poor. But only he had to work! He might bring home fifty dollars a week, with six kids. But my mother didn’t have to work. Believe me, fifty dollars in that day, it wasn’t like it was worth a thousand dollars or something; there wasn’t that much difference.

So there used to be this idea of benefiting society-at-large. There was this thing put out–even though it was a sham on the part of Republicans–that if you could somehow convince the Democrats that what you wanted was going to benefit the “society at large” they might come over to your side. Republicans still found it useful to promote the idea that they were representing the people.

What “extra” kitchen?  But no, no, no. If you say now that something is going to benefit somebody…. Like Santelli said, “Well, a card laid…contract law’s all important…blah, blah, blah…. Does any of you people out there…” He was talking to the stock exchange people; he said, “Does any of you want to pay your hard-earned money so that the guy next door can have that extra kitchen that he put in?”

Now, where the hell did that come from? I hardly think that many of the people losing their homes were out there spending all their money on “extra” kitchens. So what’s the implication? The implication is that we’ve got a bunch of losers, spendthrifts, who are throwing their money away and they don’t deserve a break.

More likely it was your “extra” kitchen, Rick. And, thank you very much but we’ve already paid, and dearly, for it.  Duh! Doesn’t that sound like the banks? “Extra kitchen”…Doesn’t that sound like the stock broker people, doesn’t that sound like the people who are talking about the other people this way? Wow.

Anyway, it was played over and over again. There were even people, even some pundits and governmental folks in public who were saying, “Yes, he was expressing what lot of people are thinking.” What the hell is that? That nobody can catch a break unless you’re rich? See, that’s what happens when something is repeated over and over and over again… Self-benefiting mean-spiritedness like this can be spoken of as being, somehow, reasonable.

A broken person is preferable to a broken rule in this game.  And what is it that was repeated over and over and over again? Well, let me just put it this way…because I was there. You know the real issue here…when you say that it’ll benefit “society at large” or you say it’s going to help or benefit real people, or you indicate in some way that it’s gonna ease the suffering of a lot of people… The real thing insinuated has to do with that thoroughly maligned idea–“bleeding heart liberal”–and things like that.

Worse than that, these days, is that when that human touch somehow gets in, it’s no more considered a game! “It’s supposed to be a game,” that’s what they’re thinking, now.  And it’s like, “Aw come on you’re trying to benefit people instead of playing a game.” That’s where that contract law comes in, it’s like, “No, that’s breaking the rules.” Well we’re supposed to be running a government for the people not for the rules, aren’t we?

You value people above rules? You’re no doubt a “hippie.”  So you don’t even hear goodness coming in anymore. Or if you do hear the word compassionate it’s at most the naive utterance of someone that’s wet behind the years…some newbie or hippie…some “soft-headed” person who might have used it in a question in a town meeting, or the like.

And that’s another thing. A hippie? What the hell’s a hippie? Well this hippie can tell you. That is a definition I’ve watched change over the years. The definition in these strange days and among these current cold-hearted people is way different than originally.

In looking at this change in the meaning of hippie we bring into view another aspect of the overall argument I am making. I can tell you now that at the end you will see it all comes together neatly.

It all makes sense because of some basic human feelings, which are even present in large groups. Unfortunately those widely shared feelings are completely at odds with another set of commonly held basic human feelings that can be present and shared in another large group. That might sound complicated.

 

Compassion = “hippie.” Mean-spirited = the “real” reality of the game.  What I’m trying to say is, who might that hippie be? Basically, these days, if you are one of those that uses words like compassionate…you‘re a hippie!

And on the other side of this, the side that is presented to all, promulgated to everyone, and the only one considered “real,” we’ve got these mean-spirited feelings. They are at war with the idea that we have government that’s there to at all benefit, be on the side of, or even be for its citizens.

Like earlier I brought up the example of the Food and Drug Administration as something that benefits everyone, actual people, though it puts constraints on businesses. Government seen this way exists to protect American people in situations where they would otherwise be powerless. And that is based on this old-fashioned notion that it is a good thing to save people from dying or from suffering in situations where a single individual is helpless against a cultural or societal wrong. Government could be seen this way because one preeminent value was that life was precious and good, that people dying was not good, that it was important to prevent that to the extent one could…more important than money or profits or the comfort and pleasure of people with riches. Those turn-of-the-century “hippies” valued life over arbitrary rules, people over profits, the common good over the capitalist game.

But I guess nowadays they’d say, “No, no, no…those people paid for that food!” And, you know, let the buyer beware. A dollar laid is a dollar played, after all.

That’ll do it for “Part Two” of “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths.'” This is Part Three coming up.

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Seven:
The Rise and Fall
of ‘Obvious Truths’ Part 3″

 

Footnotes

1.  For a humorous aside on this attitude of the truth not mattering when it comes to the game, check out this “Auto Salesman Tells All on Sillymickel” below.

This is another takeoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness” — a much longer audio clip here (http://bit.ly/autoclass).

Auto Salesman has the clips from “Anatomy” titled “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como does The Doors” (http://bit.ly/ComoDoors) and “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” (http://bit.ly/snorter). There is a spinoff, as well, at http://bit.ly/ComoDoors2, titled “AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig.”

This one, just below, is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego:

“Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel” – Comedy Monologue, audio clip

 by SillyMickel Adzema

“Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel”

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 History Unspun The Smoke, Lies, And Revelations Sound Clips

About SillyMickel, Auto Salesman says:

“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like, ‘Oh, he says, oh, he says like, oh, I…why, he says…he says,

‘Why George W. Bush, he, uh, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was a government job, all for the purpose of doing this and that, and it killed thousands of people,’

“and, not only that he said the scientists are saying that we only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.

“And I say, “You call them reasons?” ….

“You call them reasons?”  I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocket book one bit!  Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care?  I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to effect them!

“Now, as far as the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever  in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care?

“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop botherin’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it matter!?….”

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

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,’ PartTwo

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 Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

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

 

Continue on this site with
“Culture War, Part  Seven:
The Rise and Fall
of ‘Obvious Truths’ Part 3″

 

Invite you to follow me on Twitter: 
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Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule, Part Two

Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule, Part Two

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.  [Continued below audio]

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two

an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

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 here, 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.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

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 susceptible to “human nature,” there are others who would not be.

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.

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

Image of A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush, with Admiration for the Great Bush-Paulson-“Filthy Rich” Caper by SillyMickel Adzema

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 longevity and potency of a template so simple in this age of Ocean’s Eleven, high tech wizardry that could have been employed and indeed was employed, for example, for the 911 caper. Yet this simple motive is still moving people?

Apparently so aligned with the human nature hardly changed. A few bags of silver?

Utopia undone

Anyway, back to the economy, remember folks at that time, still under Clinton and before Bush took office we had a budget surplus that we were eagerly debating how we could use to benefit our country and 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 had the marks of beginning to get out of hand.

All those happy ideas of how to use the surplus. Yet no one envisioned the possibility that actually occurred, requiring, as it would, that people of unnatural stupidity or 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 any and all objection at any level, including that of the media, and therefore the population. Well, who would have foreseen such an elaborate and abhorrent possibility?

“Bring back the flat Earth!”

For one thing its abject failure recently apparent, its certainty to benefit few if any, its guarantee of destroying huge benefits possible 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 reviving the disproven economics of only eight years prior to 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, eight minimum? 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. Many a Republican President had claimed it as a top priority and made it a central plank in their election platforms. But in Reagan’s case, for example, a term or two later, after absolute failure and in fact causing a tripling or quadrupling of the National Debt instead, they had claimed it 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 clear retraction afterward, again in his own words and captured unmistakably on videos is slam dunk proven example 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 comprehensive reversal that has Bush fully opting to remove all the protections deemed by legislators over hundreds 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 had it thoroughly checked out ahead of time and foreseen it. The pundits were nonstop in their analyzing various aspects of it that should have given rise to suspicion and led to investigation long before it actually occurred.

But there seemed to be no end to the, “I don’t know how this happened. It shouldn’t have. It seems impossible”…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 causes any more than that chemicalized frozen chunk of waste from airplanes 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 and investigator, or at least a would-be one, came before Congress.

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.

C-Student, Bluto-Bush

Bush’s response is always, he don’t claim to be an A-student. What is it with these Republicans all thinking they’re Hermann’s Hermits?!

Bluto-Bush

What are you in “Animal House,” Bush? Who are you? Bluto? Telling your housemates,

“Hell, buds, ain’t no need to do any studying 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 enlisted 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 right is white! 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 one example of something rampant throughout the media and throughout government 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 from the sound of those journalists

…without a clue about the Maddof scandal … …y’know, I mean, with all this evidence nobody did anything… they were doing lots of scratching their head and wondering, and “Gee, I dunno” “Hard to understand” and such instead of off-the-air investigation which 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: To my brain, question! (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, well “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 perfect scheme: Republicans know that educated people vote by greater percentages more for Democrats than for Republicans. So, first part: Gut education; make education more expensive.

Also, continue to change higher education…as started in 1971 so…as I saw it happen…so it is swept of all the kinds of content and courses that often lead to insight, that lead to people becoming individuals. Instead heavily fund highly specialized programs of ethically neutral technical information. Forget the arbitrary culture- and time-bound and ephemeral and changing 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. Imagine 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 very technical job they teach you. But you’ll never be able to find a place that to use that training anywhere else because it only applies to the 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 peculiar 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 government ever to have existed…I’m talking about Reagan putting it out now…they encourage the uneducated to feel they’re 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, hard-working, uneducated man to inform you of what’s what, along with the help, of course, of a Republican Party (and now of course blatantly in the media with Fox “News”) a 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 a better person 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 who 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, ridiculing education so they could have more success in politics. Well, they overdid it and one point. For their “success” in selling Bush woke some people up, to make us want to have an Obama, to make us want to have intelligent people to make us want to have people better than us not equal to us handling problems which are much much bigger than we would ever really want to know, let alone handle ourselves.

In answer to the question I posed earlier about whether the Bush Administration’s C-student mentality ended up in the media because it was encouraged, in a 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 like 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. They might be “jocks” ridiculing the “nerds” or “geeks” and such. It would be 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 were not knowledgeable 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 and its failure as it 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. Nobody in the SEC wanted to know about the biggest ripoff of that sort in American history. So, The SEC, assigned to be the one 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 many of whom would affect them unknowingly and from afar, like Food, Drug, and Water, et cetera, with dire consequences.

How he did it? He placed in the positions of power, of highest power, in these agencies people firmly entrenched with the industries or groups that are supposedly regulating these agencies. Commonly it is called hiring the fox to guard the hen house.

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

“…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 these horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining let alone progressing in the freedoms and privileges 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 American souls no longer here because of Bush’s inept policies, 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 it was their own…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 horse-like chart markings of the DOW began that nodding, as if to say,

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Culture War, Part Ten: Time Capsule, Part 3

Footnote

1.

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Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two

an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

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 here, 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.

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Three

an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

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 here, 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 Three” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

Image of “Message in a Bottle: A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events, Part 3” by SillyMickel Adzema

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Tags: “my generation”, demonstrations, Filthy Rich, Republicans, The Sixties

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“Time Capsule, Culture War, Part Ten:

Message in a Bottle, Part 3”

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