Dear friends,
My Liberal Education
I learned something a few
weeks ago: between the shutdown, the news, the chatter on Facebook and Twitter,
as well as from starting to read Crisis of Democracy, the 1975
report of the Trilateral Commission.
It’s Noam Chomsky’s fault:
he put me up to it. Chomsky’s Oct. 1,
1993 YouTube broadcast, “Totalitarian Culture in a Free Society,” resurfaced on
Facebook.[1] Like a whale coming up for air, Chomsky
always gets my attention. He is a giant
among men. He is brilliant, where others
are merely educated. He is profound,
where others are merely observant. He is
one of the few world-class intellectuals who really dares to think. Unfortunately, in our Pollyanna[2] society,
Chomsky is doomed to play the role of Cassandra.[3]
Among the many things
Chomsky pointed out, he emphasized that in our pseudo-democratic society we are
really being governed by a totalitarian tyranny of culture. Two traits form this culture. One, it is controlled by the
industrial-political complex. Two, in a
society that on the surface appears to be free, the industrial-political
complex keeps its fascist grip on the people through propaganda, we are simply
told what to believe.
Dr. Chomsky got me
thinking. I don’t believe that he
mentioned any industrial-military complex.[4] He didn’t need to. The industrial-military complex simply does
not exist. At best, the military is the
whipping boy, the scapegoat in this discussion, a weak minor third player in a
giant power struggle. The military is a
convenient adversary to blame, so that no one looks too closely at the real
problem, the industrial-political complex.
The Industrial-Political Complex
It should be obvious to all
of us that something radical changed when we lost the family farm to the
industrial revolution. The family farm
can be described as having: no debt; no bosses, just fathers and mothers;
occasional poverty, but always with a roof, food, humble clothing, and a place
to put the homeless (the barn); little crime, just mischievousness, punishable
with a willow switch, not by branding for life; maximum freedom.[5] Equally obvious, the era of the family farm
economy was fouled by the ugliness[6] of
slavery.[7] Even so, during the family farm economy era,
government was responsible to the people, law was the dominant social force,
the form of government was a republic, not a democracy, and people still
believed in God.
Then the industrial
revolution struck. Soon there were
powerful industrialists, lords over great empires, with enormous power — far
more power than the President of the United States, simply because they
controlled more wealth than the President of the United States. The lawful republic of the United States
quickly became a feudal system. On the
surface it still looked like a republic; in reality it was dominated by feudal
lords. The industrial economy can be
described as having: not much debt initially; bosses everywhere; amazing spurts
of wealth followed by terrifying crashes in repeating cycles; famine and
persecution of the homeless; rising crime punished by criminal branding for
trivial offenses; shrinking freedom. The
industrial-political complex, using propaganda, presented through government
and the press, convinces a gullible nation that the Union must be maintained by
war. The Civil War is launched.
Not that the old agrarian
society gave up without a fight. One way
of analyzing the Civil Way is to view it as the cash of two Titans: Agrarian
Economy versus Industrial Economy. The
Industrial Economy won the war.
Seemingly overnight, the United States ceased to be an aggregation of
strong States governments and became a strong national government served by
weakened and weakening States governments.
The final domination of the States would not take place until after the
presidency of Calvin Coolidge.[8]
Nevertheless, the rise of
the industrial-political complex spells the termination of government by law,
under law; and guarantees the certainty that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people has already perished from the earth. It institutes a new governmental form exclusively
of, by and for Robber Barons.
The Ring of Truth in Selling War
What was the principal
commodity sold in this period? The
answer appears to be war and death. If
some States resisted central domination, they would be bludgeoned into
submission. Evidently, the Robber Barons
discovered that war made a lot of money.[9]
A quick glance at the
behavior of the Gross National Product soon brings one to realize that great
natural disasters bring about an equal and attendant increase in the Gross
National Product. The reasons for this
are easy to understand. One hundred
million dollars of natural disaster, spurs an immediate response to accomplish
one hundred million dollars in immediate repairs. This one hundred million dollars-worth of
repairs is added directly to the Gross National Product. It is money that would not ordinarily be
spent at that time. Extra effort is
expended so that these repairs do not detract from the ordinary cost of doing
business. Unless the economy becomes completely
overloaded, it works every time.
If natural disaster is good
for the economy, then war is also good for the economy. Every dollar spent for war, as with natural
disaster, adds directly to the Gross National Product.[10] Careful examination shows that this logic is
most likely faulty. However, it does
generate a great deal of money for those powerful industrialists who support
either disaster or war production. The
ability of Robber Barons to manipulate unnatural disaster, strengthens their
grip on government: they can now manipulate disaster and the Gross National
Product at will, and for their own private profit.
This sleight-of-hand[11] in
convincing the public that there is a danger in an industrial-military complex
only covers up the real problem of the Robber Baron, industrial-political
complex. The military is simply a
convenient smoke screen; one that appears to take the high moral ground; one
that generates a lot of profit for Robber Barons; and one that conveniently covers
up the real theft in the process.[12]
The War-Debt Link
Prior to 1830 the United
States had very little debt: effectively zero debt at 1830.[13] Thereafter, increasing debt appears to be
directly geared to war.[14] It is very likely that the bulk of debt
accrued prior to 1830 was the direct result of the American War for
Independence (1775-1783)[15] and the
War of 1812 (1812-1815).[16] The cardinal change that takes place at 1830
is: Prior to that date, the economy is allowed to stabilize on its own, and
debt reaches a zero level. After that
date the economy is supported artificially and it never again returns to zero.
The link between a
war-manipulated Gross National Product, mortgaged militarization, and paper
money, ensures that the return to government by law is nearly impossible to
accomplish. Nevertheless, it also
guarantees that, in the not far distant future, the Robber Barons will become
the vassals of the bankers; and in turn the bankers will become the vassals of
lawyers; and then the whole system will break down in massive uncontrollable
anarchy.
Power by Intimidation and Manipulation
The industrial feudal lords
maintained power by intimidation of the populace and manipulation of the
government and the nation gave birth to the industrial-political complex. At first these feudal lords continued to wage
war against all their opponents: unions were crushed by police action, union
leaders were branded as criminals and killed, poverty-stricken homeless were
beaten to death. The remaining family
farms and mom-and-pop shops watched in horror as this juggernaut took over the
country. The situation was complicated
as union thugs struck back. Nobody
really knew what to believe.
Nevertheless, as I search
for historical reports, I find far more incidents of police brutality than of
union wrongdoing. Indeed, in a time when
folks are very sensitized to the tragedies of mass killings, a surprising
portion of these were not due to an individual, shooting up a school full of
children, but to police brutality suppressing strikes. It’s not hard to fill in the blanks here:
Upton Sinclair and other writers exposed the evils of the age.
Power Through Propaganda
This exposure of evil,
however, is not why it changed.
Industrialists shrewdly discovered a more effective method for
maintaining control of the populace: the ultimate instrument of
totalitarianism, which Dr. Chomsky suggests — propaganda. They turned control into an advertising and
sales campaign, which worked exactly as their huckstering business model
worked.[17]
How did the sales job
go? What were its levers?
First, an ongoing
advertising campaign started to convince the citizens that the ideal form of
government is democracy, not republic. Democracy brings an increase of freedom, they
proclaimed. We will soon show that this
is not true. Democracy brings an
attendant loss of freedom: but who will believe that, the Cassandra effect is
in play. So even when we prove, beyond
any doubt, that democracy is necessarily a social evil, a form of tyranny, we
don’t really expect anybody to believe us.
Second, all communication
was controlled, and propaganda replaced reality and truth, especially in news
reporting. This was not difficult to
accomplish. Communication, especially
the news is very money dependent.
Elected officials, under law, no longer control the money supply;
powerful feudal-industrial lords control it.
These powerful feudal-industrial lords are also the leaders of the great
news organizations. News has become an
industry, it is no longer in the hands of the local mom-and-pop print shop
dedicated to bringing truth to the community.
The art of spinning facts grows rapidly.
Unfortunately, we tend to
be gullible and trusting. We believe
that democracy is better. We believe
that the news is true, especially when it is published by one of the great
standard brands: for example the New York Times.[18]
Social Darwinism
Alas, this does not spell
the end of major political changes.
Behind the industrial revolution and the growing industrial-political
complex, social Darwinism is also developing.
Driven by a gross misunderstanding of science. It was commonly believed that this is even a (pseudo)
Christian virtue, wherein the rich and powerful have a moral obligation to
dominate and protect the weak: women, children, Indians, blacks, Hispanics,
Orientals, immigrants, anyone who was not rich and powerful. Several of these groups were considered to be
sub-human, the Darwinian missing links, which perversion of science persisted
well into the 1950s, and remains with us to this very day.[19] The weak, like other animals, need to be
bred, controlled, dominated, managed, trained, and led off to slaughter — their
lives don’t matter, they have no rights, they’re just dumb animals.[20]
Debt Slavery: The Leverage Fraud
We’re not to the bottom of
the pile yet. I don’t know when it
happened.[21] I first became aware of the problem around
1957, and I was not yet able to grasp the fact that it was a problem. Somewhere around 1957, Jones and Laughlin
Steel borrowed a considerable amount of money from the Carnegie Mellon Banks:
it stirred up quite a scandal at the time.
In terms of leverage, it was small peanuts: I suppose, around ten
percent of the Jones and Laughlin empire.
But it marks a major revolution in business philosophy. Business and government become increasingly
leveraged, possibly into the ninety percent range. This revolution spells the doom of the
industrial-political complex and the birth of the lending-political
complex. The life is squeezed out of
industrial leaders like Ernest Whitworth Marland, the former governor of
Oklahoma.[22] Increasingly, business ceases to be led by
technically expert businessmen, and is taken over by accountants and
bankers. In the ensuing battle, business
collapses, and lawyers take the reins of power.
The Great Democracy Lie
In 1975 the Trilateral
Commission[23]
publishes what appears to be its principal and only significant work, Crisis
of Democracy.[24] I’m no lover of the Trilateral
Commission. Be that as it may, the
reading of Crisis of Democracy has proved to be very
informative. I’m only on page twenty out
of a two hundred twenty-seven page total.
I’m going phrase by phrase analytically, striving to sort out facts and
points from the often poorly written and inane verbiage. Crisis of Democracy is exactly
what its title claims, another highly propagandized sales job for democracy, to
the detriment of the republic.
Democracy, democratic, and similar words are used hundreds of times,
scores of times on every page: this is more than ordinary sales work; this is
mind washing ala Nineteen
Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.[25]
In the process of selling
democracy, Crisis rightly observes that democracy is already in
trouble at the crisis level, seeks to uncover the causes of the crisis, and
purposes to shore up and fix the major problems. In the process of fixing, Crisis
exposes and proves, beyond all doubt, exactly what is wrong with democracy.
The Growing Federal Monopoly
In the interim two World
Wars are fought, the Korean War comes and goes, the travesties of Vietnam fade
from view. The power of the strong
central government is increased and solidified.
States become almost irrelevant.
After WWI (1914-1918),[26] the
FBI,[27] founded
as the BOI in 1908, grows in power under J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972): eventually it
is granted jurisdictional authority to operate outside of United States
boundaries. The CIA (1947)[28] is given
authority to operate within United States boundaries. State Militias or Guards are made into
National Guards and the power to conscript them increases. The number, power, and size of federal
bureaucracies grows exponentially.
The Harsh Reality of Downturns
With the attendant loss of
natural resources, absence of a war-driven economy, lack of pent-up demand, and
increasing leverage, the United States experiences wave after wave of downturns,
coming on roughly eight year intervals.[29] A downturn economy is incapable of supporting
leverage. The United States threatens to
implode. We are unable to support the
national defense, maintain jobs, or carry out any other necessary function.[30] Why? Crisis
explains why.
Democracy Defined in Detail
It’s simple logic
really. Consider what a democracy really
is and does. In a true democracy every
citizen is involved in every decision without exception. Every person has to do every job. There is no freedom for division of
labor. Every hour of the life of every
citizen is consumed with government decisions.
Every one becomes a slave to the necessity to make federal
decisions. Democracy, a true democracy
is a totalitarian slave state. Since no
real work can be accomplished it soon fails under its own weight. In a true democracy, your civic duty is to
give all of your time, 24 x 7, to government and its oversight. Ultimately, everyone is stealing, no one else
can be trusted: it is the government of the sleepless, ONE. You cannot afford to close your eyes. You have no time left to work. You have become the slave of the system.
Not only are true
democracies, slave states; they are incredibly short lived. Since real work has ceased while everybody
becomes involved in government, the democracy, now fully stagnant, becomes
increasingly vulnerable to external hostile takeover by foreign enemies; or to
internal takeover: usually a collapse into Fascism or Junta. At this point it no longer matters: the
original nation has ceased to exist.
As stagnation increases,
the citizenry, who have stopped working to tend to democracy, also have
increasingly unmet needs. More and more
the citizenry looks to government to provide these needs: yet, at the same time
the government is losing its ability to meet these needs. Consequently, dissatisfaction and distrust
also increase. Now the citizens are
reduced to an intensified democracy: the public must know how every “i” is
dotted and every “t” is crossed. The
vicious cycle of breakdown intensifies.
Elections are reduced to popularity contests, devoid of real platform
issues. Celebrities in office are unable
to deliver. The decision-makers and
bureaucrats are set in adversarial relationships.[31] Real problem-solvers are shoved aside. Blackmail becomes the norm of government
operation.[32]
Local Action is the Cure
Crisis of Democracy pithily observes that countries which opt
for local action, rather than central control are still relatively successful
under these conditions.[33] The observant person realizes that this is
the exact opposite of democracy. It is
in fact, exactly how a republic works.
QED — the point is
sufficiently demonstrated, democracy is antagonist to freedom, not supportive
of it.[34] What has gone wrong? What has been lost along the way? Many things, you say: but one thing, the
root-cause does not stand out. One of
the essential elements of problem solving techniques is root-cause analysis. It is this root cause for which we must now
search.
Root-Cause Analysis
One of the fascinating
things that Crisis points out is that under encroaching
democracy, two games develop. We ought
not think of game theory as a trivial approach to human dynamics. The statistics of game theory has produced
some of the greatest breakthroughs in recent understanding of psycho-social, economic,
and other world problems. It is,
nonetheless, a dangerous field that has also produced its share of colossal
failures.[35] We observed above that “decision-makers and
bureaucrats are set in adversarial relationships. Real problem-solvers are shoved aside.”
One of these games is
called the decision-making game:[36] this is
the game played by politicians as they strive to formulate new law. Decision-makers are not motivated by solving
problems, not in the ordinary sense.
Decision-makers are motivated, for the most part, by the struggle to
stay in power. The most important Nash Equilibrium[37] for a
politician would be total loss of influence and power: every gain in influence,
prestige, and power is a positive from that equilibrium. Consequently, decision-makers frequently
enact law for which they have no solution, or even for which no solution
exists.[38]
Another game introduced by Crisis
is the implementation game:[39] this is
the game played by bureaucrats as they strive to carry out well established
practice. Implementers are not motivated
by solving problems either. Their task
is to repeat the execution of old solutions.
They are motivated, by their struggle to keep their agency intact and
keep their jobs. The Nash Equilibrium[40] for an
implementer is any change in the status-quo: any tendency away from rocking the
boat, toward constancy and stability is positive for implementers. Implementers rarely act as problem solvers.
We observe that both decision-makers
and implementers want to keep their jobs, their spheres of influence. For decision-makers that involves
manipulating the public through propaganda, maintaining instability.[41] For implementers it involves maintaining stability:
business as usual.[42] These vastly different spheres of influence
are often in direct conflict; and neither of them is focused on solving
problems. Moreover, under encroaching
democracy, problems among the populace are increasing, while the availability
of problem solvers is decreasing.
Government in effect needs to create a whole new agency to solve a
problem of any substance.[43] Problems of lesser magnitude are frequently
handled by technical consultants. The
gap between increasing problems and decreasing solutions is ever widening until
disillusionment, frustration, and shutdown overtake the whole system.
Where is God?
The Root Cause of this
collapse is not that problem-solvers have been left out of the equation: but
rather why they have been left out of the equation. The Root Cause is that God has been left out
of the equation. Nobody, really believes
in God anymore. Well, everybody wants
God as a social equal, but nobody wants to face a God, Who demands
obedience. Nobody wants to face God as
what He is, the Sole Monarch of the Universe.
Few people take God seriously anymore, and God is returning the
favor. Few people see God as the
omnipotent Creator of the Universe.
Man can accomplish anything
he wants to accomplish if he has enough money and time, we erroneously and
foolishly believe.[44] Any dream that decision-makers can imagine,
no matter how fanciful, can be solved by throwing engineers and scientists at
it, we think. However, loss of faith in
God and displacing that faith with faith in technicians has a terrible
price. Since, we no longer trust in
anything solid, we eventually distrust everything. Faith or trust is no longer faith in God: it
is faith in faith, which is nothing but vanity.
The spreading distrust among men guarantees the final failure.
Returning to God
If
we wish to fix the Root Cause, we must return to God, as the only sensible
object of trust.
“But without faith it is impossible to
please Him: for anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He
is the One Who rewards those who diligently seek Him.”[45]
“I say to you, ‘Ask, and it shall be given
you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one who asks, receives; he who
seeks, finds; and he who knocks, it shall be opened to him.
‘If a son asks for bread from any of you
fathers, will he give him a stone? If he
asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? If he asks for an egg, will he offer him a
scorpion?
‘If you then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?’ ”[46]
“When the Spirit of truth comes, He will
guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatever He
hears, He shall speak: and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive My
things, and show them to you. All things
that the Father has are Mine: therefore I said, that He shall take My things,
and show them to you.”[47]
These three passages are enough to get anybody started. God is the Greatest of all Monarchs. Yet, He did not say to Adam, “This is how it
is.” He brought the animals to Adam, and
said in effect, “Figure it out.”[48] As the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit again
becomes active in our lives, we will discover more and more truth with each
passing day. We will learn to trust God
as our true and only best friend. As we
grow in understanding the Bible, we will learn to participate in God’s
conversation with Moses and all the prophets.[49] As we learn to trust God, we will learn to
love Him. But trust and love do not
spring into full bloom in an instant: they develop day-by-day and year-by-year
as the direct consequence of diligent searching for truth and wisdom.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSBqkLDxmo
[2]
The excessively and foolishly optimistic heroin in Eleanor H. Porter’s book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly
anna. A person who is optimistic beyond
all possible reason. Not as in
Christianity, where I person being martyred still hopes in Christ. As when a person hopes that even Satan will
turn out to be good, or that people cannot die.
A person suffering from an optimistic delusion: “Someday, pigs will
fly.”
[3]
The mythological daughter of king Priam, who was gifted with the ability to
predict only truth, but was cursed to be always disbelieved. The absolute perfect reality which no one
believes and nobody listens to. A person suffering from an equally
optimistic delusion: someday, people will hear and believe the truth. The reality that many people would prefer not
to know or face the truth: “You can’t handle the truth.” The contrast between Pollyanna and Cassandra was drawn by Crisis of Democracy on page 3.
[4]
This term was popularized by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower in a 1961 speech.
Today, I believe it to be nothing more than another misleading piece of
propaganda designed to distract us from the real adversary, the
industrial-political complex and the juggernaut advance of democracy in
destroying the republic. As in the
tragic situation with Gary Powers, Eisenhower demonstrated that he was just
another liar.
[5] We
are painting with a broad brush here. We
are not trying to overgeneralize and idealize the family farm into the perfect
utopian dream, which it is not.
Indentured service existed from the earliest colonial days:
http://en.wiki-pedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant. Tenant
farming continues to this day, although it has declined: http://en.wiki-pedia.org/
wiki/Tenant_farmer. Sharecropping has
existed throughout history, but rose rapidly due to the poverty in the
aftermath of the Civil War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping. Between 1920 and 1950, R. H. Garvey (d 1959) built
a wheat empire of perhaps 100,000 acres by speculating on land, possibly of
broken homesteaders, through the Dust Bowl (1930): http://kshs.org/publicat/history/2000springsummer_miner.pdf. John Kriss (1915-1996) was a colleague of
Garvey: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2542&context=great-plainsquarterly. They survived the Dust Bowl, but many
homesteaders did not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_ Bowl. Garvey and Kriss, as well as others like
them, changed the model of farming as a family owned sole proprietorship into
the model of farming as a business, which was run like any other industrial
operation: http:// www.kansas.com/2012/11/07/2559955/kansans-celebrated-in-new-documentary.html. However, family farming presents a model of
freedom, along with mom and pop shops, where most other businesses do not.
[6] It
is likely that ugliness is not a strong enough word to describe the cruelty and
wickedness of slavery. It is possible
that there are no words sufficiently violent to do justice to any real
description of slavery. Perhaps
Andersonville (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_(novel)) and Roots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_
The_Saga_of_an_American_Family) begin to do justice to the subject.
[7]
The degree of slavery practiced in the South and condemned as thoroughly
corrupt, will prove to be nothing compared to the degree of slavery practiced
in the North and uncondemned. I will not
fully understand this principle until two things happen: One. I will work in a Southern motel and watch cruelty
explode when the Southern management is replaced by Northern management. Two. I
will see the movie Ali for the first time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali. Then and only then will I grasp the horrible
scale of Northern slavery through indifference: a slavery mostly manipulated by
debt. Now, my shame has reached the
limit of what I can bear. Now, I’m
beginning to understand the true moral depth of depravity involved in racial
prejudice, especially as practiced in the North.
[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVn8ytEq-vU
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
[10] http://economics.about.com/od/warandtheeconomy/a/warsandeconomy.htm,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/61962/richard-n-cooper/is-war-necessary-for-economic-growth-military-procurement-and-te
[11] A
magician’s method of deception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_hand. In Thimblerig the pea is actually in the thief’s hand. A little jostling from a shill is sufficient
distraction to cover the fraud: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_game. All successful gambling operates off a Dutch
Book principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_book, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutchbooktheorem.asp. Most gamblers are well aware of this, and
gamble anyway, just for the rush. Book
makers and Casinos are happy to disclose this information: nobody wants an
unhappy customer. Government, on the
other hand maintains the pretense of honesty while perpetuating the fraud. Any belief that government is not a sleight-of-hand,
Thimblerig like, Dutch Book,
rigged game is naïve.
[12]
It has a ring of truth, but it is a lie.
[13]
Chase may not be culpable. He may have
broken American dependence on European banking.
On the other hand, the system he designed would soon (within one hundred
years or less) enslave the United States in debt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase.
[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Federal_Debt_Held_by_the_Public_1790-2013.png,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ National_debt_of_the_United_States
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
[17]
This is basically Dr. Chomsky’s idea expressed in my own words. My apologies to Dr. Chomsky.
[18] Gardener, Howard, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: (Perseus Books, New York, 2011: 244 pages) quoted in O’Connor, Rory, Friends, Followers and the Future (City Lights Books, San Francisco: 2012, 286
pages, pages 216ff.), ‘ “In principle we
can do it — we can find the truth.”
says Gardner. “Truth, it must be made
clear, is not a question of bias or gut instinct; it consists of
carefully-arrived-at conclusions on the basis of cool and consistent review of
the evidence. In fact, if we have the
patience to find it, and are willing to work hard, we are now in a stronger
position than ever to figure it out.[”] ’
(page 218).
[19]
Just ask a skinhead. Hitler is not
unique in his belief in Arian superiority.
I really don’t understand how he sold that to the Japanese; or if the
Japanese simply seized the opportunity at hand, to promote Shinto Imperialism.
[20]
This is what our leaders still think of us, and this is exactly how they
govern. Unfortunately, such perverted
thinking results in better care for a horse than for a man.
[21] The Federal Reserve System was created on
December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System. “In October 1976, the government officially
changed the definition of the dollar; references to gold were removed from
statutes. From this point, the
international monetary system was made of pure fiat money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard. In 1830 the National Debt was effectively
zero; it is no mystery that the bulk of this debt is caused by war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:
Federal_Debt_Held_by_the_Public_1790-2013.png and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_
States.
[22]
Marland Oil Company (later CONOCO): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._W._Marland
[23] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
[24] https://www.google.com/#q=the+crisis+of+democracy+pdf
[25]
George Orwell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
[26] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
[27] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation
[28] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency
[29]
1970 saw the first of an escalating sequence of federal bailouts with Penn
Central Railroad, see the list of Cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout. The effectiveness of these bailouts in
warding off financial collapse is possibly best understood by studying Detroit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_bankruptcy.
[30] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/24/adm-mike-mullen-national_n_624096.html
[31] Crisis describes this as a
pair of games, page 16.
[32] Crisis makes first note of
this on page 13.
[33] Crisis makes uses Sweden as an
example of such decentralization on page 15.
[34]
Unless you define freedom as the mandate that everybody must be involved in
government. However, if one defines
freedom as the ability to choose one’s life interests and pursuits without
undue interference from outside sources: then democracy is the ultimate
slavery. I cannot chose to be a butcher,
a baker, a candlestick maker: I must become a politician.
[35] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis
[36]
Another name for this game is “Chicken” it thrives on instability. It is this very instability that divides and
conquers the populace. We seldom realize
that this instability is simply another form of Thimblerig; a Dutch Book in which we the people have been played yet once
more.
[37]
Actually the inverse of a Nash Equilibrium: this is the worst possible scenario
for a politician.
[38]
In 1984, someone or some group convinced President Regan to “sell” the
“Star-Wars” Strategic [Missile] Defense
Initiative (SDI): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative. This may have had real political value in
convincing other nations to back down on certain technical war
developments. However, SDI as a
technology is probably impossible: the real problem-solvers still don’t know
how to pull it off. Earlier, in 1961
President Kennedy was convinced to sell the “Moon Race”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race. The decision was made before we had the
technology to put it together. The point
is not to fault either of these decisions.
The point is that decision-makers and problem-solvers function
differently, with differing motivations and skills, often without regard for
each other’s realms of function.
Decision-makers usually act before problem-solvers.
[39]
Implementation thrives on stability, in which stability it pretends to get
something done, it pretends to solve problems.
[40]
Another inverted Nash Equilibrium: this is the worst possible scenario for a
bureaucrat.
[41]
As with wrestling, for example, the opponent, which in this case is the
populace, not the other party, must be kept off balance and off guard by the
execution of a series of violent reversals.
These violent reversals result in the opponent being thrown down and
controlled (pinned). The two-party
system provides the capability for maintain the necessary reversals.
[42]
Bureaucracy provides the shill factor in the game. If the public is sufficiently fed, fattened,
and anesthetized or numbed by entertainment they will have no desire to
investigate the behavior of “the man in the corner, behind the screen.” Bureaucracy forms the same function as
regulating the Roman bread lines and circus.
[43]
for example, Homeland Security
[44] Napoleon
proposes and Napoleon disposes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon's_planned_invasion_of_the_
United_Kingdom.
[45] Hebrews 11:6, my paraphrase
[46] Luke 11:9-13
[47]
John 16:13-18
[48]
Genesis 2:19-20
[49]
Exodus 33:11
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