The current level of authoritarianism we're in is insidiously crafty. For people that follow the prescribed path it doesn't seem authoritarian at all. For those people you can't even get them to understand, all they see is that things are acceptable and even enjoyable. They don't realize that what they do, what they enjoy, what they know, what they think, their entire world view has been directed. It's directed to facilitate the conglomeration of wealth and power to those few behind the curtain. They can't comprehend the degree of lack of choice they have.
Isn’t a key reason for the ignorance of people on a prescribed path simply because they’re adequately rewarded for doing so? It’s an annoying fact, but far too many Americans do not care what control they are under, so long as they have the house, the neighborhood, the schools, the cars, the budget to insulate them from the sordid reality that they have witnessed from a distance, but believe they can safely evade. This is a big reason why I am convinced that the full force of Caitlin’s ( and a growing number of like-minded writers’ ) relentless deconstruction of the empire’s narratives will only manifest fully when, economically, the proverbial shit hits the fan. This is why the strategies of Putin and Xi, and the governments of India, Iran, Pakistan and practically all of South America are so critical to the cause.
Ho Chi Minh taught a valuable lesson to those paying attention. The USG learned that conscription is not a workable plan, and allowing journalists to have full access to the grunts and the designated enemy combatants is too much transparency. The North Vietnamese lost almost 2 million people, and the USG lost 58,000. But the USG got its ass handed to itself...and why? Because you can’t win a war that you simply choose to fight. Osama bin Laden learned the latter lesson. Get the U.S. involved in a protracted military conflict, and counter the narratives doggedly. Together, the people of the Earth who fight for justice and fairness can slay the beast.
On point. Americans are a curated product of addiction...to comfort, convenience, hyper consumption and self reliance is not a thing in their "modern" world. Tell them what to think, what to eat, where to work and allow plenty of opportunities to capture and briloadcast their specialness on selfies to distract them from any existential suffering elsewhere among their fellow human beings. Child trafficking torture and sacrifice? Not possible in MY Starbucks on every corner patronized by compassionate snot pouch donning facebookers neighborhood!
The worst part is that their answer to all that lack of choice is, invariably, more rules, more "leadership", and more policing. They think obedience is free and they're entitled to all they can eat. They have no interest in collapsing "order" because their claims to social and private property and the superiority they believe inheres in them would also collapse. They are scared to death of a level playing field and need "order" to protect them.
The problem is not "order" or the infantile ideology that all government is evil. The problem is authoritarianism, willing to not play by any rules at all, and Elites so caught up in what Carl Jung called the "Power complex" they are now willing to blow up the fucking world, like a child having a tantrum that can't get its way.
It appears to me you're unholstering the emotional bludgeons to perform the standard middle-class domination-in-service act, that maximizes both the hedonic pleasure of subordinating others, and the self-righteousness of being able to claim that you are a subordinate "just following orders" of your value system. It's a very comfortable place, having one's cake and eating it too, I'm sure, and I understand why members of the parasitic middle class who have spent their lives being served and fawned over in the name of some fiction or other might want the games to continue. I'm unimpressed.
Societies large and small have done it before plenty of times: split, joined, syncretized, schismatized, expanded, overextended, collapsed their worlds, sometimes by choice, sometimes by crisis, sometimes kicking and screaming behind some despot who works out their personal problems on an entire nation in the name of the liberal doctrine of moral progression. Anyone with a grasp of anthropology and history knows this.
Since at least 6yo I have trouble understanding this mindset of wanting to live in a make-believe, to reify this "world" as if it were a necessary material thing which really exists and which we are terminally incapable of critiquing, changing, or replacing. And now you've gotten some notion of me as "the enemy" because I reject your imperious demands for generalized submission, and will not subordinately respect your ideals.
I asked you kindly in the last thread to read Graeber and Wengrow so that you could learn about how actually existing human society actually works and has worked, and could work again, and how this bedtime story of total subordination to a lie being somehow necessary or good for humans individually *or collectively* is nothing more than Western cope. It seems that the implications of exiting all those myths strongly motivate you to reject any inconvenient, historical understanding of the human condition in favor of an emotionally manipulative, disinformed idealistic tirade that was put in your head by other people. Worse, I get the sense from you that imposing your tyranny of system fetishism on the future is a valuable and important thing.
That looks like a good book from the psychological perspective. I'll put that on the short list. Thank you! There is so much reading to do that I don't expect to finish in this lifetime. :)
Christopher Hill's _The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution_ investigates poverty and sin from the early modern English cultural perspective, getting to the crux of capitalist class formation under the Prosperity Gospel in Chapter 8, "Sin and Hell":
>If Adam's Fall had not brought sin into the world, men would have been equal, property would have been held in common. But since the Fall, covetousness, pride, anger and all the other sins have been transmitted to his posterity. The mass of mankind is irretrievably damned: a small minority is predestined to eternal life. A coercive state is one consequence of the Fall, necessary to prevent sinful men from destroying one another. Private property is likewise a consequence of sin; but since it inevitably exists, it must be defended against the greedy lusts of the unpropertied, who must be held in subordination. The Tudor state took over many of the functions of the medieval church. These traditional doctrines had not gone unchallenged. The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England rely heavily on original sin to defend property and the authority of magistrates against Anabaptists.
I'd like to read The World Turned Upside Down. I've been trying to track down the hatred of the poor and I suspected that it came over on the Mayflower.
As a matter of fact, David Graeber's essay "Manners, Deference, and Private Property" examines the Puritans in a case study in hierarchy, based on three works by Hill as well as several others. "Manners" and its bibliography are a good starting point for further reading on political Puritanism. I consulted TWTUD about social formation before properly reading it, but it seems to contain a helping of good and interesting research.
You are on the front line in this battle, leading the charge. Thank you for that. I'm grateful for every essay of yours that cuts through the static and reaches people, even skeptics who dismiss your ideas or argue against them, because the more voices they hear dissenting from the narrative, the more likely they will come around. It can happen. It must happen.
If the populaces are not convinced that their present and near-future standard of living has been negatively impacted by the mad anti Russia propaganda which has caused the price of energy and therefor all manufactured goods and their distribution to soar uncontrollably: if they don't see their taxes going up in the smoke and mirrors of the West-generated and backed Ukraine war, then it is hopeless. The point of pain is to alert the individual to danger, but some pervertedly, seem to thrive on it, pain and danger both. You might think that the greatest antidote to propaganda is reality, the practical realty of living, the acid test of truth: So let's hope this sinks in, the deprivation, the lack of basic amenities and the security that provides hope for the future. Because if it doesn't, all the talk in the world will make no difference.
Every time I check out at the grocery store, I talk to the checker and people in line in front of me and make sure I say "The inflation and high prices are due to Biden's insane war. This is what a war economy looks like". No one has ever disagreed. People understand what's going on.
I do the same thing at the gas pump and anywhere else people gather.
Everyone should do the same thing. If the rulers want to play the propaganda game, we have them outnumbered. And It's reassuring to know that people generally know what is being done to them and by whom.
Danger gives a heightened sense of reality, and pain can also make one feel "something," at least. That's why those who practice self-injurious behavior do it.
And look at the boiling frog example: the populace can get used to an incrementally higher level of pain.
The question is whether one or the other or a combination of the two is still needed to keep some sort of order with humans. Since lack of both leads to chaos.
Every culture has a disciplinary myth that's intended to keep people contained in the community. The middle-class "muh chaos" myth is the unhinged neo-Platonic philosophy of the Great Chain of Being, secularized.
Nobody needs order except those who need to entitle their lazy selves to the labor of others.
A society which lacked any kind of order would be very difficult to deal with for most of its constituents, which is why societies go to so much trouble to concoct them. You seem to allude to a class system, which indeed implies violence and oppression, but that is not the only sort of order which people can create.
Desiring to be told what to do, as opposed to working one's will, seems contrary to simple reason, but I suppose early childhood experiences, especially if sufficiently terrifying, might cause some people to feel that the price for being able to work one's will is too high or the task too challenging.
No matter how fancy a term for the control mechanism but it must be there for any society to survive. Those "disciplinary myths" somehow came into being. And there will always be people within such societies who would recognize them as such and consider them "tyranny".
Societies that are worth living in don't need "disciplinary myths" to keep their people participating in their relations. Everything you're saying is cope designed to entitle yourself to the labor of others without reciprocation. Neo-Platonism is an ideology of perpetual childhood and humanity will never grow up without rejecting it.
"Some sort of order with humans" - once again I sense a reference to supposed "human nature." Now you're saying that human nature is so untrustworthy that tyranny is needed to keep us in line.
Those who follow this line ignore the better parts of "human nature": altruism, compassion, and honesty.
If you look for them, there are many examples of people living in freedom who don't "need" tyranny to function.
You sense correctly but the word "tyranny" in that context should be understood as something like "having degrees of control". No one denies better parts of human nature and one could have all of those living in isolation in some ideal make-believe environment. But people live in groups and when there's a group there's tension. Just take your ordinary couple.
I'd very much appreciate the "many examples of people living in freedom" and how such freedom is manifested in combination with all the practical requirements of existence.
Except that none of your examples - for example, the "ordinary" couple - are free of social and political forces that force them into unnatural relationships.
Go back and read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
It follows then that any "natural relationship" would be possible for some "extraordinary" couple, to focus on the smallest societal unit. Can you give an example so it would be scalable given the practical implication of the world we live in?
Capitalism and corporate power are enemy #1, because they own and govern the propaganda machine and write and enforce the rules under which the machine and society operate.
Not disagreeing with you, but the other side of the equation is that most people are content to be told sweet lies and really have no desire to disconnect from the Matrix. They only want to be fat, dumb and happy.
Also, it's been said that if people are not liberal when they're young, they're hard-hearted, but if they don't become conservative when they're older, they're soft-headed.
Christ instructed his disciples to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
Most people who appeal to Christianity as a cure for Christian ideals taken to their logical conclusion as they are in the world today are middle-class emotional sadomasochists who want to be superior to labor.
Calvinism defined class according to stages in the human life cycle. Their social ideal was rendered mythical by capitalist relations, yet they still blamed the victim for not "achieving" autonomy, in almost the exact same language that conservatives use now.
What is actually going on with your smug invidious ageism is that people who have *property* become conservative, a cognitive bias known as the endowment effect.
It seems by design. Once a thinking person has lived through a few cycles of some happenings (crises, wars, etc.) and hence accumulated, hopefully, some wisdom to act properly not just for himself but, more importantly, for the society in some meaningful capacity - it is time for him to go, physically.
And those records called history apparently are too hard to consult or take seriously by every new crop.
The demoralization of our nation and the westernized world has been thorough.
What people need is something bigger than themselves in the grand scheme, something worth dying for it it came to that. Then they'd fight for it here on earth. God has been removed from our world, hence the demoralization, by that very design.
As someone famous once said, if there's nothing worth dying for then there's nothing worth living for!
There are at least two reasons that's a terrible idea:
1. It's why the enemy is doing what they're doing.
2. It's why most of the normals are doing what they're doing.
3. People only want people to believe in values so that they can be manipulated.
We need to worry less about one another's feelings, in the sense of trying to align theirs with ours, and more about one another's comfort and pleasure.
In any event, if people need something "bigger than themselves" to effect any improvement, they're either going to wait a long time for the gods to descend and intervene, or they're going to get false gods who are more of the same in disguise.
God has not been removed from this world. Did we not pray for an injured football player? God is here within us all. We just have to remove the cobwebs of society and dust off our souls. Really quite easy.
Got into this conversation with my wife today, the majority of those same people "praying," who knows to whom in most cases, are vehement Injection supporters that would throw you in jail for not injecting yourself. They've said so.
So I question who they're praying to to begin with. Most are merely virtue signaling. One mustn't announce that one's praying. In fact, Jesus stated plainly that we shouldn't.
Oddly, that has been done from within, not from without as so many have surmised.
In short, within the "Christian" community, which I put in quotes because it's a misnomer today, the values of antichrist have been aligned with the values of Christ.
It would be akin to saying antichrist-Christ values. Oxymoronic
That's a very general statement. Do you want a far more detailed blueprint on exactly how it was done?
This is a serious red-pill decision. Most people have been so indoctrinated that they're their own worst enemies on that, and I'm referring to readers HERE.
We simply don't want to believe the truth. Interestingly, that's EXACTLY what Yuri Bezmenov said about the Demoralization process in his interview with G. Edward Griffin nearly 40 years ago when he plainly stated that the process was all but complete. And so right he was! It what has greased the skids for the perps in the link that I'm talking about between then and now.
THAT'S why we're screwed, because we've allowed that indoctrination to permeate our inner beliefs, to the exclusion of God.
If I send you the link I don't want to hear about how I'm "this-ist" or "that-phobic" etc. That's ALL part of the charade of theirs, those that have perpetuated this indoctrination. Which highlights who's behind it all.
I only cited Bezmenov on the demoralization of our populace, which has beyond clearly occurred, whether he was a propagandist or not. I use him for nothing else. At minimum, he sums up the demoralization entirely.
Another point missed by those(in the USA, anyway) is that they are always in debt. They are born with around $80 grand of debt to Uncle Sam. Their parents have to come up with between, $8 grand with some insurance or as much as the particular hospital sees fit. A premature infant adds another sky-high adjustment. I'm unsure of actual costs; I'm just not in the mood for research today. Then comes school, homes, credit cards, cars. etc. I will die with an unknown amount of medical debt. If I had any savings "they"--the state or the feds--would take it to pay to the medical system that I rely on. Debt IS a form of slavery. If debt is to the IRS, their gestapo tactics will ruin you in a hurry.
So freedom is an illusion woven by the propagandists to keep us from revolting. If one does actual work against the system they better have a way to fund it; lawyers, health, housing, transportation, etc. A benefactor without ties to yourself is a good start. As long as debt is used as leverage the establishment has order. There are many other ways as well. But Ol' Caitlin is correct; we are "told" how IT is and you better accept it or perish. The current wave of inflation has hit me especially hard. More slavery, in a way. I will now escape via HBO Max, I dropped other subscriptions to get it. My slice of freedom even if it's on a TV. Find your own way to escape and be free, in your mind anyway. Peace, The Ol' Hippy
Please find out about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
It explains sectoral balances, among other things. The idea of sectoral balances is that there is a public sector and a private sector. Since the government (the public sector) creates the currency, they have a different ability to withstand changes. The private sector has to rely on money (currency) coming into it from the public sector.
There is an inverse relationship between the sectors: the more that the government spends into the economy, the less the private sector has to come up with cash. Similarly, the more "debt" the public sector carries (remember that a government can never go broke with any debt in its own currency), the less debt the private sector has to carry.
Politicians and economists like Milton Friedman know perfectly well how this works, and they use the ignorance of the people to manipulate them. This is why they practice neoliberal austerity: they force the people (the private sector) in to debt slavery.
You can learn about MMT on YouTube from The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, MMT Mondays, or Real Progressives. Stephanie Kelton also has some excellent videos on YouTube about it.
I agree with your statements but a person selects debt as an instrument to make their life easier.
Money, the institution that buys comfort is an illusion. It does not exist.
You can walk away from debt. Throw the keys to the house and car at the bank and walk out a free man. You will be cut off debt for two years. Then, they feel they have taught you a lesson and give you a credit card and within 5 you could be right where you started from.
The entire monetary system is a complete ponzi scheme.
There are those that would say this is theft. According to their own system it is not. Corporations do this all the time. The government says create a trillion and bamm. They type in a 1 and 9 zeros and they gavr a trillion. To justify it they use GDP. A supposed set of numbers set up by government to lend themselves money.
So use it now. It ain't gonna be around much longer.
I will opt out of my debt(medical) when I die--no heirs either to go after either.(Fairly soon too, i believe.(bad health--don't smoke cigarettes!) I haven't had real credit since a bankruptcy back in 1986. But you are correct about money(capital), and the capitalists' rule the roost, so to speak. It will all collapse in the near future because Monopoly Money, what's been infusing the economy of the US of late, will become worthless. Then actual items, food, fresh water, etc., will become far more valuable than ever. I will most likely be gone before then. Peace
BTW-Debt to banks is a form of "soft violence", and used ruthlessly to rule the weak and the poor.
The soft violence is a nothing burger. People will look down on you is the threat. You will destroy your credit rating.
Who gives a shit about people's made up perception of you?
Credit ratings? So someone said no, you can't have any more toys without penance.
The penance for my bankruptcy was 2 years. I couldn't get a mortgage for 7. That was 20 years ago.
Lol. I knew then it was a Ponzi scheme. They can't tell anyone about you. Most people would just say screw that and dump their load of debt off on them. The banks love screwing us. Corporations do this all the time. Wall street sees a cash flush corporation. They buy up the stock. Take over the board. Take all of the money out of the corporation, run up debt. File chapter 11. The board gets very Rich. Gamestop's was almost victim to this.
If they can do this money is truly nothing but perception.
Yes, money is an illusion. No, the economic system isn't a Ponzi scheme, which would mean that later arrivals to the system would fund the earlier arrivals.
If you would trouble yourself to do the actual work of learning Modern Monetary Theory, and not simply responding with a knee-jerk answer repeating your fondly-held beliefs, you would find out that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. It's new money every time. They don't get funds from the later arrivals in the system to pay off the earlier arrivals.
Please try learning something new. You'll be glad you did.
Please pay attention. The current debt levels are exceeding tax revenue. And reported printed money in circulation is also a lie. It is more. 3.42 trillion revenue. 31.2 trillion debt level. That is 10 to 1. That by the definition of a ponzi scheme if they don't pay the debt they owe. You can use "modern money theory" all day long. It is total bullshit even if the lies are fancy words.
America produces very little. So GDP is an imaginary/arbitrary number provided by statisticians and it states whatever the government wants it yo state. Inflation numbers are the same.
And please explain the gold rush by China and Russia. Both state they realize that derivatives and debt are not real.
Since Nixon, the USA has held monetary power in the world. Other countries woke up while America went woke.
BRICS will replace the USA as a top currency, not using debt to build.
So, if the value of your currency is dropping in real terms, your government prints in excess of 40 percent in growing debt, inflation in real terms is beyond their control and no hope of ever reducing the bill. Ponzi scheme.
Bernie would tell you. Don't get me started on corruption. Even the military is corrupt. Biden is corrupt.
Repeating your talking points isn't a good answer to the suggestion that you learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). All of your objections would be answered by those who are much more knowledgeable about it than I am. ("The debt exceeds the tax revenue": of course it has to!)
You don't know what I'm talking about, and your falling back on your previously-held beliefs shows clearly that you don't want to know.
When you are ready to learn this way of studying the economy, we can talk. Until then, go your ways.
P.S. If you do the hard work of learning this new idea, you would find that people don't "choose" debt. (That is a Calvinist judgment and blames the victim.)
The economic system in the US-centric empire pushes people into debt. It's designed to do that.
Sure, you can walk away from debt. You can throw the keys to the house and the car to the bank. And then what? It's not as easy as saying that all you lost was your credit rating. YOU WILL BE HOMELESS, without even a car to live in. And if you think that you can ignore the contumely of other people, try homelessness to convince yourself that it doesn't work like that.
People do not choose government debt. They elect people who are supposed to look out for them. They trust the government to take xare of them. They trust the doctor, the lawyer, the system. Mostly broken.
They need a house. They buy a house. They need a car to go to work. But thry should never ever overextend.. Meaning you find a partner, you rent a bachelor, then a one and save every dollar you can.
You only buy when your pay exceeds your mortgage by 60 percent. You buy beater only if you have to. You have one cell and share internet services or go to the library. You eat healthy and stay out of restaurants and fast foods. For fun you walk and exercise. You play cards. You keep your money in your pocket.
The Ponzi scheme destroyed that. Not the boomers. The Ponzi scheme. Tell me 2008 wasn't a Ponzi scheme.
Oh, I made 50 bucks week in 1974. I worked every day for 35 years serving my country. We saved every dollar we could, paid into pension plans, bought gold and silver, bits at a time. I started with nothing. A pair of pants and a shirt. We communicated by mail. No phone, no tv. I started a business after retirement. Nobody gave me anything and it was extremely hard work.
I did my best to avoid payments to the man.
Big banks have created this mess. People are upside down in their mortgages or will be soon.
I did not live a ponzi scheme life.
No luck, just hard work. I am not overly intelligent, never lucky just determined.
If you want to know why people live in cars, look at Washington. Look multi national corporations. Look at fair tax laws. Look at the Ponzi scheme.
If you are upside-down in a mortgage you have to walk. If you have a huge car payment, take it back. The job losses have started.
Medium to large size corporations took full advantage of the COVID crisis. The little people got a grand. The corporations made billions.
The "Left" is getting out maneuvered again, most recently on the Republican Congressional revolt. I listened to Aaron Mate and BJG basically agree with and support a far right proposal to freeze and cap government spending at 2022 levels, because it would result in a $75 billion of so cut to the Pentagon budget. That was supposed to be the left anti-war position.
They failed to note that a spending freeze/cap is a Neoliberal austerity measure and that social spending would be slashed. They also failed to note that the Right wing republicans are not changing Ukraine war policy and have no real interest in defunding the pentagon or war machine, they are using the war as cover for dismantling government (the old "starve the beast" and "drown it in the bathtub" strategy).
The real left doesn't fall for this garbage - they do exactly the opposite, as Dr. King did, but linked the war machine spending with neglect of poor people and domestic social obligations.
Here is what I don't understand about the left: when I grew up, they were all about peace, detente (a Nixon initiative, actually), free speech, and my-body-my-choice. Now they are about war with Russia, dominating the planet, no free speech, and Pfizer injection mandates. Btw, there are protocols that attempt to clear the injection from your body before it gives you a heart attack or cancer. (Link: https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/i-recover/)
Here's what I don't get about my side, the right: why aren't we seeking detente with Russia and China? They both have nukes, guys. We're also sort of good on free speech, but Twitter is still throttling some conservatives, and I suspect that uni-party hacks like Cocaine Mitch McConnell would love censorship just as much as sophist Chuck Schumer.
For the new year, these are my resolutions:
+ Tell people uncomfortable truths;
+ Aim for health for as many people as possible. That's why I want to help you clear blood clots;
+ Be more self-disciplined;
+ Be more empathetic. So, when I make my cases, always act with love. You hate me? Well, I love you. And love seeks to respect others' freedoms, and to do what is in the best interest of the other person.
Here's what I don't understand about the right. The US empire installs right-wing dictatorships around the world and has completely marginalized the real left (which is not democrats BTW), since the Russian revolution. The right also does not answer the question about the long history of capitalist failures since practically the beginning of western history and the instant persecution of the relatively new idea of communism. Sarcastically, why would the capitalists oppose the idea of giving workers the fruits of their labor? Yes, blessings and kindness and peace! Oh, and I do not think it has to be either or.
My school had me start to teach economics. After much reading, it didn't take me long to conclude that I like free markets, and free markets are the opposite of monopolies and oligopolies. So, I ended up seeing monopolists & oligopolists as sneakier dictators, while communist dictators were just a lot more up front about who to kill.
I want small, local, free communities with autonomy. I found myself opposing centralization, like Russell Brand, who is supposedly on the left. But I overlapped with any number on the right that I saw the same way. I hesitate to say their names at risk of making this post about philosophy turn into a debate over the merits of individuals.
So what about regulating the multinationals, supporting entrepreneurs and unions, and giving workers seats on the board and voting power, for examples? I am anti war, anti passports and mandates, anti monopolies and totally anti authoritarianism. I support higher taxes for the rich like we used to have and help for the poor and an immediate end to homelessness.
We are not going to have small local communities in control like in our distant past where those local communities often went to war. There are too many people on the planet. I think small is beautiful and we must learn to live together without war. Democracy means listening, understanding, debate, and giving everyone a seat at the table... in the club that Carlin says we ain't in.
Problem is, the table is greedy and tends to grow. We busy ourselves with measuring one another far too much as it is. A universal endowment of privacy, not merely "access to", would respect that not everything belongs on a universal table, to be meted out under rule.
Sailors working up the masts observed a sensible, practical ethic: "One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself." Such an idea could unfold as a sensible, practical antidote to the maximalist tendencies of both possessive individualism and unitarianism.
Probably the most useful would be to no longer use terms like left and right as they divide us. The two parties are corrupt sides of the same coin. I think we can find common ground in our values... the important ones like peace, respect, kindness, honesty, integrity, inclusivity...
I think in the end it will be irrelevant if people from the "international community" (= US and its lackeys) will wake up or not. What matters is that the "rest" (i.e. most) of the world is waking up real fast. We're living a crucial moment in world history, and billions of people won't wait from the "first world" to catch up - it will be a fait accompli.
The only problem is that for the first time in history a crumbling empire can destroy humankind. Will they accept their fate and finally start behaving like normal countries/people? I would like to say I believe it, but I can't.
Anyway, paraphasing Marx, violence is the midwife of history, so it seems likely that there will be blood.
"You'll never stop depraved agendas as long as propagandists can manipulate a critical mass of people into consenting to those agendas. Propaganda is enemy #1."
Right you are, Caitlin! Thank you for continuing to speak out and encouraging us all to speak out against the manipulations of the Ministry of Truth. The truth shall set us free--hopefully someday soon.
Being uncompromising with values and morals is correct as long as it is with the flexibility of love and kindness, which are the highest of values and morals.
By focusing on rehabilitation and restitution that does not include cruel and unusual punishment (which is horribly abundant in our "injustice system," which does no good. By recognizing that until one has walked a mile in another's shoes ... or there but for fortune ...
Societies are quick to judge and punish. They are quick to assume guilt rather than innocence. Individual humans are more caring than when they become the group or mob.
One can always apply love and kindness. It is the most positive, win-win response.
We are talking about mass murder, knowingly hiding facts, bombing and terrorizing innocents, corruption to the highest levels and you are talking about compassion and understanding.
I have zero sympathy for whatever happens to any of them.
By my reading, he was chiding that stand-your-ground stance in the first paragraph of section I. In any case, cheers, I'm glad you liked it and I think you'll enjoy Club Orlov.
The current level of authoritarianism we're in is insidiously crafty. For people that follow the prescribed path it doesn't seem authoritarian at all. For those people you can't even get them to understand, all they see is that things are acceptable and even enjoyable. They don't realize that what they do, what they enjoy, what they know, what they think, their entire world view has been directed. It's directed to facilitate the conglomeration of wealth and power to those few behind the curtain. They can't comprehend the degree of lack of choice they have.
Isn’t a key reason for the ignorance of people on a prescribed path simply because they’re adequately rewarded for doing so? It’s an annoying fact, but far too many Americans do not care what control they are under, so long as they have the house, the neighborhood, the schools, the cars, the budget to insulate them from the sordid reality that they have witnessed from a distance, but believe they can safely evade. This is a big reason why I am convinced that the full force of Caitlin’s ( and a growing number of like-minded writers’ ) relentless deconstruction of the empire’s narratives will only manifest fully when, economically, the proverbial shit hits the fan. This is why the strategies of Putin and Xi, and the governments of India, Iran, Pakistan and practically all of South America are so critical to the cause.
Ho Chi Minh taught a valuable lesson to those paying attention. The USG learned that conscription is not a workable plan, and allowing journalists to have full access to the grunts and the designated enemy combatants is too much transparency. The North Vietnamese lost almost 2 million people, and the USG lost 58,000. But the USG got its ass handed to itself...and why? Because you can’t win a war that you simply choose to fight. Osama bin Laden learned the latter lesson. Get the U.S. involved in a protracted military conflict, and counter the narratives doggedly. Together, the people of the Earth who fight for justice and fairness can slay the beast.
On point. Americans are a curated product of addiction...to comfort, convenience, hyper consumption and self reliance is not a thing in their "modern" world. Tell them what to think, what to eat, where to work and allow plenty of opportunities to capture and briloadcast their specialness on selfies to distract them from any existential suffering elsewhere among their fellow human beings. Child trafficking torture and sacrifice? Not possible in MY Starbucks on every corner patronized by compassionate snot pouch donning facebookers neighborhood!
Sheesh. Feels like we are screwed.
The worst part is that their answer to all that lack of choice is, invariably, more rules, more "leadership", and more policing. They think obedience is free and they're entitled to all they can eat. They have no interest in collapsing "order" because their claims to social and private property and the superiority they believe inheres in them would also collapse. They are scared to death of a level playing field and need "order" to protect them.
The problem is not "order" or the infantile ideology that all government is evil. The problem is authoritarianism, willing to not play by any rules at all, and Elites so caught up in what Carl Jung called the "Power complex" they are now willing to blow up the fucking world, like a child having a tantrum that can't get its way.
It appears to me you're unholstering the emotional bludgeons to perform the standard middle-class domination-in-service act, that maximizes both the hedonic pleasure of subordinating others, and the self-righteousness of being able to claim that you are a subordinate "just following orders" of your value system. It's a very comfortable place, having one's cake and eating it too, I'm sure, and I understand why members of the parasitic middle class who have spent their lives being served and fawned over in the name of some fiction or other might want the games to continue. I'm unimpressed.
Societies large and small have done it before plenty of times: split, joined, syncretized, schismatized, expanded, overextended, collapsed their worlds, sometimes by choice, sometimes by crisis, sometimes kicking and screaming behind some despot who works out their personal problems on an entire nation in the name of the liberal doctrine of moral progression. Anyone with a grasp of anthropology and history knows this.
Since at least 6yo I have trouble understanding this mindset of wanting to live in a make-believe, to reify this "world" as if it were a necessary material thing which really exists and which we are terminally incapable of critiquing, changing, or replacing. And now you've gotten some notion of me as "the enemy" because I reject your imperious demands for generalized submission, and will not subordinately respect your ideals.
I asked you kindly in the last thread to read Graeber and Wengrow so that you could learn about how actually existing human society actually works and has worked, and could work again, and how this bedtime story of total subordination to a lie being somehow necessary or good for humans individually *or collectively* is nothing more than Western cope. It seems that the implications of exiting all those myths strongly motivate you to reject any inconvenient, historical understanding of the human condition in favor of an emotionally manipulative, disinformed idealistic tirade that was put in your head by other people. Worse, I get the sense from you that imposing your tyranny of system fetishism on the future is a valuable and important thing.
Yep. I strongly support your "No, I am not complying". Your reasoning is truth. Systems work for making a car. They don't work to grow as a human.
I’m no longer certain that most of our fellow citizens are not ready to simply say…. No More.
These sociopaths have over stepped now.
Speak up!!!!
Read Dr William Ryan's Blaming the Victim. He said all of this long ago.
That looks like a good book from the psychological perspective. I'll put that on the short list. Thank you! There is so much reading to do that I don't expect to finish in this lifetime. :)
Christopher Hill's _The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution_ investigates poverty and sin from the early modern English cultural perspective, getting to the crux of capitalist class formation under the Prosperity Gospel in Chapter 8, "Sin and Hell":
>If Adam's Fall had not brought sin into the world, men would have been equal, property would have been held in common. But since the Fall, covetousness, pride, anger and all the other sins have been transmitted to his posterity. The mass of mankind is irretrievably damned: a small minority is predestined to eternal life. A coercive state is one consequence of the Fall, necessary to prevent sinful men from destroying one another. Private property is likewise a consequence of sin; but since it inevitably exists, it must be defended against the greedy lusts of the unpropertied, who must be held in subordination. The Tudor state took over many of the functions of the medieval church. These traditional doctrines had not gone unchallenged. The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England rely heavily on original sin to defend property and the authority of magistrates against Anabaptists.
I'd like to read The World Turned Upside Down. I've been trying to track down the hatred of the poor and I suspected that it came over on the Mayflower.
As a matter of fact, David Graeber's essay "Manners, Deference, and Private Property" examines the Puritans in a case study in hierarchy, based on three works by Hill as well as several others. "Manners" and its bibliography are a good starting point for further reading on political Puritanism. I consulted TWTUD about social formation before properly reading it, but it seems to contain a helping of good and interesting research.
You are on the front line in this battle, leading the charge. Thank you for that. I'm grateful for every essay of yours that cuts through the static and reaches people, even skeptics who dismiss your ideas or argue against them, because the more voices they hear dissenting from the narrative, the more likely they will come around. It can happen. It must happen.
Another brilliant article! Thanks again Caitlin! Exactly what needs to be said now!
If the populaces are not convinced that their present and near-future standard of living has been negatively impacted by the mad anti Russia propaganda which has caused the price of energy and therefor all manufactured goods and their distribution to soar uncontrollably: if they don't see their taxes going up in the smoke and mirrors of the West-generated and backed Ukraine war, then it is hopeless. The point of pain is to alert the individual to danger, but some pervertedly, seem to thrive on it, pain and danger both. You might think that the greatest antidote to propaganda is reality, the practical realty of living, the acid test of truth: So let's hope this sinks in, the deprivation, the lack of basic amenities and the security that provides hope for the future. Because if it doesn't, all the talk in the world will make no difference.
Every time I check out at the grocery store, I talk to the checker and people in line in front of me and make sure I say "The inflation and high prices are due to Biden's insane war. This is what a war economy looks like". No one has ever disagreed. People understand what's going on.
I do the same thing at the gas pump and anywhere else people gather.
Everyone should do the same thing. If the rulers want to play the propaganda game, we have them outnumbered. And It's reassuring to know that people generally know what is being done to them and by whom.
Danger gives a heightened sense of reality, and pain can also make one feel "something," at least. That's why those who practice self-injurious behavior do it.
And look at the boiling frog example: the populace can get used to an incrementally higher level of pain.
True. However enough of us frogs are jumping out of the pot.
Physical tyranny is for those not skilled enough to exercise the psychological variety.
The question is whether one or the other or a combination of the two is still needed to keep some sort of order with humans. Since lack of both leads to chaos.
Every culture has a disciplinary myth that's intended to keep people contained in the community. The middle-class "muh chaos" myth is the unhinged neo-Platonic philosophy of the Great Chain of Being, secularized.
Nobody needs order except those who need to entitle their lazy selves to the labor of others.
A society which lacked any kind of order would be very difficult to deal with for most of its constituents, which is why societies go to so much trouble to concoct them. You seem to allude to a class system, which indeed implies violence and oppression, but that is not the only sort of order which people can create.
Have you read True Believer?
I thought that everyone was interested in autonomy, but it explained to me why some (maybe most) people prefer being told what to do.
Desiring to be told what to do, as opposed to working one's will, seems contrary to simple reason, but I suppose early childhood experiences, especially if sufficiently terrifying, might cause some people to feel that the price for being able to work one's will is too high or the task too challenging.
What I said. Your "disciplinary myth" can be construed as psychological tyranny.
Which would constitute mere script-flipping on your part, therefore psychological tyranny on your part.
If you don't want to be anatomized, keep your tyranny in your own bedroom.
No matter how fancy a term for the control mechanism but it must be there for any society to survive. Those "disciplinary myths" somehow came into being. And there will always be people within such societies who would recognize them as such and consider them "tyranny".
Societies that are worth living in don't need "disciplinary myths" to keep their people participating in their relations. Everything you're saying is cope designed to entitle yourself to the labor of others without reciprocation. Neo-Platonism is an ideology of perpetual childhood and humanity will never grow up without rejecting it.
"Some sort of order with humans" - once again I sense a reference to supposed "human nature." Now you're saying that human nature is so untrustworthy that tyranny is needed to keep us in line.
Those who follow this line ignore the better parts of "human nature": altruism, compassion, and honesty.
If you look for them, there are many examples of people living in freedom who don't "need" tyranny to function.
You sense correctly but the word "tyranny" in that context should be understood as something like "having degrees of control". No one denies better parts of human nature and one could have all of those living in isolation in some ideal make-believe environment. But people live in groups and when there's a group there's tension. Just take your ordinary couple.
I'd very much appreciate the "many examples of people living in freedom" and how such freedom is manifested in combination with all the practical requirements of existence.
Except that none of your examples - for example, the "ordinary" couple - are free of social and political forces that force them into unnatural relationships.
Go back and read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
It follows then that any "natural relationship" would be possible for some "extraordinary" couple, to focus on the smallest societal unit. Can you give an example so it would be scalable given the practical implication of the world we live in?
What I'm saying is that NO natural relationship is possible, given the practical implications of the world we live in.
Capitalism and corporate power are enemy #1, because they own and govern the propaganda machine and write and enforce the rules under which the machine and society operate.
Not disagreeing with you, but the other side of the equation is that most people are content to be told sweet lies and really have no desire to disconnect from the Matrix. They only want to be fat, dumb and happy.
Also, it's been said that if people are not liberal when they're young, they're hard-hearted, but if they don't become conservative when they're older, they're soft-headed.
Christ instructed his disciples to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
Most people who appeal to Christianity as a cure for Christian ideals taken to their logical conclusion as they are in the world today are middle-class emotional sadomasochists who want to be superior to labor.
Calvinism defined class according to stages in the human life cycle. Their social ideal was rendered mythical by capitalist relations, yet they still blamed the victim for not "achieving" autonomy, in almost the exact same language that conservatives use now.
What is actually going on with your smug invidious ageism is that people who have *property* become conservative, a cognitive bias known as the endowment effect.
It seems by design. Once a thinking person has lived through a few cycles of some happenings (crises, wars, etc.) and hence accumulated, hopefully, some wisdom to act properly not just for himself but, more importantly, for the society in some meaningful capacity - it is time for him to go, physically.
And those records called history apparently are too hard to consult or take seriously by every new crop.
The demoralization of our nation and the westernized world has been thorough.
What people need is something bigger than themselves in the grand scheme, something worth dying for it it came to that. Then they'd fight for it here on earth. God has been removed from our world, hence the demoralization, by that very design.
As someone famous once said, if there's nothing worth dying for then there's nothing worth living for!
There are at least two reasons that's a terrible idea:
1. It's why the enemy is doing what they're doing.
2. It's why most of the normals are doing what they're doing.
3. People only want people to believe in values so that they can be manipulated.
We need to worry less about one another's feelings, in the sense of trying to align theirs with ours, and more about one another's comfort and pleasure.
In any event, if people need something "bigger than themselves" to effect any improvement, they're either going to wait a long time for the gods to descend and intervene, or they're going to get false gods who are more of the same in disguise.
I can't hear well, but I can read.
God has not been removed from this world. Did we not pray for an injured football player? God is here within us all. We just have to remove the cobwebs of society and dust off our souls. Really quite easy.
Got into this conversation with my wife today, the majority of those same people "praying," who knows to whom in most cases, are vehement Injection supporters that would throw you in jail for not injecting yourself. They've said so.
So I question who they're praying to to begin with. Most are merely virtue signaling. One mustn't announce that one's praying. In fact, Jesus stated plainly that we shouldn't.
Wow, the responses.
Anyone notice that our problems have increased exponentially since God & Christ have been removed from our foundations?
Anyone ever wonder why, or how?
Exactly.
Oddly, that has been done from within, not from without as so many have surmised.
In short, within the "Christian" community, which I put in quotes because it's a misnomer today, the values of antichrist have been aligned with the values of Christ.
It would be akin to saying antichrist-Christ values. Oxymoronic
They've increased exponentially as God and Christ have been hijacked by Reformed theology as rationalizations for capitalism.
That's a very general statement. Do you want a far more detailed blueprint on exactly how it was done?
This is a serious red-pill decision. Most people have been so indoctrinated that they're their own worst enemies on that, and I'm referring to readers HERE.
We simply don't want to believe the truth. Interestingly, that's EXACTLY what Yuri Bezmenov said about the Demoralization process in his interview with G. Edward Griffin nearly 40 years ago when he plainly stated that the process was all but complete. And so right he was! It what has greased the skids for the perps in the link that I'm talking about between then and now.
THAT'S why we're screwed, because we've allowed that indoctrination to permeate our inner beliefs, to the exclusion of God.
If I send you the link I don't want to hear about how I'm "this-ist" or "that-phobic" etc. That's ALL part of the charade of theirs, those that have perpetuated this indoctrination. Which highlights who's behind it all.
No, thank you, I have no interest in taking on anyone's mythology. If you get your truth from elites, you'll only know lies.
Bezmenov was a low-level propagandist who merely took his career to the competition. I reject him as a source.
The elites is the last place I get anything.
I only cited Bezmenov on the demoralization of our populace, which has beyond clearly occurred, whether he was a propagandist or not. I use him for nothing else. At minimum, he sums up the demoralization entirely.
I suggest you study-up on Edward Bernays.
Another point missed by those(in the USA, anyway) is that they are always in debt. They are born with around $80 grand of debt to Uncle Sam. Their parents have to come up with between, $8 grand with some insurance or as much as the particular hospital sees fit. A premature infant adds another sky-high adjustment. I'm unsure of actual costs; I'm just not in the mood for research today. Then comes school, homes, credit cards, cars. etc. I will die with an unknown amount of medical debt. If I had any savings "they"--the state or the feds--would take it to pay to the medical system that I rely on. Debt IS a form of slavery. If debt is to the IRS, their gestapo tactics will ruin you in a hurry.
So freedom is an illusion woven by the propagandists to keep us from revolting. If one does actual work against the system they better have a way to fund it; lawyers, health, housing, transportation, etc. A benefactor without ties to yourself is a good start. As long as debt is used as leverage the establishment has order. There are many other ways as well. But Ol' Caitlin is correct; we are "told" how IT is and you better accept it or perish. The current wave of inflation has hit me especially hard. More slavery, in a way. I will now escape via HBO Max, I dropped other subscriptions to get it. My slice of freedom even if it's on a TV. Find your own way to escape and be free, in your mind anyway. Peace, The Ol' Hippy
Please find out about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
It explains sectoral balances, among other things. The idea of sectoral balances is that there is a public sector and a private sector. Since the government (the public sector) creates the currency, they have a different ability to withstand changes. The private sector has to rely on money (currency) coming into it from the public sector.
There is an inverse relationship between the sectors: the more that the government spends into the economy, the less the private sector has to come up with cash. Similarly, the more "debt" the public sector carries (remember that a government can never go broke with any debt in its own currency), the less debt the private sector has to carry.
Politicians and economists like Milton Friedman know perfectly well how this works, and they use the ignorance of the people to manipulate them. This is why they practice neoliberal austerity: they force the people (the private sector) in to debt slavery.
You can learn about MMT on YouTube from The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, MMT Mondays, or Real Progressives. Stephanie Kelton also has some excellent videos on YouTube about it.
I agree with your statements but a person selects debt as an instrument to make their life easier.
Money, the institution that buys comfort is an illusion. It does not exist.
You can walk away from debt. Throw the keys to the house and car at the bank and walk out a free man. You will be cut off debt for two years. Then, they feel they have taught you a lesson and give you a credit card and within 5 you could be right where you started from.
The entire monetary system is a complete ponzi scheme.
There are those that would say this is theft. According to their own system it is not. Corporations do this all the time. The government says create a trillion and bamm. They type in a 1 and 9 zeros and they gavr a trillion. To justify it they use GDP. A supposed set of numbers set up by government to lend themselves money.
So use it now. It ain't gonna be around much longer.
I will opt out of my debt(medical) when I die--no heirs either to go after either.(Fairly soon too, i believe.(bad health--don't smoke cigarettes!) I haven't had real credit since a bankruptcy back in 1986. But you are correct about money(capital), and the capitalists' rule the roost, so to speak. It will all collapse in the near future because Monopoly Money, what's been infusing the economy of the US of late, will become worthless. Then actual items, food, fresh water, etc., will become far more valuable than ever. I will most likely be gone before then. Peace
BTW-Debt to banks is a form of "soft violence", and used ruthlessly to rule the weak and the poor.
I pray you go in peace, brother.
The soft violence is a nothing burger. People will look down on you is the threat. You will destroy your credit rating.
Who gives a shit about people's made up perception of you?
Credit ratings? So someone said no, you can't have any more toys without penance.
The penance for my bankruptcy was 2 years. I couldn't get a mortgage for 7. That was 20 years ago.
Lol. I knew then it was a Ponzi scheme. They can't tell anyone about you. Most people would just say screw that and dump their load of debt off on them. The banks love screwing us. Corporations do this all the time. Wall street sees a cash flush corporation. They buy up the stock. Take over the board. Take all of the money out of the corporation, run up debt. File chapter 11. The board gets very Rich. Gamestop's was almost victim to this.
If they can do this money is truly nothing but perception.
Yes, money is an illusion. No, the economic system isn't a Ponzi scheme, which would mean that later arrivals to the system would fund the earlier arrivals.
If you would trouble yourself to do the actual work of learning Modern Monetary Theory, and not simply responding with a knee-jerk answer repeating your fondly-held beliefs, you would find out that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. It's new money every time. They don't get funds from the later arrivals in the system to pay off the earlier arrivals.
Please try learning something new. You'll be glad you did.
Please pay attention. The current debt levels are exceeding tax revenue. And reported printed money in circulation is also a lie. It is more. 3.42 trillion revenue. 31.2 trillion debt level. That is 10 to 1. That by the definition of a ponzi scheme if they don't pay the debt they owe. You can use "modern money theory" all day long. It is total bullshit even if the lies are fancy words.
America produces very little. So GDP is an imaginary/arbitrary number provided by statisticians and it states whatever the government wants it yo state. Inflation numbers are the same.
And please explain the gold rush by China and Russia. Both state they realize that derivatives and debt are not real.
Since Nixon, the USA has held monetary power in the world. Other countries woke up while America went woke.
BRICS will replace the USA as a top currency, not using debt to build.
So, if the value of your currency is dropping in real terms, your government prints in excess of 40 percent in growing debt, inflation in real terms is beyond their control and no hope of ever reducing the bill. Ponzi scheme.
Bernie would tell you. Don't get me started on corruption. Even the military is corrupt. Biden is corrupt.
Repeating your talking points isn't a good answer to the suggestion that you learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). All of your objections would be answered by those who are much more knowledgeable about it than I am. ("The debt exceeds the tax revenue": of course it has to!)
You don't know what I'm talking about, and your falling back on your previously-held beliefs shows clearly that you don't want to know.
When you are ready to learn this way of studying the economy, we can talk. Until then, go your ways.
I fail to understand how you can believe they are following any modern money principles today.
Theft, corruption and lies were not part of any modern monetary theories.
The premise that you borrow in bad times and pay back n good times makes perfect sense.
Criminality is not part of MMT.
Thank you.
P.S. If you do the hard work of learning this new idea, you would find that people don't "choose" debt. (That is a Calvinist judgment and blames the victim.)
The economic system in the US-centric empire pushes people into debt. It's designed to do that.
Sure, you can walk away from debt. You can throw the keys to the house and the car to the bank. And then what? It's not as easy as saying that all you lost was your credit rating. YOU WILL BE HOMELESS, without even a car to live in. And if you think that you can ignore the contumely of other people, try homelessness to convince yourself that it doesn't work like that.
People do not choose government debt. They elect people who are supposed to look out for them. They trust the government to take xare of them. They trust the doctor, the lawyer, the system. Mostly broken.
They need a house. They buy a house. They need a car to go to work. But thry should never ever overextend.. Meaning you find a partner, you rent a bachelor, then a one and save every dollar you can.
You only buy when your pay exceeds your mortgage by 60 percent. You buy beater only if you have to. You have one cell and share internet services or go to the library. You eat healthy and stay out of restaurants and fast foods. For fun you walk and exercise. You play cards. You keep your money in your pocket.
The Ponzi scheme destroyed that. Not the boomers. The Ponzi scheme. Tell me 2008 wasn't a Ponzi scheme.
Oh, I made 50 bucks week in 1974. I worked every day for 35 years serving my country. We saved every dollar we could, paid into pension plans, bought gold and silver, bits at a time. I started with nothing. A pair of pants and a shirt. We communicated by mail. No phone, no tv. I started a business after retirement. Nobody gave me anything and it was extremely hard work.
I did my best to avoid payments to the man.
Big banks have created this mess. People are upside down in their mortgages or will be soon.
I did not live a ponzi scheme life.
No luck, just hard work. I am not overly intelligent, never lucky just determined.
If you want to know why people live in cars, look at Washington. Look multi national corporations. Look at fair tax laws. Look at the Ponzi scheme.
If you are upside-down in a mortgage you have to walk. If you have a huge car payment, take it back. The job losses have started.
Medium to large size corporations took full advantage of the COVID crisis. The little people got a grand. The corporations made billions.
The "Left" is getting out maneuvered again, most recently on the Republican Congressional revolt. I listened to Aaron Mate and BJG basically agree with and support a far right proposal to freeze and cap government spending at 2022 levels, because it would result in a $75 billion of so cut to the Pentagon budget. That was supposed to be the left anti-war position.
They failed to note that a spending freeze/cap is a Neoliberal austerity measure and that social spending would be slashed. They also failed to note that the Right wing republicans are not changing Ukraine war policy and have no real interest in defunding the pentagon or war machine, they are using the war as cover for dismantling government (the old "starve the beast" and "drown it in the bathtub" strategy).
The real left doesn't fall for this garbage - they do exactly the opposite, as Dr. King did, but linked the war machine spending with neglect of poor people and domestic social obligations.
Excellent article. True.
Here is what I don't understand about the left: when I grew up, they were all about peace, detente (a Nixon initiative, actually), free speech, and my-body-my-choice. Now they are about war with Russia, dominating the planet, no free speech, and Pfizer injection mandates. Btw, there are protocols that attempt to clear the injection from your body before it gives you a heart attack or cancer. (Link: https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/i-recover/)
Here's what I don't get about my side, the right: why aren't we seeking detente with Russia and China? They both have nukes, guys. We're also sort of good on free speech, but Twitter is still throttling some conservatives, and I suspect that uni-party hacks like Cocaine Mitch McConnell would love censorship just as much as sophist Chuck Schumer.
For the new year, these are my resolutions:
+ Tell people uncomfortable truths;
+ Aim for health for as many people as possible. That's why I want to help you clear blood clots;
+ Be more self-disciplined;
+ Be more empathetic. So, when I make my cases, always act with love. You hate me? Well, I love you. And love seeks to respect others' freedoms, and to do what is in the best interest of the other person.
God bless you. Get those clots out. (https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/i-recover/)
Here's what I don't understand about the right. The US empire installs right-wing dictatorships around the world and has completely marginalized the real left (which is not democrats BTW), since the Russian revolution. The right also does not answer the question about the long history of capitalist failures since practically the beginning of western history and the instant persecution of the relatively new idea of communism. Sarcastically, why would the capitalists oppose the idea of giving workers the fruits of their labor? Yes, blessings and kindness and peace! Oh, and I do not think it has to be either or.
My school had me start to teach economics. After much reading, it didn't take me long to conclude that I like free markets, and free markets are the opposite of monopolies and oligopolies. So, I ended up seeing monopolists & oligopolists as sneakier dictators, while communist dictators were just a lot more up front about who to kill.
I want small, local, free communities with autonomy. I found myself opposing centralization, like Russell Brand, who is supposedly on the left. But I overlapped with any number on the right that I saw the same way. I hesitate to say their names at risk of making this post about philosophy turn into a debate over the merits of individuals.
So what about regulating the multinationals, supporting entrepreneurs and unions, and giving workers seats on the board and voting power, for examples? I am anti war, anti passports and mandates, anti monopolies and totally anti authoritarianism. I support higher taxes for the rich like we used to have and help for the poor and an immediate end to homelessness.
It never has to be either or, right or left, black or white.
We are not going to have small local communities in control like in our distant past where those local communities often went to war. There are too many people on the planet. I think small is beautiful and we must learn to live together without war. Democracy means listening, understanding, debate, and giving everyone a seat at the table... in the club that Carlin says we ain't in.
Problem is, the table is greedy and tends to grow. We busy ourselves with measuring one another far too much as it is. A universal endowment of privacy, not merely "access to", would respect that not everything belongs on a universal table, to be meted out under rule.
Sailors working up the masts observed a sensible, practical ethic: "One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself." Such an idea could unfold as a sensible, practical antidote to the maximalist tendencies of both possessive individualism and unitarianism.
The new left is just a new and exciting label. Like a Tide Pod. Still laundry detergent.
They just pretend they are woke.
Probably the most useful would be to no longer use terms like left and right as they divide us. The two parties are corrupt sides of the same coin. I think we can find common ground in our values... the important ones like peace, respect, kindness, honesty, integrity, inclusivity...
Absolutely. These aee attributes we should all try to acheive.
And demand of our leaders... In politics and in business, education, spiritual, etc.
It isn't that the left has changed so much as it was taken over by hostile forces. Whatever you're calling "the left" now isn't the left.
BRAVO!!!
I think in the end it will be irrelevant if people from the "international community" (= US and its lackeys) will wake up or not. What matters is that the "rest" (i.e. most) of the world is waking up real fast. We're living a crucial moment in world history, and billions of people won't wait from the "first world" to catch up - it will be a fait accompli.
The only problem is that for the first time in history a crumbling empire can destroy humankind. Will they accept their fate and finally start behaving like normal countries/people? I would like to say I believe it, but I can't.
Anyway, paraphasing Marx, violence is the midwife of history, so it seems likely that there will be blood.
I'm afraid we may end up living in a mix of Orwell and Huxley. Or maybe we already are.
"You'll never stop depraved agendas as long as propagandists can manipulate a critical mass of people into consenting to those agendas. Propaganda is enemy #1."
Right you are, Caitlin! Thank you for continuing to speak out and encouraging us all to speak out against the manipulations of the Ministry of Truth. The truth shall set us free--hopefully someday soon.
Actually. Principles and morals have to come with "I don't give an inch" attitude. That takes hardness and callousness.
The soft is where we are now. Giving in to the bs. Sleepwalking through life.
Being uncompromising with values and morals is correct as long as it is with the flexibility of love and kindness, which are the highest of values and morals.
Where do you apply love and kindness to a murderer or a psychotic politician? No that approach has to be firm and unwavering.
By focusing on rehabilitation and restitution that does not include cruel and unusual punishment (which is horribly abundant in our "injustice system," which does no good. By recognizing that until one has walked a mile in another's shoes ... or there but for fortune ...
Societies are quick to judge and punish. They are quick to assume guilt rather than innocence. Individual humans are more caring than when they become the group or mob.
One can always apply love and kindness. It is the most positive, win-win response.
You can always apply love and kindness...to individuals. You need to have an uncompromising stance towards major evil.
We are talking about mass murder, knowingly hiding facts, bombing and terrorizing innocents, corruption to the highest levels and you are talking about compassion and understanding.
I have zero sympathy for whatever happens to any of them.
Though I replied to your comment (twice) it is not appearing here. They are above?
The conservative author Dmitry Orlov dismisses that petulant stance:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40690.htm
I read all of this great article, laughed a lot, and agreed with all of it.
I have been quietly observing this for the last few years, and I did read a comprehensive Russian history some time ago.
Thanks for the link!
Are you talking to me? Great article by the way. That is how I live my life.
By my reading, he was chiding that stand-your-ground stance in the first paragraph of section I. In any case, cheers, I'm glad you liked it and I think you'll enjoy Club Orlov.