Thursday, October 24, 2013

Government, Part 1

Thursday, October 24, 2013

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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