Culture War, Class War
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Posts Tagged special interest
Passion Versus Power, People vs. Corporations, Internet vs. Matrix: Democrats Are Also for Special Interests … After They’ve Convinced You YOU Are One
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, nonconform, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on September 12, 2012
Creating a (Not So) American Life: Stolen Elections, Crazy-Making Social Processes, and Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies … The Rise of “Obvious Truths” (updated)
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life
Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America
Opposing Ways of Changing America – Passion vs. Power, Authenticity vs. Money
In the last half century, Americans have experienced unprecedented changes in their lives, their lifestyles, in what it means to be alive and a human in America in these times. Rarely have societies experienced this kind of change. What is even more astounding is the way the changes send us shooting dramatically in one way and then in the other direction.
Of course it is amazing that people are able to manage these kinds of change. But we don’t do this easily.
Let us look at the side-to-side careening of American life in that time and where we are today in that.
Creating an America Worthy of its Name
In introducing “Obvious Truths,” I talked about how politicians and leaders can only do so much and that the effects of their words are often fleeting. I said that social change that’s either reinforced or carried forward, or even initiated, by something like music or something that affects your feelings, can be greater and longer lasting. The powerful feelings that are stirred this way can affect people for their whole lives and even have influence for generations. I mentioned that these emotional influences reach more deeply into people because feelings exist at a deeper level of the brain undergirding words, thought, or even reason.
Finally, keep in mind that this is titled the rise and fall of “obvious truths.”
Obvious “Truth” – “Money Changes Everything”…. Really? … Only?
So I’m gonna start looking over what has transpired so far. I said at the beginning there was a title, one that pointed to the power and grandeur of these social movements. I wrote at the time that if the title’s claim–casting ordinary folks, along with revolutionary art, as the instigators of grand movements…the people of the Sixties and the music of bands like the Beatles, for example—sounds silly or trite to you that you are operating out of social prejudices we all carry from childhood, like most people do, particularly around status.
And by that I meant we have a tendency to assume that it is money that changes everything and that ordinary folks have little power without it.
For example, we assume that artists and musicians can’t affect anything. They more often arise from non-affluent beginnings; we have the term, starving artist, for example. Their power in society is considered to be as minimal as their finances.
“Real World” vs. “Flaky”
But this is not true—that is what I’m getting at. For, has the power of people been created with money, solely? Well, I think there’s a tendency to think it is.
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Not long ago, America and I went through such a change arising artistically from the masses. The Beatles affected us in such a great way that we were changed forever and society’s traditional momentum in a direction benefiting its moneyed royalty was stopped and even reversed. Their music and that of those like them changed the world in terms of the way we saw peace. The way we saw love. The way we saw drugs. The way we saw tolerance of other people…the way we looked at other people.
Status and Money, More Than Ever, Determining What Is “Real”
But I’m not going to go too far there, because that’s all coming up, too. I’m just saying that we do have these preconceptions about status and money that affects what we think is more important or powerful. It affects what we think of as “real” and “real world” versus what is considered silly or superfluous … “flaky” … “kumbaya.”
I was talking earlier about how, these days, it seems like only people with money have power. Everybody knows that and assumes it can only be that way. This is so because many people today have not had the experience of seeing it being different than that.
The Exception That Reveals the Rule
There is one exception and as it happens this exception does reveal the rule.
The Blue Meanies Dissed, Dismissed
For Obama’s rise to the presidency was startling, shocking even, because it was a unique phenomenon for this time. It was a grand and sweeping phenomenon because people got a chance, for the first time in a long time, to see that ordinary folks getting together could effect massive change…without the power of gobs of money. We can recall how his campaign was largely done over the internet and with small contributions. People could feel again, some for the first time, that they had the power in their passion and numbers to throw off the shackles of the filthy rich. Unbelievable.
Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate – Creating an America That Is Not
Creating an America That Is Not – Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate
Creating an America That Is Not
Obama’s success was astounding, but look what it took! Look at what had to happen before a Democrat, Obama, and the first African-American ever, could win the presidency. It only came about after a long time of national suffering, disgrace, war, loss of life, incompetence, cronyism, scandal, atrocity, erosion of rights, squandering of money, tragedy, and more. Bush was in the presidency for a full eight years; he actually got to steal a second election.
The Blue Meanies – Stolen Election
It is clear that Bush’s first term was not won fairly. Even putting aside the intimidation of black voters in Florida and similar unfair and illegal practices perpetrated by Republicans, we still have the fact that Bush was given the presidency by a decision of the Supreme Court. Our history records how vote counting was stopped before the outcome could be determined; the Supreme Court decided on a winner, Bush; and subsequently the vote tally came out that Gore had actually won the presidency! These are simply the facts, the things not in dispute.
The Rule Itself—Money Changes Everything.
The facts of Bush’s second election are less well known; in fact they are more assiduously covered up. Still, in the vote tally against John Kerry it should not have even been close…but for more obscure reasons.
There is plenty of documented public evidence that the electronic voting machines were fixed, making the outcome fraudulent. The machines were owned by Diebold Corporation, a firm solidly in the Republican camp, the head of which promised the Republicans, before the election, that he was going to get Bush elected. I mean, seriously. Isn’t that pretty much an admission that the voting machines were going to be fixed?
And in fact this is what they discovered to have taken place.
Now, is this not the kind of thing that in the past would have brought people out into the streets? [Footnote 1]
Anyway, it was confirmed, to some extent even prior to the election, that even a person walking by with an iPhone or something similar could hack into these electronic voting machines and change the votes. That is, if they had the correct access information. And the only ones who had that and therefore could decide the vote tally were the Diebold Corporation in league with the Republicans. Is it any wonder Bush “won”?
The Battleground for America
“Only people know just how to change the world.” – J. Lennon
So the two things of relevance in this example are that in previous times this would have brought people out into the streets, would have caused people to rise up in outrage against authority when it was found out.
The Duty, and Failure, of the Press
Which brings out the second relevant point: The public’s power could be stirred only by these facts coming out and becoming widely known.
This information did come out; entire popular books were written describing how and that it was done. It came out in the broadcast media as well.
It is unlikely that you know that, however. That can only be because it wasn’t told enough in the media, that it was downplayed in the media, covered up, or the media directed your attention away from it. And that is the problem I’m getting at.
Changing America by Changing its People
But you see there’s another thing that happened. Even with a responsible media you have to have a citizenry that is open to this kind of information and able and willing to process it and draw conclusions from it. That is what I will be addressing now.
Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies
Creating a (Not So) American Life: Your Mind Made Fertile For the Planting of Lies
Going back, I was saying we all have these prejudices regarding what is deemed powerful and important. We all have stuff from childhood that makes us shrink before authority, cower before money, status, and power. We all have irrational ideas magnifying the power of our oppressors, telling us to obey, to not question, to go along with that which others would have of us but which is not in our own interest and in fact brings suffering into our lives. And on top of all that, these early imprints and social teachings would have us rationalize our subjugation and deny our felt experience ever fending off inner and outer information, clues threatening to our precious conscious untruths and instilled self-sabotaging beliefs and notions.
Thinking About There Not Being Enough Time to Think
But you know sometimes you have a chance to kick back and not be caught up in the struggle to survive. You have a chance to reflect on your circumstances, your prejudices, and to re-evaluate matters. You have leisure time in which to do more than survive, to actually re-create, re-new yourself, and to grow in wisdom so you are not so blinkered by the blinders of the comfortable ignorance of grade-school propaganda and other early conditionings, prejudices. So society benefits both through your productivity but also through the fact that you have leisure time to become a wiser social actor. You have this leisure time….
Or, do you?
Well, not too long ago we had more leisure time, let’s put it that way. We had more leisure time; we had more time to pause and reflect. So some things might occur to us that were different than what we originally thought…than our preconceived notions; we might actually change our mind about things if we thought about them. I am not saying that was what everybody did all the time or anything like that. I am saying it could happen, and it happened more. So I’m saying that a lot has changed.
Well, you don’t think we have less leisure time? If you are much younger than me, you probably don’t know. But I am old enough to know that I have never seen Americans so busy…so busy and so preoccupied.
Climbing Down the Ladder of Your Todo List
Backing up, so imagine you or somebody like you is saying, “Ah, naw naw naw, naw, y’know, musicians, ordinary folks, they can’t do anything; they’re not politicians, they’re not powerful, they’re not rich!” Ok? But this person or you may not have had occasion to actually pause your life…to step back from the twenty-four hour climbing down the ladder of your todo list to success. Y’know?
How long is your todo list by the way? Busy, busy all the time is now required for survival concerns. There was a time in which you might be really motivated…you’d see people that were really striving …trying hard to be a big success or something like that. But it wasn’t required.
Forms Fill Up Free Time…”Fax It Over, I’ll Look At It.”
There is also the increased paper load, the mountains of red tape, which is also filling up the supposed “free time” of the average American. Man! What the hell is with that!?
Now they can blame it on computers; they can say it’s because we have more information and they can store larger amounts of it electronically, and they can put more… aw, c’mon, it’s people deciding that you have to fill things out and that you have to get and give more and more and more and more information, this is a lot of time!
Did you ever buy a house? You sign that Sisyphian hill of documents? I can only just imagine the day when there was just a deed, signed over. I’m not that old.
So, with exorbitantly more paperwork, there’s less time for thought, less time to think. We’re busy, and we’re nervous. Why? We got a lot of red tape, we got a lot of things to do. We’re under stress…
Taxes to Twist You With
And part of that paperwork … probably the worst part, if you’re like me, is due to the complex and contradictory tax codes. Part of the leisure time lost disappears into the black hole around tax forms. Seriously, I am old enough to have seen taxes get more contradictory and complex over the years.
In fact the tax codes are rather convoluted abominations twisting themselves to benefit corporate special interest, with little or no rationale even presented to explain why these special interests should be benefited.
And this sort of corporate special interest input into tax codes has just exploded over the years.
In the previous times, such things as a benefit to any special interest were usually presented to the legislature, and the public, in a particular way to justify them. You can just imagine like, in some kind of bargaining session in Congress, they would say, “Well, if we provide a break here, that’ll result in benefits over in this sector…” Or they might say, “…and it benefits our economy as a whole, which will…” and they might add a few elements into the equation before the inevitable, “it’ll benefit the average American or be a boon to our society as a whole.” And the reaction, we imagine, would be like, “Aw, yeah, yeah…ok.” Then it’s good; it’s approved.
Crazy-Making Social Processes Aid Manipulation
But over time, even this linking to the common good was not necessary, so the tax codes got exceedingly more convoluted and hopelessly contradictory, essentially lacking any reason. We all know that. It’s a dead document, so to speak, which would never, ever, ever be able to be brought back to rational health, so riddled with myriad kinds of cancers which are special interest convolutions of its elements so that it would be impossible to excise them all.
You have probably all heard the story. You call up the tax adviser, you have a question about how to fill something out…how to do something. And you’ll ask one person and they’ll tell you one thing; and then you call back and you get a different person and they’ll tell you something entirely different; then if you call again, somebody else will tell you something again … all different. Well, this is crazy-making.
And that crazy-making takes up your time; and it makes you worry more…and, well, it works itself into your time to ponder things, especially important things.
If Both Parties Are Equally Funded by Corporations, Why Have Democrats Always Been Woefully Underfunded? Money Changing Everything – The Planting of Lies
Creating a (Not So) American Life, Part Four: Both Parties Are Funded by Special Interests, If You Consider People a “Special Interest” for Democrats
So, the tax code is hopelessly brain dead, and everyone knows it. Any former link to fairness, reasonableness, or coherency has been severed; it has become a coffin into which anything can be thrown and in which any corporate wish can be granted. So the country has now turned completely into the hands of the corporations, ok?
The Money Changing Everything
And with corporations firmly backing Republicans, the Democrats in every election that I can recall, especially in the presidential elections, always were way underfunded and the GOP overfunded because the Rich-publicans were carrying the wishes of those corporations into the board rooms of Congress along with their huge amounts of money.
Corporations Invest in America (Government).
But these payoffs were small investments to corporations, relative to the benefits they would get in the changes in government policy which affected them. Republicans were—It was obvious…it was all on public record—were getting huge amounts of money going into their campaign coffers and were way overfunded. One hell of a lot of money was put toward putting and keeping Republicans in office. It was not even a fair fight.
Democrats Not Wanting to Be Totally Disarmed
So with no hope then…and this is what I saw happen…Democrats, who were still wanting to work for a better America and therefore better government, were forced into a choice of either continuing to rely only on contributions from the American people…as for example unions, keeping them woefully underfunded, and therefore losing…or to accept what was being offered them also by corporations.
So you began to have some Democrats making compromises with their principles and accepting some corporate money. Though even then it remained true that for the most part Democrats are funded by unions and organizations dealing with issues, like education, health care, seniors, jobs, and so on that affect the average American.
Now, this is where I get to one of those Big Lies, one of those concocted untruths that end up everyone just knowing to be true.
Obvious “Truth” – Politicians Are Like the People We Want Others to Think We Are Like (But Aren’t)…Like Who We Pretend to Be
To make this point, I need to back up to that thing related to convoluted tax codes and corporations. I was saying that eventually it was getting to where a huge increase in that problem could be attributed to corporations not even having to justify that the paybacks they wanted were good for America anymore. How did this happen?
Breaking News—Politicians Are Human.
Well, we have the situation mentioned where eventually Democrats were virtually required to accept corporate money or else they had no chance to win election. Naturally then, they had to produce at least a little for their benefactor corporations as well.
People Can Still Be Good, Even if Not Mother-Theresa Good.
It is crucial to keep in mind the fact that Democrats were not getting near as much money from corporations as Republicans, by and large, and they remained largely staying afloat through contributions from unions and from organizations of masses of people pushing issues of overall social benefit. So Democrats were backed for the most part by actual people not corporations; still they had to produce something for the overlords.
Alright, so it happened that Democrats would seek to strengthen their overall hand to accomplish beneficial things for society by tossing occasional bones of tax concessions to their corporate backers. They would go to their gop counterparts and would want something in the tax code, for example. And the Republicans would say, “Well you want that? Well, I’ll give you that, you give me this.” So it could not help but happen that taxes and public policy got more and more convoluted in conforming to these complications and outright contradictions. We saw this increasingly over the second half of the Twentieth Century.
Obvious “Truth” – Both Parties Funded by Special Interests
But Republicans were always seen, rightfully so, as the ones who were representing various corporations and what were called the special interests–defense, big agriculture, big oil, the Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, and so on.
But then this is what also happened: This huge lie was created, becoming a big part of the Matrix, the Matrix of confusion that was being put out to cover up truth. This lie was impossible to make out, blocked out by an omnipresent media saying all the same thing, in rather like this monotone voice almost like Pravda in the old days of the Soviet Union. I saw this happen too.
You no longer had differences of opinion you just had the same thing being said.
Anyway, this Big Lie, firmly woven into the fabric of the Matrix as to be both invisible and therefore unchallengeable even by rational arguments…this lie, and I’m sure you’ve heard it is that: Well, both parties are funded by special interests!
Real Truth: Democrats Funded by a Special Interest—People
Now, of course, you know you’ve got Big Oil and Big Coal, and you’ve got the Pharmaceuticals and the Defense Industry and they’re funding the Republicans, and they would come back and say, “Special interests?! Well you Democrats have them too. What about your unions? You’re being funded by them!”
Well let’s just take the unions for starters, ok? Seriously, the unions as special interests? The unions?
Real Truth: Republicans Funded by Non-People—Corporations
Ok, let me step back. We got corporations, which are a few people getting rich and it’s not even benefiting people. They’re not even including the people who work at the corporations, because they’re union people, maybe, or else they’re non-union people but they’re certainly not making any money off of what the corporations are getting in laws and benefits from their paid-for Republican representatives.
Obvious “Truth” – Both Parties Funded by Special Interests: Democrats’ “Special” Interests of Unions, Education, Health, Elderly Only Benefit Those Who Work, Think, Get Sick, and Age
Creating a (Not So) American Life, Part Five: So, What Is a Special Interest? Republicans Benefit Corporations, Democrats Benefit People, So They’re Equal?
Obvious “Truth” – Unions Are a “Special” Interest
So, what is a special interest now? Ok, so, is the American public a special interest? Wait, I thought the government was supposed to be for the people. Now if the people are workers, primarily; and at one time there was a lot of them that were union workers, ok? But even if they’re not union workers, aren’t the unions aiming for benefits for their membership that also carries over to the non-union workers? If the unions are able to get medical benefits, for example, which is one big thing that they pushed for, well then it became common for all workers to get medical benefits.
Is It a “Special” Interest If It Benefits Virtually Everyone?
Ok…that’s a special interest? I thought special interest was something that was against the interests of the American people and it was only going to benefit a certain small segment, a certain handful of people. That’s why it’s called special, isn’t it? But there’s the Republicans saying, “Oh, they’re unions, workers benefits are for unions.” And I just wonder if the unions are just a handful of people, who the hell is making all the stuff in America, who’s building the buildings, who’s…? Geez! I think you got the point.
For, I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and I’m sure you’ve all accepted it that “unions are special interests.” But I just don’t get it how…well maybe I don’t have a high paying job, or anything like that. But I work…doesn’t everybody?..I’m a working person and unions aren’t against me. I just wish there were more unions, so that whenever I would have a job or something like that I could have one to represent me against the powerful corporate owners.
Put Out to Cover Up and Confuse
So here, quite clearly, we have one of those obvious “truths” put out to cover up and confuse clear thinking: Unions are a special interest.
Obvious “Truth” – Education Is a “Special” Interest
But what else is a “special interest” for Democrats? Oh, it’s the teacher’s union or stuff like that, or, education.
Oh, great! So, what is that again? So education is for who now? Ok, now that’s a special interest. Mmmm hm. That’s a special interest? Does that mean that there are like only a few people that have kids that need education?
Education Is a “Special” Interest … It Is Only for Those Who Own Brains.
I’m starting to get sick here. I don’t quite get it. I mean I’ m getting confused, you know what I mean. This is what I’m talking about, this is that irrationality: Special interest, education? Aw, c’mon, c’mon, I want to say.
An America Without People Is an America That Doesn’t Need Education.
I mean, c’mon, aw, c’mon, somebody, somebody point out that education is not a special interest. It’s… Jesus! We won’t have an America in the future unless we have kids!
Don’t Need Education… It Doesn’t Matter if Stupid People Make Our Corporate and Governmental Decisions. *sarcasm*
Not to mention how can it be a special interest if were we to give more money to education, we would have better educated people growing up…these people would even benefit the corporations by being better corporate employees. They would, in fact, benefit all of society by making better decisions.
I kind of think we have an idea of what a big difference intelligence makes… what a big difference it is when you have intelligent people running things and when you don’t.
We Kind of Know How That Works (Stupid People Running Things).
For didn’t we have a kind of a little contrast there; didn’t we have a kind of a little experiment in that recently? I believe it had to do with C-student Bush…if you remember some things like Katrina and things like that…or maybe what hits you is something about a huge costly war that…well, it was gotten into on false grounds, illegally, we were lied to…but the whole matter and even the conduct of it, wasn’t it all rather…stupid what happened?
Bush Gets Presidency—Kind of Like He Won the Lottery.
Such things that happened under Bush are incompetencies that never happened before. Never! Not even under Republicans. We got Bush here, taking more time off from the presidency than any president in history…it was kind of like he thought he won the lottery or something. Didn’t even bother to look like he had a job to do. Wasn’t his first press conference something like ten months after he was sworn in?
Obama Gets Presidency—Kind of Like He Got a Job!
Now, contrast that with Harvard Law Review editor Obama. How many press conferences did he have after taking office? How frequently have you seen him on the job? He’s handling some of the biggest problems this country has every had. And people are impressed that he can do it. And there’s so much of it. So, isn’t intelligence kind of a good thing for us all?
Anyway. You get the point. Education a special interest? Seriously now.
Obvious “Truth” – The Sick and the Elderly Are “Special” Interests
How about medical care? Health and life are not for the common good. God, no, we don’t need medical care, that’s a special interest, that’s just for them people who get sick…and I’m starting to get sick here, I mean, y’know, for people who get sick? C’mon!
Health Care Is a Special Interest…. It’s Only for People Who Have Bodies.
And, it’s like, “Oh, no, no, it’s not just for those people who get sick, it’s those people who have to pay medical bills.” Oh, I see, then that must be just for…. Who’s gotta pay medical bills, again? Well none of us have to pay medical bills, it’s all free, right? Nooo, it’s not.
The Elderly Are a Special Interest…. It Only Benefits Those Who Are Affected by Time.
And is it really necessary to point out that seniors and the retired are not a special interest? I suppose if you’re thinking the current group is the last humans ever to reach an advanced age it would limit their numbers some.
So unless we all suddenly stop getting older, help to the elderly and the retired is help to us all; it is not special. Am I not right?
Obvious “Truth” – Democrats and Republicans Are Equal
So, where do you hear anybody pointing this out? I don’t know but if you’re hearing the same media and TV coverage that I am, you’re hearing that they’re equal. The Democrats and Republicans are equal because they’re equally funded by special interests, and the special interests…. What are these special interests again? Well, sometimes it’s like, “What are those special interests?” “Well, it’s the union, and the education, and it’s the medical care.” Oh, geez, just listen sometimes.
It’s the Internet Versus the Matrix: Corporations Fund the Elections of both Republicans and Democrats? Then I Must Be a Corporation
Creating a (Not So) American Life, Part 6: Obvious “Truth” – Democrats and Republicans Are Equal? Internet Versus Matrix, and Magical Republicans
I don’t know but if you’re hearing the same media and TV coverage that I am, you’re hearing that they’re equal. The Democrats and Republicans are equal because they’re equally funded by special interests, and the special interests…. “What are those special interests?” “Well, it’s the union, and the education, and it’s the medical care.” Oh, geez, just listen sometimes.
Obvious “Truth” – Corporations Fund the Elections of both Republicans and Democrats.
And by the way, I said this was the rise and fall of Obvious “Truths.” The idea that both parties are funded by huge corporations, what they call large donor contributors, was blatantly revealed as the lie it is during the 2008 presidential election.
Remember, contrasted with Republican McCain’s funding from those real special interests–that related to Big Business and Defense…what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex…Democrat Obama ran a campaign in 2008 where the donations were voluntarily capped at an unusually low level. The upper limit was set at $1,000, which meant that his backing would have to come from numerous small contributors not special interests benefiting only a group. And, amazingly, he received a record amount of money to support him. It was said he had all kinds of money more than McCain, even though McCain was backed by corporations.
Then I Must Be a Corporation, Because I Gave to Obama.
Now, how did that happen? Well it could only have happened because the masses of Americans wanted to give, even if it was $5, $10, or whatever…whatever they had. It required that donations come from a huge number more of people than contributed to McCain. I gave. My wife gave…several times. Didn’t you give, too?
For a change, in recent memory, this demonstrated that strength I was talking about before–that strength that’s of so many people feeling the same way, therefore acting in solidarity with each other. Surprisingly this happened despite them not being in face-to-face contact with each other, in general. This was one of the interesting things about this development: that it was largely accomplished just through the power of the internet.
It’s the Internet Versus the Matrix.
So the internet kind of brought folks together in solidarity of purpose the same way maybe a rally or demonstration in the past would have brought people together.
It was significant that most of this happened from the actions of people sitting alone in front of computers, not buoyed up by the effusiveness of a demonstration. It showed an unexpected power of social media.
In the Past, Face-to-Face, like Demonstrations, Were Where People Connected with People Like Them.
Remember, in demonstrations in the past…and I’ve been to them…you would go and you would share your feelings of outrage and hurt, you would be affirmed in the importance of your concerns and be instilled with hope of a change in them, most of all you would have your sense of what was going on expressed out loud. Previous to that, you may have been reading the newspapers, say, and feeling, this is wrong, this is an outrage. This would have motivated you to attend a demonstration, and there you would have found other people who were feeling the same things. So you would be confirmed in your beliefs that it was wrong.
In the Past, Face-to-Face, like Demonstrations, Were Where People Learned and Grew in Understanding.
Nowadays, social media and the internet have provided a similar thing where you can express your concern and rage and find others who feel the same way you do and so confirm your beliefs, and even expand on them with more information. So you can grow in your understanding of events and in your knowledge of what you can do about them.
This function of developing your insight and your effectiveness was provided by the rallies and demonstrations in the pre-electronic eras. The point is that over the election of Obama people connected again; and it was people not loads of military-industrial money that got him elected.
Bush Brought Us All Together…
Well, that’s one thing that Bush gave back to America. He united us. He united us around at least one obvious rallying standard. He made our minds finally clear that…it’s true he’s an idiot! It’s true Republicans can’t handle government. It’s true that they will claim to be fiscally responsible and yet…what happened? Well the largest economic collapse in American history second to the Depression…and it was the largest collapse in the economy of the world. (So, thank you, George W. Bush!… See Footnote 2 as well.)
Obvious “Truth” – Republicans/ Conservatives Are Fiscally Responsible
So this financial “meltdown” is coming from the people who are supposed to know so much about economics. But at the same time, like McCain said, “I don’t know too much about economics.” He don’t know too much about economics! Who does McCain think he is, the Herman’s f-ing Hermits!? Anyway, McCain kind of spilled the beans there. Some of the actual truth came it: About conservatives and fiscal matters…Republicans “don’t know too much” about it.
Coming Up – Watch Black be Made White, White Be Made Black!
Oh, Those Rascally Magical Republicans!
OK, that’s it for Part One of “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’”—Chapters Eight and Nine in this book.
Part Two is available here too—Chapters Ten through Thirteen. And in Part Two I go more into how they were able to get American people—including the media and the pundits and everybody—to accept this obvious unreality which is that both parties are funded by “special interests”; and you probably believe that yourself.
Oh, The Things They Do
But I think if you hear what I have to say, I think I’ll convince you of how amazing it was that they were able to pull that off. I think it will shock you to see how they could get so many people thinking irrationally about something that is so obviously not true. And there’ll be other things like that too.
Watch ‘em Turn Black into White!
There’s a pattern I’ll be talking about where…it’s like black is made white, white made black, where things are turned around. For example Republicans might have a proposal to help with the health care problem, for as they say, and we all know, the costs of health care are high and people are not getting covered. But their proposals end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what they say they will. And they know they will do that even when they propose them.
It is a matter of record that these sorts of swindles have been proposed and pushed by Republicans fully knowledgeable of what they were accomplishing. These things happened; we see they continue to happen. Taking health care again: Obviously we were left a very, very bad health care problem by Republicans. The point is that right from the beginning—you can go back to Nixon on this—they knew what they were doing. They knew how it would turn out, and there’s proof of this. We have their very words…
A Glimpse Ahead
The last thing to be disclosed in this series: the Why. The actual events that led these people to decide on this path toward us all, and moved them to increase and add and elaborate those initial moves to the levels of the most comprehensive totalitarian controls over a people ever attempted, let alone succeeding, as far as we know right now.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight: Creating an American Mind
Footnotes
1. Helen Caldicott compares our complacency in the face of dire happenings–such as Fukushima–to the parents who respond emotionless when she has to tell them their child has leukemia. She says, “Get mad. Get emotional.” She urges us to take back our governments from these mad perpetrators of the darkest doom imaginable. And, in the least, occupy! She proclaims,
It’s time you took your country back…. Use your bodies like they did in Wisconsin. Do a Tahrir Square here. Take back New York. Take back the Congress. Invade the Congress! Those people belong to you. They are your representatives, and you are their leaders. But you’ve got to have some guts! And stop being so goddamn polite all the time! And don’t need approval. Step up to the plate….
We’ve got to be emotional…. It’s time we used our emotions and become incensed! Otherwise we’re not going to make it.
2. 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-yous 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.
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:
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. It’s the economics mel-ting!” 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!…
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click below to launch the audio player here.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835359
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight: Creating an American Mind
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Obvious “Truth” – Both Parties Funded by Special Interests: Democrats’ “Special” Interests of Unions, Education, Health, Elderly Only Benefit Those Who Work, Think, Get Sick, and Age
Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, economics, globalrevolution, History, nonconform, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on August 24, 2012
Creating a (Not So) American Life, Part Five: So, What Is a Special Interest? Republicans Benefit Corporations, Democrats Benefit People, So They’re Equal?
Obvious “Truth” – Unions Are a “Special” Interest
So, what is a special interest now? Ok, so, is the American public a special interest? Wait, I thought the government was supposed to be for the people. Now if the people are workers, primarily; and at one time there was a lot of them that were union workers, ok? But even if they’re not union workers, aren’t the unions aiming for benefits for their membership that also carries over to the non-union workers? If the unions are able to get medical benefits, for example, which is one big thing that they pushed for, well then it became common for all workers to get medical benefits.
Is It a “Special” Interest If It Benefits Virtually Everyone?
Ok…that’s a special interest? I thought special interest was something that was against the interests of the American people and it was only going to benefit a certain small segment, a certain handful of people. That’s why it’s called special, isn’t it? But there’s the Republicans saying, “Oh, they’re unions, workers benefits are for unions.” And I just wonder if the unions are just a handful of people, who the hell is making all the stuff in America, who’s building the buildings, who’s…? Geez! I think you got the point.
For, I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and I’m sure you’ve all accepted it that “unions are special interests.” But I just don’t get it how…well maybe I don’t have a high paying job, or anything like that. But I work…doesn’t everybody?..I’m a working person and unions aren’t against me. I just wish there were more unions, so that whenever I would have a job or something like that I could have one to represent me against the powerful corporate owners.
Put Out to Cover Up and Confuse
So here, quite clearly, we have one of those obvious “truths” put out to cover up and confuse clear thinking: Unions are a special interest.
Obvious “Truth” – Education Is a “Special” Interest
But what else is a “special interest” for Democrats? Oh, it’s the teacher’s union or stuff like that, or, education.
Oh, great! So, what is that again? So education is for who now? Ok, now that’s a special interest. Mmmm hm. That’s a special interest? Does that mean that there are like only a few people that have kids that need education?
Education Is a “Special” Interest … It Is Only for Those Who Own Brains.
I’m starting to get sick here. I don’t quite get it. I mean I’ m getting confused, you know what I mean. This is what I’m talking about, this is that irrationality: Special interest, education? Aw, c’mon, c’mon, I want to say.
An America Without People Is an America That Doesn’t Need Education.
I mean, c’mon, aw, c’mon, somebody, somebody point out that education is not a special interest. It’s… Jesus! We won’t have an America in the future unless we have kids!
Don’t Need Education… It Doesn’t Matter if Stupid People Make Our Corporate and Governmental Decisions. *sarcasm*
Not to mention how can it be a special interest if were we to give more money to education, we would have better educated people growing up…these people would even benefit the corporations by being better corporate employees. They would, in fact, benefit all of society by making better decisions.
I kind of think we have an idea of what a big difference intelligence makes… what a big difference it is when you have intelligent people running things and when you don’t.
We Kind of Know How That Works (Stupid People Running Things).
For didn’t we have a kind of a little contrast there; didn’t we have a kind of a little experiment in that recently? I believe it had to do with C-student Bush…if you remember some things like Katrina and things like that…or maybe what hits you is something about a huge costly war that…well, it was gotten into on false grounds, illegally, we were lied to…but the whole matter and even the conduct of it, wasn’t it all rather…stupid what happened?
Bush Gets Presidency—Kind of Like He Won the Lottery.
Such things that happened under Bush are incompetencies that never happened before. Never! Not even under Republicans. We got Bush here, taking more time off from the presidency than any president in history…it was kind of like he thought he won the lottery or something. Didn’t even bother to look like he had a job to do. Wasn’t his first press conference something like ten months after he was sworn in?
Obama Gets Presidency—Kind of Like He Got a Job!
Now, contrast that with Harvard Law Review editor Obama. How many press conferences did he have after taking office? How frequently have you seen him on the job? He’s handling some of the biggest problems this country has every had. And people are impressed that he can do it. And there’s so much of it. So, isn’t intelligence kind of a good thing for us all?
Anyway. You get the point. Education a special interest? Seriously now.
Obvious “Truth” – The Sick and the Elderly Are “Special” Interests
How about medical care? Health and life are not for the common good. God, no, we don’t need medical care, that’s a special interest, that’s just for them people who get sick…and I’m starting to get sick here, I mean, y’know, for people who get sick? C’mon!
Health Care Is a Special Interest…. It’s Only for People Who Have Bodies.
And, it’s like, “Oh, no, no, it’s not just for those people who get sick, it’s those people who have to pay medical bills.” Oh, I see, then that must be just for…. Who’s gotta pay medical bills, again? Well none of us have to pay medical bills, it’s all free, right? Nooo, it’s not.
The Elderly Are a Special Interest…. It Only Benefits Those Who Are Affected by Time.
And is it really necessary to point out that seniors and the retired are not a special interest? I suppose if you’re thinking the current group is the last humans ever to reach an advanced age it would limit their numbers some.
So unless we all suddenly stop getting older, help to the elderly and the retired is help to us all; it is not special. Am I not right?
Obvious “Truth” – Democrats and Republicans Are Equal
So, where do you hear anybody pointing this out? I don’t know but if you’re hearing the same media and TV coverage that I am, you’re hearing that they’re equal. The Democrats and Republicans are equal because they’re equally funded by special interests, and the special interests…. What are these special interests again? Well, sometimes it’s like, “What are those special interests?” “Well, it’s the union, and the education, and it’s the medical care.” Oh, geez, just listen sometimes.
Continue with It’s the Internet Versus the Matrix: Corporations Fund the Elections of both Republicans and Democrats? Then I Must Be a Corporation
Return to If Both Parties Are Equally Funded by Corporations, Why Have Democrats Always Been Woefully Underfunded? Money Changing Everything – The Planting of Lies
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One – an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click below to launch the audio player here.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rzznhtzjsk
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”: Part One. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with It’s the Internet Versus the Matrix: Corporations Fund the Elections of both Republicans and Democrats? Then I Must Be a Corporation
Return to If Both Parties Are Equally Funded by Corporations, Why Have Democrats Always Been Woefully Underfunded? Money Changing Everything – The Planting of Lies
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How the Game Works and The Religion of Capitalism: The Game Is the One True Faith with Winning All Important, Integrity Laughable, and Kindness a Sign of Weakness
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on July 15, 2012
Reason and Action Eroded, Only The Game Remains: How the Game Works – People’s Lives Not Even a Chip in the Negotiations Anymore
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve:
Only The Game Remains
The REALLY Special Interests. People’s Lives Are Not Even a Chip in the Negotiations Anymore
The Really Special Interests…What They Want Is At Our Expense
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.
Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted
Their Kind of “Sharing the Pain” – My Problems Will Be Your Problems, They Say.
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 not many 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 here we had 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, 1% 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.
To Win at All Costs – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours
To Win at Any Cost – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours
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 hear 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 was 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.
Compassion’s Downright Laughable in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
Kindness Means Weakness in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
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, for the 99%
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 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
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.
Getting to Home Base, in Their Baseball Game
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 Supported by “Obvious Truths”—Those Untrue Truisms—It Is Now Easier for Them to “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.
“It’ll Benefit Society-at-Large? What Are You, a Wuss?”
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.”
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Thirteen:
The Great American About Face
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eleven: Reality Transplant, The Media
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 (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, video by SillyMickel Adzema
Category: comedy, environment, politics, psychology, Tea Party, satire
What follows is the full text of the video.
About SillyMickel (me), Auto Salesman (my “evil twin”) says:
“Ok. Enough about that. I’m gonna get back to being this erudite mother-fucker, wherever he is. I guess I got to bring him out.
“I try to keep him in that jar, but he keeps going on about
‘It’s just a laundry room.’
“Aaah, shut up.
“I try to keep him in there. I cover it with grass. Which I give him breathing holes; I don’t know what he’s complaining….
“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,
‘Why, George W. Bush, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was like a government job, and it was all for the purpose of doing this and that, and that it killed thousands of people….
‘And not only that, but the scientists are saying that we’ve 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 pocketbook 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 affect them!
“Now, as far as, you know, 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? See?
“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, you know, ‘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, you know, it’s like, NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it MAT-ter!?….”
“Besides, everybody’s so fucking stupid, they think God’s gonna come down and save them anyway, because, you know, they all think they’re so special and everything. And so do I, you know. But not him, he says… He’s kinda wierd because he kinda thinks… that…you know… He’s moved by God, but he doesn’t expect God to come down and save him! I don’t understand it.
“He expects…. He wants God to save everybody. And he wants to help. Well, we don’t think like that around here! Do we?
“Naaa. That’s just…we ain’t…that’s just a little bit too goddamn complex for our thinking processes. I mean, it’s like, ‘Am I gonna die?’… you know… ‘Am I gonna be able to eat?’
“And if it’s anything beyond that, what does it matter?
“I think I understand. Yeah. I understand… I don’t know why that erudite puke doesn’t understand it. You know? Maybe I’ll go and tell. Maybe I will, behind his back, you know. This recording here…maybe I’ll send it to them. Just so that they know…that I understand.
“That he’s got a part of himself that’s sane, you know. Keeps him on track, you know? He’s got a part…
“But then maybe they’d like to hear some of my other stuff, too, you know? Like ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’ and my class consciousness stuff, you know…Mr. Boehner and all that. Maybe they would like that because maybe they would understand that I’m like them, you know? It’s just that, you know, that erudite guy, you know…is the one that they don’t like. Think I should? Yea, I know that.
“Because, you know? They should at least know that there’s part of him that’s like that….
“Oh, he’s…. He wants to come out now. He wants to come out.
“What, you don’t like me? Ain’t I better lookin? Ain’t I better lookin than him?
“No!?
“Well, you’re an insultin’ little prick, aren’t you? Well, you’re snortin’ and you’re insultin’…snortin’…insultin’
“Man! Ok, alright, alright, alright!
“What’s your name? Katie? Anyway?
“It would be Katie, I figured it. Boy, man, that Katie, she’s a bad aaaassss! I seen her on TV, she’s a BAD ASS!
“Anyway. I see, underneath all that sweetness….
“Ok! Alright, I’ll go, I’ll go!
“Ya don’t have to PUSH!
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two
– an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Thirteen:
The Great American About Face
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eleven: Reality Transplant, The Media
Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
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Compassion’s Downright Laughable in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real: Only the Game Remains, Part 4
Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, economics, globalrevolution, History, nonconform, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology on March 11, 2012
Only the Game Remains, Part Four: Kindness Means Weakness in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
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, for the 99%
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 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
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.
Getting to home base, in their baseball game.
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 Supported by “Obvious Truths”—Those Untrue Truisms—It Is Now Easier for Them to “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.
“It’ll Benefit Society-at-Large? What Are You, a Wuss?”
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.”
Continue with Once Upon a Time, Kindness Was a Noble Thing: The Great American About Face, Part 1
Return to To Win at All Costs – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours: Only the Game Remains, Part 3
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Once Upon a Time, Kindness Was a Noble Thing: The Great American About Face, Part 1
Return to To Win at All Costs – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours: Only the Game Remains, Part 3
Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
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The REALLY Special Interests. People’s Lives Are Not Even a Chip in the Negotiations Anymore: Only the Game Remains, Part 1
Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, economics, globalrevolution, History, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, US on March 9, 2012
Only the Game Remains, Part One:
The Really Special Interests…What They Want Is At Our Expense
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.
Continue with Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted: Only the Game Remains, Part 2
Return to Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted: Only the Game Remains, Part 2
Return to Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
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The Corporate Feast: When you’re feeling pissed on, they’d like you thinking it’s really money raining down.
Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, economics, globalrevolution, History, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, US on February 29, 2012
The Corporate Feast: Part Two, Reality Transplant, The Media
The Corporate Feast
So I saw over time this slow, steady stream of pundits and journalists adopting Republican mantra 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 mantra 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
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.
GeorgeOrwell-land – Fun New Capitalist Theme Park!
The truth that it was Bush the W who doubled the Debt mysteriously ended up in the trash.
Smoke and lies around tax and spend
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
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.
Are they so immersed in Republican culture?
Why commentators would be so easily forgetful and then complicit is the question.
Continue with Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
Return to Dandified Little Pups: The Media, Status, and the Great Suck UP
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
Return to Dandified Little Pups: The Media, Status, and the Great Suck UP
Invite you to follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
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Culture War, Class War Book Chapters
- About
- Site Intro
- Chapters 1-15
- Ch 1 Smoke, Lies
- Ch 2 Matrix Aroused
- Ch 3 Opposing Worlds
- Ch 4 Concocted Worlds
- Ch 5 The King Won’t Die
- Ch 6 Culture War Allegory
- Ch 7 Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
- Ch 8 Creating an American Mind
- Ch 9 Creating an American Life
- Ch10 Erosion-Reason,Confidence
- Ch 11 Reality Transplant, Media
- Ch13 Great American About Face
- Ch 12 Only The Game Remains
- Ch14 Better Than 50 Years Ago?
- Ch 15 Money Mad
- Chapters Under Construction
- Chapters 16-32
- Ch16 The Fall of “Obvious Truths”
- Ch 17 Freedom Repealed
- Ch 18 Dire Prediction
- Ch 19 Thanks, George Bush
- Ch 20 Auto Salesmen
- Ch 21 C-Students All
- Ch 22 Horrors Worse
- Ch 23 Wonderful Can Happen
- Ch 24 Naked Republicans
- Ch 25 Dictatorship: America
- Ch 26 American Fascism
- Ch 27 Life vs Matrix
- Ch 28 Thanatos Walking
- Ch 29 How To “Unlike” Fascism
- Ch 30 Afterword – Politics Matter?
- Ch 31 Epilogue – Is Good Bad?
- Ch 32 Interlude – Class Consciousness
- Blogs
- Juicy Links
- Apocalypse Emergency – Bk 3
- Apocalypse NO – Bk 4
- The Great Reveal – Bk 6
- Wounded Deer, Centaurs – Bk 5
- Experience Is Divinity – Bk 8
- Falls from Grace – Bk 9
- Culture/Class War – Bk 1
- Funny God – Bk 7
- Prodigal Human – Bk 10
Culture War, Class War
Culture War is Class War disguised. The Wealthy Elite–the "Filthy Rich"–foment Culture War in society to distract and cover their real economic motives. Culture War, Class War explores the resulting cultural divide–how it was instigated and kept alive for fifty years in America by certain elite powers and how and why they choose to benefit while tearing families in two and keeping America paralyzed.
Culture War, Class War Recent Blog Posts
- We can be clever, we can hone our skills in being loving while also properly asserting ourselves, speaking truth to power, protecting the helpless, standing between the innocent and evil. Mahatma Gandhi showed how this works and how effective it can be.
- “our strong men and patriarchs would concoct the idea that our Small Accumulators, women, and children would be utterly lost without their telling them what to do”: *Fourteenth Descent — Misogyny*
- Hunting, Murder, and Farming–The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Descents in the devolution of humans from our noble place in Nature
- “So, the amount of surplus value in any society is equal to the amount of additional suffering that has been created through hierarchy and coercion. The huge structures of civilization are monuments to, and are equal in size to, the size of the freedom lost.”
- Losing our relatively noble status as egalitarian gather-hunters, we began living in societies where controlling others or being controlled colored all our social interactions, and an incipient class war festered beneath the surface…
- Why not a hero’s tale; no solitary hero, but billions of heroes. Showing the Universe the story of the impossibly death-defying grasping at life, even as being thrown over the cliff…
- “We are the myths in motion … are witness to secrets of eternity finally revealed….” “We are players in epic stories of ends of days and beginnings of time….”
- Reagan, like other Republicans, are able to confuse people, against all the facts and historical record, into thinking that any screwing up, of any time, must have been done by Democrats…
- a 50% extinction rate, die-off, minimum, within a decade or two … now, you tell me how we’re going to be alive to even see what happens after that kind of extinction…
- *Societal God*: this patriarchal god is a product of the elites, creating, for the purposes of wealth and power, such a cultural-economic situation where survival *would* be linked with their largess … or at least, with their permission…
- So people were being left to die, killed in this manner by being denied insurance coverage when they most needed it. Does this not amount to more “hits” put out on people by the HMO?…
- Prenatal Matrix of Human Evil 3 … “Bad Blood,” Disgust, Nauseated, Sickening Become Homophobia, Smoking, Sadism-Masochism, Addictions, Money Fetish, Air and Food Pollution, Propaganda …
- “…the meaning of the practice remains clear: In order to be a mover-shaker one must not be “weak” … one must be above ordinary feelings of empathy and compassion”: *The Fallacy of Transcendence*, Ch 38 of *Dance of the Seven Veils 1* by Michael Adzema
- This book is directed and dedicated to any who are not turning away, especially activists, and who instead are seeking to end it within themselves and to make it better…
- why socialism? because in our natural state in Nature, the forest was the safety net. By civilization taking us away from Nature & denying us access to it, we make it right society should provide that safety net…
- *One Must “Die” to One’s Sickness to Be “Born” Well* … So there is hope in that we see in the worst of times the seed of healing. However, we can lose heart in a pendulum swinging so far to the Right…
- this ethic goes way beyond we are our brother’s keeper. No, we are our brother. So be kind to yourself, you are everyone. Love your neighbor as yourself, for she is…
- We should never intentionally harm another. For a part of us is always like them…. Violence is never an option, for in resorting to that, we have already lost….
- In patriarchy, with its value on transcendence over Nature, one increases in power to the extent one diminishes the lives of others…
- Creating An American Life. Power Versus Passion, Money Versus Authenticity. Chapter 9 of *Culture War, Class War* by Michael Adzema
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All Posts
- We can be clever, we can hone our skills in being loving while also properly asserting ourselves, speaking truth to power, protecting the helpless, standing between the innocent and evil. Mahatma Gandhi showed how this works and how effective it can be.
- “our strong men and patriarchs would concoct the idea that our Small Accumulators, women, and children would be utterly lost without their telling them what to do”: *Fourteenth Descent — Misogyny*
- Hunting, Murder, and Farming–The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Descents in the devolution of humans from our noble place in Nature
- “So, the amount of surplus value in any society is equal to the amount of additional suffering that has been created through hierarchy and coercion. The huge structures of civilization are monuments to, and are equal in size to, the size of the freedom lost.”
- Losing our relatively noble status as egalitarian gather-hunters, we began living in societies where controlling others or being controlled colored all our social interactions, and an incipient class war festered beneath the surface…
- Why not a hero’s tale; no solitary hero, but billions of heroes. Showing the Universe the story of the impossibly death-defying grasping at life, even as being thrown over the cliff…
- “We are the myths in motion … are witness to secrets of eternity finally revealed….” “We are players in epic stories of ends of days and beginnings of time….”
- Reagan, like other Republicans, are able to confuse people, against all the facts and historical record, into thinking that any screwing up, of any time, must have been done by Democrats…
- a 50% extinction rate, die-off, minimum, within a decade or two … now, you tell me how we’re going to be alive to even see what happens after that kind of extinction…
- *Societal God*: this patriarchal god is a product of the elites, creating, for the purposes of wealth and power, such a cultural-economic situation where survival *would* be linked with their largess … or at least, with their permission…
- So people were being left to die, killed in this manner by being denied insurance coverage when they most needed it. Does this not amount to more “hits” put out on people by the HMO?…
- Prenatal Matrix of Human Evil 3 … “Bad Blood,” Disgust, Nauseated, Sickening Become Homophobia, Smoking, Sadism-Masochism, Addictions, Money Fetish, Air and Food Pollution, Propaganda …
- “…the meaning of the practice remains clear: In order to be a mover-shaker one must not be “weak” … one must be above ordinary feelings of empathy and compassion”: *The Fallacy of Transcendence*, Ch 38 of *Dance of the Seven Veils 1* by Michael Adzema
- This book is directed and dedicated to any who are not turning away, especially activists, and who instead are seeking to end it within themselves and to make it better…
- why socialism? because in our natural state in Nature, the forest was the safety net. By civilization taking us away from Nature & denying us access to it, we make it right society should provide that safety net…
- *One Must “Die” to One’s Sickness to Be “Born” Well* … So there is hope in that we see in the worst of times the seed of healing. However, we can lose heart in a pendulum swinging so far to the Right…
- this ethic goes way beyond we are our brother’s keeper. No, we are our brother. So be kind to yourself, you are everyone. Love your neighbor as yourself, for she is…
- We should never intentionally harm another. For a part of us is always like them…. Violence is never an option, for in resorting to that, we have already lost….
- In patriarchy, with its value on transcendence over Nature, one increases in power to the extent one diminishes the lives of others…
- Creating An American Life. Power Versus Passion, Money Versus Authenticity. Chapter 9 of *Culture War, Class War* by Michael Adzema
- in toxic parenting, which we think is normal, obedience trumps feelings of compassion & empathy…
- Evil beyond all imagining. Evil beyond anything ever conceived or acted ever before in the billions of years of existence of this planet…
- The Universe Wants Fun … “The Universe reveals that it is dynamic & playful…
- Our planetmates reveal, for the first time, how we differ from them …
- Magic, Ritual, & Superstition Occur with the Beginnings of Ego & the Agrarian Desire to Control Nature—the Matriarchal Consciousness…
- Prenatal Suffering Is the Root of Virtually All Human Atrocity—Greed, War, Torture, Rape, Racism, Murder…
- Every skein of empathy & compassion must be slain inside soldiers…
- THE PRENATAL MATRICES OF HUMAN EVIL: Third Trimester Fetal Suffering Become War, Violence, Greed, Class War, Bigotry, Racism, Paranoia, Intolerance, Phobias, Sexual Abuse, Anti-Semitism, and Tattoos
- The Proper Response to Insanity: Ethics in an Era of Trumpism and the Difficult, yet Profoundly Fruitful, Task of Loving Your Dragons
- “The Secret of Men: What Patriarchal Cultures Never Tell Women, or Themselves — The Elders’ New Clothes and the Lie of It All
- A rare peak into holotropic breathwork: “It’s not like anything you know or have heard about” … here’s a taste, on video, of some authentic spiritual experiences….
- The Myth of Intelligence: Most of what is applauded as intelligent in modern societies is merely the linking together of socially approved and *audience flattering* cliches.
- Why should we be surprised that social media became programmed to block progressive, revolutionary efforts after Occupy? Hell, they did the same thing in the 70s to derail the activism then, too.
- The Lie about Yuppies Being Former Hippies: They were actually a creation of the 1% to discredit an activist generation and fight back the threat of 60s values
- Who’s at the controls over at Facebook? Profiling the elite … let me introduce, to you, our “masters.”
- Planetmates’ Message: You might be enlightened by the reasons planetmates give for our nonchalance as death hangs over the entire planet, including ourselves and our families
- Drugs and Generations … Boomers: Drugs of choice were pot and LSD … no coincidence that Sixties values emphasized spiritual access, pacifism, authenticity, sensory openness, community
- Take comfort: Ninety percent of the horror you see are merely projections from repressed traumatic experiences you had at birth and in the womb. Stop giving them energy by believing in them.
- “You are invited to a return to unity with Nature and a harmonious understanding of our role, perhaps our destiny, in the grand scheme of things”: A re-visioning of humans in Nature
- Who are the “savages” really? We see “savagery” in Nature, among animals and planetmates, just like we did among indigenous peoples.
- “Killing “The Sixties”: The responses of the 1% to Sixties activism “were calculated to placate the masses and keep them, as for hundreds of years, feeling nervous, unworthy, inferior, and slavish in relation to the wealthy and powerful….”
- “lives are at stake…. including yours… but mostly it’s about the innocent ones… the planetmates and the children…” (a message to the critics of those of us working on the environmental crisis)
- Ecocide and the Necessary Hero … on youtube: Sorry, it’s not in the best of interest of my children to allow ignorance.
- Activate Media, Extinction Radio. Peter Melton interviews Michael Adzema on extinction, activism, and the cosmic significance of our lives in these times
- The purpose for existence: “You might say that we are video games for God, who has disintegrated Herself into many, in a process of forgetting….”
- On the brink of ecocide AND humanicide (the suicidal killing of our species) as we are, ought we not re-vision “man”kind’s vaunted “civilization”
- Egotistical and arrogant, patriarchal “heroes” see no problem in straying over lines to get what they want. We see it so much on TV, we turn our heads at atrocities and injustices perpetrated by our own.
- Convenient (for the “Filthy Rich”) “Truth”: If a Million People Appeared in DC, and the Media Didn’t Cover It, Did It Really Happen?
- “Slaughtering” Smart Folks: “they would become rote learners of narrowly applicable, short-lived ‘knowledge,’ removing the educated class as a barrier to a totalitarian America”
- in America, we neutralize our educated as a potential progressive force using money and position: “enlightenment lobotomies”
- “this battle has not gone away at all but is simply being ignored … and consciously *dismissed*”: Culture War, Class War, Occupy Generations
- “The last educated generation”: “It had become clear to the people at the top they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way”
- “Woodstock? Isn’t that the kind they use to make rifles?” … No, i don’t believe history is being taught much, anymore.
- “We call it “growing up” to be impassionate, to be morosely, meekly obedient: Educators exhort us to deny emotion; Doctors prescribe pills; therapists counsel us to be less alive
- We’d rather cuddle with a statue: “Emotions having become soured in us … we strive to empty ourselves of them. Our cultures, similarly, glorify the unaffected personality….”
- Schizoid experience and God: “Being closer to God is having more participation in, more inclusion of the Experience of Reality”
- We mistakenly think repressing our passions is holy: “Churches call them ‘sinful’; we deem them ‘inappropriate’ in middle class homes.”
- “with self-denial, we kill the God in us, thinking we are becoming more God-full that way: God includes the sensual, is “interesting”
- “We are merely the glove on the fingers of the Divine. We are sock puppets for Divinity.”
- “we’ve built theologies out of our fears…created religions to soothe…deny our experiences…. It is the opposite of Reality”
- “We’d rather think of God as being nothing…or devitalized…rather than heartless; like we feel Him to be, because of our experiences with authorities in childhood”
- “The fact that Mitt Romney lost is in indication of the “fall of obvious truths”…discussed in…this book and which is the hope abundant in the advance of generations.”
- There is no sacred or profane: “If Truth is God, then embracing what is, is equivalent to embracing God. No points for blind belief.”
- “We compete, we fight wars … because we learn to be so through a psychotic culture passed on from one generation to the next”: Wounded Deer and Centaurs
- God’s “glory”? … “You’re still fucking peasants as far as i can see.” — John Lennon
- blasphemy? meh. “we talk about fear of God as being a good thing…God–stern, fatherly, punishing…sin…Well, all of that is wrong….”
- The Crisis and Opportunity of Impending Extinction: An Interview with Michael Adzema, broadcast on Extinction Radio, with Peter Melton
- “Humans, in their evolution from planetmates, for survival advantages became crazier…” say planetmates. Video commentary on 8th prasad
- “While they were lynching and beating innocents, they were secretly seeing themselves applauded and approved….”
- “we are … in the lives where we wanted to reincarnate at the “climax” of the movie here on Earth. For whatever reason … to help, to complete a mission, to observe the spectacle….”
- “There are always those, those who have conformed and submitted, who view any who leave the fold as thinking too much of themselves….”
- If you don’t read anything else by me, you should at least read this….
- “you will feel comforted..you will feel you have come home”: reversing the patriarchal split from nature, becoming real
- “we are players in epic stories of ends of days and beginnings of time….”: The Tao of Funny God
- The transcendent approach to activism, the necessary hero: Humor and the Reemergence of the Divine Feminine
- “People who are chained to the products of their hands are never happy or free, regardless how much of that product comes back to those hands.”
- You can be reckless and even screw up and make mistakes and you are always held and guided and comforted.
- “With defense of stores, or “investment,” we have another reason children were more desired, after you became sedentary. They act like little soldiers.
- “To the extent one lowers the barriers of early pain and the mental defenses from it, you also can feel such Divine instruction, as “instinct,” say Planetmates
- “What you have so forgotten, astonishingly, is how life’s pleasure is involved, not just in sensory satisfactions, but in using the skills latent in you … your ‘instinct’”: The Planetmates reveal instinct and “free will”
- “You could not let it be easy…. Your single-minded attention to filling your stores as a hedge against incursion of imagined darkening … brought additional work to your lot in life”
- “Children being seen as things … as inanimate … not as live or animate beings with intention … but as objects in space, matter to be used … is called thingification”: The Planetmates on thingification, the economic lodestar, children as commodities, large families, child labor, Nature’s parents
- To most Christians, and many conspiracy theorists, I want to say, you way OVER-estimate humanity….
- “It is Isaac, hardly Abraham, who would really be losing something, “sacrificing” something — specifically, his life!” Planetmates reveal childhood lost, the animal self, soul murder, the intrusive parenting mode
- “With agrarian economics … there was more focus on the immediate family. You had increasing alienation from each other … and increasing greed”: The Planetmates on sex, happiness, the tribe, the nuclear family, and the “intensity of experience” of life
- “When you became agrarian and sedentary, you perceived survival advantages in family status and larger broods of children”: Planetmates reveal magical childhood, tribe life, primitive planned parenthood
- The war on drugs, one example, is basically the battle between folks finding out for themselves what is real versus outside authority doing that: Experience Is Divinity, Matter As Metaphor
- You wish to raise a loving child, but you do it in an insensitive way, for you cannot be other than yourself. The Planetmates reveal on soul murder, the adult trance state, and how human children became different from the children of Nature
- The troubles of your childhood you push beneath a thick cloak of confabulation, heart shapes and unicorns, revision, and rationalization: Planetmates reveal forgotten childhood, hope and real transformation, parenting and the unconscious….
- “Like the wicked stepmother, your infants are hidden behind a mirror reflecting only the caregiver’s countenance — her needs — to herself”: The Planetmates reveal on parenting, child abuse, who the real “animals” in Nature are, and other blasphemies
- “While braying about the purity and superiority of your human love, you cannot feel the true love you are capable of”: Planetmates reveal on real love, the “love contract,” adorability in infants, parental “love”
- Your “wound” is the wall you get to push against in life to build up your spiritual “muscles”: Planetmates reveal love, woundedness, relationships, real healing, real transcendence….
- “You care for children desperately hoping they will fill the huge hole of unloving you carry from infancy”: Unreal love and roots of woundedness … “babies having babies” … parental love … what the planetmates reveal
- “One does not transcend body and Nature and become one with God. For God/Divinity is IN body and Nature”: Planetmates on spirituality, body’s needs, detachment, helping the higher ups, enslavement
- Like reading a letter from a wise, old friend….
- “You may control your sexual urges only to end up beating your women and children and going to war”: Planetmates reveal the truth about human communication, the “games people play,” human “intelligence,” the roots of war, domestic brutality, genocides, and enslavement in self-denial, and more
- bonding, hidden agendas, how babies are like politicians. From the Planetmates, on communication in Nature and in humans, Nature’s honesty, and more
- “positive” thinkers, culture, the “good” person, obedience and sycophancy, more. new from the Planetmates
- from the Planetmates on consciousness … family and children … “that ego that you do, you do so well” … “trigger-happy cowboys on crack” … more
- Biology as Metaphor and Mythology, Part One: “The Map Is Not the Territory” and Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness
- “You Lose Your Form, You Lose Your Fear”: Experience Is Divinity, Part Fourteen — The Dream Is Over, Liquid Memories, and THE TRUTH
- About the Books
- You Say You Want a Revolution?
- Tribes and Wonder Versus Civilization and Suffering: More Nestling Up With the Implicate Order, Or Before and After the Western Fall (Split)
- The Bliss of Connection with Others … But There Is a Pain in Unexpressed Love: A Foray Into Cellular/Transpersonal Consciousness, Part Six — Womb with a Review
- Keep on Cosmic Giggling and HumanLand — Fun, New Amusement Park: Experience is Divinity, Part Thirteen — Fun Times Waking from Nightmares
- The Sound of Creation and Cellular Template of Eternal Bliss: I Was This Pulsating One-Celled Animal … Each Reaching Out Was Joy of Being Alive
- Past Lives, Other Lives, and The Vast Hole of the “Not the Tribal”: A Foray Into Cellular/Transpersonal Consciousness, Part Four — Sidling Up to the Implicate Order
- The Beginning of Change
- What the planetmates really think of us, the latest: On human “evolution,” control, conformity, birth…”controlling your young”
- Life Is a Sickness … for the Purpose of Getting Us Well: A Foray Into Cellular/ Transpersonal Consciousness, Part Three — There Is Always Grace
- We Are Always and Only “Just a Membrane Away” … from Understanding Everything: A Foray Into Cellular/ Transpersonal Consciousness, Part Two — “Juicy Caring” and the Answer to Pain
- Culture War, Class War book released. Occupy Generations and The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths.” now available. Order Information
- Apocalypse NO released. Book by Michael Adzema now available. Order Information
- Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call. Book by Michael Adzema released. Order Information.
- Mind and Motion ~ Being and Forgetting; We Are Stardust … Sorta; and Where the Poignancy Comes In: Reality Is a Funny God
- Eating the Apple: “You Dismissed Divinity’s Perfect Banquet … Perfect in … Your Primary Purposes in Being Alive, Not Just Existing,” Say Planetmates in The Fourteenth Prasad
- Feedback wanted: Apocalypse – No! Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious. cover and description. Comments?
- Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call – book soon to be released. Feedback?
- Every Path Is Magnificent and Maximizing Your Poignancy: Time and Uncertainty Are the Screens We Erect to Block Out Knowing Everything
- Apocalypse No, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious finally released!
- What I Can Tell You About the Seed of Light in the Deepest Darkness: The Witness Self, The Beneficence of Experience, and the Secret About Oneself One Dares Never Reveal
- Like Jacob Wrestling the Angel, in Your Switch to Sedentary Life You Confused Divine Assistance with Evil: “You Saw Difficulties … Deprivations, and Pain as to Be Avoided Instead of as the Blessings of Divinity.”
- When Life is Ever New, a Revelation, One Has Turned the Good into the Wonderful: Experience Is Divinity, Part Nine — God Invents Joy by Forgetting.
- Apocalypse No: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious … the book
- The Biggest Secret and Why the Bodhisattva Waits: We Remove the Essence of Divinity from Our Ideas of the Divine
- Enslavement of Earth Citizens, Husbandry, and Sedentary Ways: All This Controlling Required the Changeover from Nomadic to Sedentary … Your Increasingly Sedentary Ways Is the Root of the Apocalypse We Face Today
- All Roads Lead Home and the Multi-Tasking Universe: The Universe is a Vast Expanse of Experience, “Looking” in Different Directions.
- Our Divine Adventure in Forgetfulness Has Us Misunderstanding the Pain We Give Ourselves to Wake Up: Experience Is Divinity, Part Six — The Poignancy of It All
- Through Horticulture You Expanded Your Interference in Nature’s Perfect Ways into the Flora Empire of Earth Citizens: The Eleventh Prasad from the Planetmates
- Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call … Book 3 … complete, on-line
- Recipe for Game of Humanness — Take Equal Parts Emptiness and Stupidity … Add a Belief in a Death: Experience Is Divinity, Part Five — Life Is the Divine Playing Peek a Boo with Herself
- Becoming Controlling, Becoming Killers: In the Tenth Prasad, the Planetmates Tell How Humans Became So Complacent About Taking Life
- The Spirituality of Cells and Seeds of Light in Every Darkness: All the Things We Do in Life Are Distant Reflections of Our Earliest Life as Cells
- Early Humans, Foragers, Harmony with Nature … the Fall: The Tranquil Time Ended … the Gap Between Natural Functioning and Twisted, Human Functioning Widened.
- The Agonies and Ecstasies of Exquisiteness: A Primal Perspective on Spirituality, Part Thirteen — The Psyche Heals Itself … If Only Allowed to Do So
- Enlightenment as an Attitude of Adventuring … Eventually It Is Simply About Staying Open to Experience/Process: A Primal Perspective, Part Twelve — Zorba the Buddha
- Science Has Uncovered Something Subtler Than the Physical, Undergirding One’s Life, and Interconnected with All and Everyone: Deeper, and Higher, Spiritual Realities
- Life Is a Dark Screen … Fetishing and Fearing What’s Hidden: To Be Ignorant of Identity with Divinity Is the Purpose of the Human Form.
- Straying from Nature: In the Eighth Prasad, Planetmates Tell How Economic Pressures Won Out Over Happiness for Early Humans
- Graduate Courses in the University of Divinity. Pain Is the Professor … Bringing Us Ever hOMe: Experience Is Divinity, Part Three — All We Are Saying … Is Give Love a Chance
- A Primal Perspective on Spirituality, Part Ten — Clean and Unclean Mysticism: The “Monsters” and Demons and Fear Do Not Exist Outside of You
- Curious God, Infinite Poignancy, and the Nature of Divinity: Funny God, Part Four — The Universe Is Experience, Life is a Disneyland
- Ego, Water Foraging, Standing, Narrow Pelvis, 20-Month Gestation, Pain: In the Seventh Prasad, The Planetmates Reveal the Root of All Our Evils
- People Look Awfully Silly Kissing Their Chains. How Is It Supposedly Rational Progressives Can Believe in Satanic Reptiles?
- Ego as Opiate for Disease of Humanness … Turns Flaws Into Supreme Accomplishments, Wrong-Gettedness: The Sixth Prasad from the Planetmates
- Wounded Healers, Heroes, and the Group Mind: The Universe Bears Up and Rewards with Renewed Life Those who Voluntarily Sacrifice Themselves for All
- Your “Wordism” Is a Cave Prison: Planetmates Tell Us, Your Language Is an Aberration Causing You to Never Really Hear or Understand Each Other.
- In Spite of Ourselves, Ultimate Trust, and the Absolute Earliest Preschool: Experience Is Divinity, Part Two — Pain Is Wisdom Gift-Wrapped
- Pot, LSD, the Illuminati, and the Real Revolution
Reality Transplant – The Media: Orwell-land, Disposable Truths, The Ladder of Status, and the Great SUCK UPward
Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality on July 12, 2012
The Puppet Strings – The Media: Dandified Little Pups, The Corporate Feast, and What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eleven: Reality Transplant, The Media
Dandified Little Pups: The Media, Status, and the Great Suck UP
Dandified Little Pups
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
Everybody Has One … Except Those Paid To
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…?
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
Dandified Little Pups
Dancing to a Long Ago Tune
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: When You’re Feeling Pissed On, They’d Like You Thinking It’s Really Money Raining Down.
The Corporate Feast
The Corporate Feast
“Persons R Us. Corporations R Not.”
When You’re Feeling Pissed On, They’d Like You Thinking It’s Really Money Coming Down.
CEO with Fifty Cookies to Tea Party Bloke with One: “That Union Guy Wants Some of Your Cookie.”
So anyway, the pundits and journalists are seen adopting the Republican mantra 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
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.
GeorgeOrwell-land – Fun New Capitalist Theme Park!
The truth that it was Bush the W who doubled the Debt mysteriously ended up in the trash.
Smoke and lies around tax and spend
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
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.
Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget – Disposable Truth:
Reality Transplant, The Media
Are They So Immersed in Republican Culture?
Are You Reeling in the Years?
What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget
Narrative for the New History … Why That’s One Dumb Republican!
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.
Dogma for the New Religion. “Obvious truths” from On High
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.
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.
The Truth—Unions Represent Otherwise Powerless Workers.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve: Only The Game Remains
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
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 link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve: Only The Game Remains
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence
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