Monthly Archives: June 2011

My tweets

Jun 28

Posted by

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

My tweets

Jun 27

Posted by

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

My tweets

Jun 26

Posted by

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

Pt 2: 60s-Matrix Aroused – Culture War

Jun 24

Posted by

Culture War Part Two, Matrix Aroused, the Sixties: How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers 

 

Matrix Aroused – Topics

Whatever Happened to the Sixties Generation?

The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged

The All Out Campaign to Slander Them, Distort their Actions, Activities, History, and to Scapegoat the Sixties Generation, their Values and Ideals

The "Big Lie" of the "Conservative Backlash" That Never Was

The Total Remaking of Education, Publishing, Media, Middle Class Prosperity, and Other Institutions so Such a Generation Would Never Rise Again

The Beginnings of the Comprehensive Blanket of Untruth–Put Out by a No Longer Free Media, a Media Bought and Owned…

Which Is Increasingly Being Termed "The Matrix"

The ‘Why’ of "Obvious Truths"
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

The Why of Obvious Truths,  Culture War and Matrix Beginnings: 
Pt. 1,  "Whatever Happened to the Sixties Generation?" 
The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged,
the All Out Campaign to Slander, Distort, and Scapegoat a Generation

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, "Culture War, Part Two: Matrix Aroused," click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

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

America’s Lying Times, Beginnings

Talkin’ Bout My Generation

Whatever Happened?  Whatever happened to Sixties youth? What has become of the values, aspirations, ideals, and energy that manifested in those turbulent but exciting, angry but supremely hopeful years?

There was a time, after all, when the influence of the "baby-boomer" youth generation was everywhere to be found. Their activities were broadcast daily on the TV news; they were making political events; they were setting trends in fashion and style which business did its worst to copy, package, and sell–attempting thereby to cash in on such powerful enthusiasms.

Suddenly, faster than their appearance, this generation of youth faded from significance in the early Seventies. At the time, commentators were falling over each other attempting to fit a rationale to the relative disappearance of youth influence and the comparative placidity of events. 

A common explanation that surfaced in those days was that many youth leaders, particularly activists, had begun being disillusioned about the effectiveness and results of confrontational politics.

Some argued that activists were beginning to "look inward" for the roots of problems, or of reevaluating and seeking to come up with better ways of eliciting change. As for the less activist sectors of the youth culture–those referred to by the originally pejorative terms "flower children" or "hippies"–many had moved out of the cities, often in disgust and equal disillusionment, to the countryside.

There they were reputed to be actively carrying out their "back to nature" values singly, in couples, and in communal groups. As far as the larger culture was concerned, they were invisible.

 

 

 

What happens to a revolution not televised:  Others have asserted that the media played a large and active part in the "disappearance" of this generation. It has been noted, for example, as simply one indicator, that 90% of youth protests were reported by the media in 1969, but only 20 to 25% were covered in 1970-71, and only 1% of such dissident activities could be found in the media coverage of 1972.

One could argue in response to this that demonstrations were becoming commonplace, so they qualified less as news as time went by. But this reasoning does not fully explain the precipitous nature of this decline, nor the resulting virtual elimination of coverage. In respect to comparable events of recent times, such a pattern has elicited the label "media cover-up."

Killing "The Sixties"

 It is therefore much more likely–and there has been evidence and published commentary to this effect–that this decline was part of a concerted effort by the media, in collusion with the threatened established sectors of society, to actively put a lid on student and youthful dissent and unrest.

Keeping the People Down

I myself have knowledge and personal experience of how a similar suppression at exactly this time was perpetrated on university campuses.

Enlightenment lobotomies…again.  Specifically, at the college I was attending–Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania–and other colleges and universities around the country, wealthy alumni threatened to withdraw funding unless (1) certain faculty members, considered "threatening" to established interests, were fired, (2) certain programs–considered too innovative, "disruptive," or "instigative"–were cut back or eliminated, and (3) certain "unorthodox," "undisciplined," or "publicly disrespectful" student behaviors were discouraged, suppressed, and/or harshly responded to and clamped down on.

The total remaking of society, so such a generation would never arise again.  Indeed, such active "blacklisting" of counterculture figures, behavior, and values on university campuses seemed to be part of a general dictum across institutions–including publishing, films, TV, education at all levels, medicine and science, and the work place–to actively fight back at what was seen as dire threats to traditional mainstream values–values, incidentally, that were calculated to placate the masses and keep them, as for hundreds of years, feeling nervous, unworthy, inferior, and slavish in relation to the wealthy and powerful.

Matrix Aroused

The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged

Some commentators speculated that established societal powers had been caught off guard by the initial fervor and tenacity of counterculture energy and demonstrations, but that toward the end of the Sixties and early Seventies there had been time to regroup.

Declaration of Culture War

A massively funded attack by "the establishment."  These established forces and economic interests began to implement a well-conceived, hugely funded, well-orchestrated, and highly cooperative counteroffensive against the new cultural values, which in their minds represented a dagger poised at the heart of their very existence.

From this perspective, then, the media’s active refusal to cover events could be seen as a small, albeit influential, aspect of a much larger effort–however unconsciously carried out–at suppression of the new values and reinforcement of traditional ones by the powerful interests that those values, if successful, either directly or indirectly put in jeopardy.

Creating a "conservative backlash."  With these considerations, it is understandable that in 1971 and 1972–despite increasing unrest and demonstrations on college campuses, increasing liberalization of values among all age groups and growing liberal and counterculture political power–there would be a number of books published and widely reviewed which, closing their eyes on all this, instead presented dubious evidence and selectively chosen incidents to make a case for a so-called "conservative backlash," which there is no doubt the authors earnestly hoped for and fervently sought to bring about in their proclamation of it. The same tactics are being used today to create a conservative Tea Party "movement."

This may be seen as the beginnings of the use of "The Big Lie" as a major, sometimes the only strategy, in conservatives attempts to fight back against this outpouring of sensitivity to injustice at all levels.

Strong man truth–Big lies!!…big ones.  As background: The Big Lie basically amounts to the idea that you can say the most outlandish thing long enough, loud enough, and from the highest pulpit, and eventually it becomes accepted fact. No doubt, its use can be traced to the earliest times of civilized history and is certainly evident in this century in the tactics of Hitler and Mussolini, where it played crucial and primary roles.

 

However, its more recent re-emergence in contemporary America and its rise to the heights of skillful political brandishment came in the hands, first, of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr.

Then later it had its most pervasive use, however awkward and skill-less, during the eight years of George W. Bush, where Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and others took it to such moronic lengths they eventually were seen to be what they were–big lies, with no attempt to educate the public at all; but simply to cover up and to manipulate, like common criminals would.  [Footnote 1]

Nevertheless, these later major uses, in fact the evolution of The Big Lie into the ONLY strategy of Republican politics may find its beginnings in such publications as these books from the early 70s, as well as to its highly skilled, and much documented, use by Richard Nixon throughout his political career.

Creating Their Own Reality –
It’s Their World, We Only Just Live In It

The success of The Big Lie, and its eventual morphing into the The Big Web of Deceit, more easily termed The Matrix

The hidden puppeteers.  Whereas Sixties youth had only their enthusiasm and their heartfelt passion to allow a world of freedom, and all the other values espoused in our Constitution, they were up against huge entrenched, and filthy with wealth, nameless puppeteers. The wealth of these puppet masters got them any support they wanted for anything. These wealthy manipulators sensed a threat to the status quo, hearing about idealistic notions of equality, freedom, and such. But they also knew that their positions depended not on the actual enjoyment of the masses of their supposed "freedoms" but only of ordinary folks being convinced they had them.

 

Culture War, Beginnings: Trauma at the Top: “Our Youth Have Gone Crazy! They Actually Believe That Claptrap About Freedom That We Put in Schoolbooks To Keep the Masses Complacent! They’re Daring to Use Them!”  So it was a huge threat to see masses of people proclaiming their rights and actually daring to use them. They could be slowed down in using their rights by having them violently bludgeoned by police and riled up construction workers in Chicago; they could be taken off track perhaps, by having several of them killed at Kent State; and they could be continually arranged to be misreported in the media and maligned as well. But this seemed to make them only more determined.

Paying the piper, calling the tune.  Still, these puppeteers owned the media and therefore controlled what the public would be told; they were the main sources of income for universities across the country, so they controlled what would be rolled out as truth and knowledge. Ultimately they could fund politicians and speakers…and radio and TV show hosts who would speak their Big Lies. They really had all the weapons to roundly put down this band of idealists whose only weapons were truth, and righteous feeling, and passion of youth, and clarity of youthful mind.

No contest.  It was no contest, especially as only one side was fully aware that they were at war; indeed the other side–most of them–had no inkling of the powers behind the scenes. That reality would of course be left out of the history and sociology books they had read–funded by the puppeteers of course.

Many 60s youth even began to believe that they had lost, and that most Americans were lashing back at them. This would be disheartening to many; especially to those who had seen the coming together of middle class, upper middle class, and working class to join in mass movements like the one million who showed up from all over the country to be at Moratorium Day on November 15, 1969. In this way the media had a big influence on taking the wind out of the sails of many of the youth.

Living Under the Big (Conservative) Lie

Others felt they must have been wrong because they had now, according to the media, become the enemy of those they hoped would see the wisdom of these values that basically came from them! That is to say that young radicals in general had come from middle class liberal family backgrounds. They always felt they were carrying out the values that their parents had taught them. 

"First, We’ll Instill Doubt in the Masses, Thereby Creating Division"

These youth saw the country come awake to their values through massive movements like the antiwar movement and the cultural flowering, which older and middle class folks were increasingly taking on themselves. It was therefore disconcerting and confusing to be told they were actually at odds with a conservative majority, a "silent majority." This wasn’t true, but that would not be obvious to them at the time. So thinking the country was at odds with the actual following through on the values of  their parents and the liberal worlds they grew up in, doubt was palpable.

"Next, We’ll Push Them Into Poverty, Thereby Eliminating Alternatives."   

For these youth, their response, unfortunately, was to try to reintegrate with the society they had thrown behind them, but now saw as the only one possible.

"Last, We’ll Compel Obedience"

Still, this cadre of youth retained their values into later life. It became common to hear that these motivated youth decided on a strategy of playing the game to gain entrance to the positions of power and to change the structures of violence and hatred from within. To some extent they succeeded, as we see from the careers of Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

 

Continue on this site with
"Culture War, Part Three: Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures"

 

 Footnote

1.  The results of this are discussed, with a fair amount of humor, in my article/audiocast "Naked Republicans."

"Naked Republicans – Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish"

For the author’s reading of "Naked Republicans," click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here (36 minutes):

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

You might also be interested in the 4-minute clip taken from "Naked Republicans." Click on the link to the audio site below or click the audio player below that:

"You’re Turning Down my Money for ME!…To Stare Down…Who?!!": Likely Constituent’s Response to Republican Governors
Who Turned Down Unemployment Money from Stimulus
to "Score Points" Against Obama

(Link) View more Silly Mickel’s Calling The Noble In Spirit: Wake Up Sound Clips and Michael Jackson And The Authentic Life Sound Clips

 Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Noteworthy Comments

1.  Mona Kranke  An interesting sight. A good article! And some facts, I have to think about.

But I don’t understand, why you decide, that the lying and dividing started in the early 70s.

But – excuse my poor English – possibly I didn’t understand all completely …?

Or do you mean this worldwide movement – you can watch between 1965 and 70 in the whole world – a movement of “Unity, Equality, Love and Peace”, in all the different societies? This you cannot explain with the development in the USA or the Western World (that is – over this very different!).

With the beginning of 1971 it was changing totally – during half an year the movement fell into pieces. Best friends become strangers to each other and even enemies. The left wing youth, the same people, that 1970 went together against war, for human rights and equality on demonstrations and wanted to change the world, were struggling between Maoist, Leninist, Trotsky-ist, Anarchist and other ~ists.

In China turned the cultural revolution – that begun as a progressive movement – into terror and the opposite of progress.

Nixon won presidential elections and bombed Laos and Cambodja – nobody asked why!

I was in an East-German jail from Xmas 1970 until Nov. 1971. I came free and wanted to visit my old friends – I was stunned! It was so crazy! The world around me had changed! The half of them didn’t speak with the other half and didn’t visit the same bars and events anymore! Only a few was not gone insane!

And I know, that the same phenomena occurred in the West-European countries – possibly besides Spain, that was under dictatorship of Franco and not in the same strength affected by this movement. I discussed many hours about this development with friends.

All the scientific explanations seem to be artificial constructions, if you look at the very different societies, that produced similar changes.

And the lying in the USA – sorry, look backwards to the consolidation of the states in the middle-west, the annexion of Texas and California, the deals during and after the Mexican war, always were the poor used and thrown away. And the left wing was much stronger before the 1960s. The McCarthy-Era left deep traces behind.

I remember big worker’s movement in the 50s and 60s, miner’s strike, transportation and docker’s strikes. I really don’t know, but for me it seems, as had this movement decreased, when the racial unrest in the mid of the 60s came up. Another reason could be, that the production was done more and more by machines. If at a workplace of 200m² is working one lonely worker, it is not easy, to organize a strong union. But it’s fact, that the strong workers movement went down, and some students, who claimed to know the world and the life, because they had read some books, came to the top of progressive movement. This will always be a dead end street! Students finish their studies and get children, leave the universities and change their residence and soon their mind.

You know the wonderful movie “Flashback”?
:-)
The media will have a big influence on all societies. And a crowd of students will never be able to build up a national movement for the future. I believe, that the leaders of the movement made the same mistake in the USA as in Middle-Europe. They discussed with their compadres and sent them out to agitate the working class.

Imagine this! You are the worker or 3 workers in a bar, the student tells you about the life … if this guy is a funny boy, you will buy him a beer and laugh with your mates the whole evening, if not, you won’t give him any chance. Those workers in the 70s weren’t the same like today! They thought a lot more than they believed and watched lesser TV. And the media was not so perfectly organized to make mindless idiots.

If Watergate occured today – what would happen? An article with headline in the NYT and other big papers. 3 days later a revision on page 3? At next month TIME would have an investigating story. No retirement, no penalty, no prosecution. In the name of security and the war against terror, wire tapping is come the normality!

Cheney did some things, that were much more serious and dangerous for the USA and the whole world. He doesn’t look afraid in any way …

2. Mickel Adzema  Thanks for your incredible, thought-provoking response. You know that of which you speak and open my mind to more of what went on. You have a story to tell that we all need to hear more of. And you add so much to what I have said, which admittedly, is more concerned with the events in the USA. But the “overseers” are a worldwide clique. And the movement, I know well, was, as you say, a worldwide phenomenon. There are many points that I would like to respond and share with you on that you bring up, too. But don’t have the time to right now. I certainly ponder your additions, and have some responses to share to some of my points that you ask about. Have you had the time to listen to any of the audio clips? I have elaborated much more on the text in them. But again, it has always been my intention to look more deeply into the worldwide movement and to do inquiry into the worldwide response by the powers elsewhere than in the U.S….though my initial inquiry has shown up that there is more connection between the elite of the many nations than among the elite with those of their own countries…just as in the 100 years war between England and France in which entire villages were given to be plundered, the men killed, the women raped and killed, in exchange for the release of a captured noble from the other side. And there is so much more of that ilk in history indicating that class warfare is not a national phenomenon but an international one, especially in this age, but also throughout history.

3.  Mona Kranke  PS: I read your article twice – it’s really very good written and thought – besides the “Beginning” in the headline – and – you can call me unscientifical – there are more influences than can be scientifical explained today!

And this is very good! – If “they” would know about the powers of mass behaviour, they would immediately pay as much as is needed to manipulate this powers … and let us pay for this manipulation, as they do with TV and religion today!

If you find this hidden energy – please, don’t tell us! We’re safe! OMNIBRAIN is watching us..

:-))

4.  Mickel Adzema  LOL. As well I know about OMNIBRAIN. I find a post of mine getting 1500 “views” in one day, and none the next, double digits in the 9 months of it having been posted, and the related posts getting no increases. I figure I let out (in the audio clip, which they didn’t pick up on initially) some of those “key words” they search for on computers to keep watch on us “troublemakers”! And I don’t write what I write without some amount of trepidation, as I said in my post on “1984 being spiffy these days.” But as Ghandi said, “truth is God.” And with so much on the line, including the continuation of life on this planet, I can’t think of how I can live my life without taking these chances. I know what has happened to those who have spoken out previously. I know I don’t need to elaborate on this with you. Anyway, thanks again for the cogent and humorous response. The only power and strength, outside of the Divine, that we have is to connect with each other and share our common experiences, insights, and SOLIDARITY. I feel unity with you, and that feeling fuels my sometimes wavering courage.

5.  Mickel Adzema  The link to the “1984 being spiffy” on Amplify is http://bit.ly/1984-Am

6.  Mona Kranke  @sillymickel – Very good article! I’ll share and store!

The most people unfortunately try to ignore this isues or they’re panicking and get paranoid – followed by insane tendencies and ignorance of reality finally too! ;-(

Continue on this site with
"Culture War, Part Three:
Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures"

 


Invite you to follow me on Twitter: 
http://twitter.com/sillymickel  

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

My tweets

Jun 24

Posted by

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

Smoke, Lies, and Revelations: 1950s – 1970s America

Jun 23

Posted by

Culture War, Part One: 1950s through 1970s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies

"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations—
Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times,
Part 1:  50s thru early 70s—
Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies"

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.  [Footnote 1]

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


Smoke, Lies, and Revelations

I was born just before the collapse of certainty and traditional truths in America during the 1960s. For many that decade, with the Vietnam War as the backdrop, was a time of confusion. The traditional bellwethers for morality and behavior had been undermined from several fronts.  Honesty and truth had been–since the McCarthy era of the early 50s–shaky, uncertain, and vulnerable. With the rise of the power of huge corporations during this period, and with competition and profit rapidly eroding all values and making truth the servant of the (always hidden) agenda, truth and honesty were the first of life’s pillars to be invaded and occupied. While it was gradual, secretive, and so went largely undetected, some astute observers were not fooled and even tried to warn the nation.

Books were written in the 50s about the changing values influenced or directly the result of the amassing of power in these huge corporations. These exposes increased in number during the early 60s: Organization Man (1956) by William Whyte; David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950); C. Wright Mill’s trilogy on power–The New Men of Power (1946), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956), along with his obviously relevant Character and Social Structure (1953). Books like Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955) and Presthus’s The Organizational Society (1963) made arguably more serious criticisms that the psychological map of Americans were being negatively affected in important areas.

 Prophetic, prescient presidential address.  The most significant warning came from the President of the United States who had presided over this post World War Two rise of corporations. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his final televised address to the nation before leaving office, warned against the power and influence of the military-industrial complex.  [Footnote 2]


Prophetic and prescient, his words–often quoted over the decades since–included "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex…."

"Resistance is futile.”  With Americans caught between opposing evils of confusion and anomy, on one side, and being assimilated by corporate culture ("resistance is futile"), on the other, many suffered through, or clung to traditional ways, especially the elderly, and ignored the assaults on the credibility of these institutions over time.

There was an astounding era of unity and enthusiasm during the Kennedy years, where corporate culture was subsumed under lofty ideals, which included both technological advance–and thus harnessed corporate energy in a positive direction–and social and intercultural advance, as for example with the Peace Corps. Fragmentation and anomy were forgotten as America believed it was involved in higher causes emanating out of the times that seemed powerful enough to propel everyone into the future with all the fragmentation following and somehow working itself out eventually.

The dream is over.  When John F. Kennedy was murdered, arguably by the Mafia but either in collusion or under pressure from powers aligned with that military-industrial complex, of which Eisenhower spoke, the floor fell out from beneath aspiring Americans, leaving them empty, directionless, and therefore vulnerable.

Almost immediately after JFK’s murder, Johnson escalated the war and funding for it. America had its first coup; its first massive cover-up and Big Lie. Over the next forty-six years, with Republicans taking over soon enough and holding onto Executive Power for all but seventeen years, including Johnson’s five years, the tendencies that began in the Fifties involving the gathering of power into fewer and fewer hands, and the use of that power to influence the beliefs, ideals, and even psychology of the masses, increased and became more severe, pervasive, and threatening up to the point of the outright lunacy and obvious deceptions and manipulations that were evident under George W. Bush.

 Only at that point, with year after year throwing up scandals, corruptions, misgovernment, several stolen Presidential elections, an unnecessary war, runaway deficits, and most significantly, right from the start, another massive transfer of wealth upward to benefit that small elite and increase their power, were Americans finally beginning to open their eyes to the ways they’d been lied to, used, and robbed by the rich and powerful. It took all that, which played out on the media nightly, year after year, with no recourse even for impeachment because of an ill-timed agreement between the parties about impeachment that had come out of the debacle of the impeachment attempt on Clinton, to create the cracks in the Matrix, or web of Big Lies built up over nearly 50 years. So that finally an authentic man, a man not of the powerful elite, could win the Presidency handily.

The face of mine enemy, 1984.  However, before that last event and over the course of those decades Americans saw essentially the rise of a one-party government, a consolidation of the mass media and its subservience, along with the government’s, to that same small group of people and powers, aligned with the huge corporations and serving their interests for profits and for enrichment of the already filthy rich. With most powers and most institutions, including education and publishing, orchestrated to the ends of a mighty few, there existed a pervasive–however very slick and clever–propaganda and cover-up apparatus constantly at work to fill or bend the minds of Americans along lines not in their interests, but rather those of these hidden powers with their corporate and political fronts. So pervasive and overwhelming was this effort at mind control and misinformation that it mirrored that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Since it provided no comfort, motivating people through the strategic use of terror and the incitement to hatred, it left that aspect wanting and many people–pushed to desperation and irrationality because of the continual terror and hatred campaigns–ran to traditional religions or clung feverishly to any one of the many alternatives offering easy one-stop full-service truth–whether evangelical, political, ideological, or traditional.

Enlightenment Overthrown. (No Smarts for YOU!)

In this context at no time was there an opening for the kind of rational or thoughtful, peaceful and considered pursuit of truth, insight, or enlightenment that had characterized the eras that had actually led to the birth of America and its system of democracy, freedoms, and rights. By this I mean that since 1963, there was little room in America for any of the elements that characterized the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason or Rationalism, or the Age of Enlightenment–whose adherents and tenets spawned the American experiment.

Can’t have liberal arts, it’s got the word "liberal" in it.  Indeed, I personally observed the downfall of the ideal of education in the liberal arts. A liberal arts college education had been regarded, since the birth of America, as a preeminent basis for further education and for life and career in general for those who would be among the educated and eventually the leaders and decision-makers of society.

Its ideals came directly out of the Enlightenment and Renaissance ideals of a well-rounded, diversely educated, and broadly knowledgeable individual and citizen. It was wisely considered that such broadly knowledgeable and broadly thinking leaders would benefit society in the wisdom, social consciousness, and moral conscience, indeed, selflessness, and social service ideals that would be part of that kind of exposure to diverse views.

But the Vietnam War had seen increasingly larger degrees of complaint, criticism, resistance, and defiance to its pursuit from these liberal arts campuses. I was on campus and was part of it. I also saw how the campuses were purged of the liberal thinkers–professors were fired, departments of philosophy, religious studies, history, and the other liberal arts were cut back, often to be eliminated entirely. It had become clear to the people at the top that they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way. They did not want smart people noticing, that’s for sure.

We stormed the administration building & found the documents—the letters from wealthy benefactors & alumni. 

The Vietnam War protests brought the suppression/repression out in the open. They actually fired professors on my campus, not because they were radical or speaking out against the war, but because they were cutting back departments that had anything to do with the Humanities—even the social sciences, religious studies!!!…anything that involved encouraging students to be independent thinkers or to learn anything different from the elementary and secondary school propaganda we’d been taught before.  [Footnote 4]

We stormed the administration building and found the documents—the letters from wealthy benefactors and alumni insisting on this change or they would stop their funding. This was a concerted effort by the wealthy elite that hit all the liberal arts institutions/universities in America. We demanded the Dean appear on the steps of the Administration building and answer to the charges and respond about the documents, as a condition of us leaving the building. He showed up, sheepishly, and mealy-mouthed his way through his responses to our evidence. He never denied it.

Some students chipped in (what little they could) to pay for some profs to continue teaching the next semester. We couldn’t use any facilities; we sat on the grass, outside. Of course, we could not afford to continue to do this; nor could the profs get by on the $1—$25 voluntary donations!

The result was that the Sixties Generation was the last educated generation. The result was that free-thinking generations would no longer be. They would not be encouraged; they would not be fostered; they would not be tolerated; they would not be allowed.

People like to dismiss efforts such as mine and those of my cohorts at this time as trying to dredge up the battles of the Sixties, to relive or redo the past. This ignores the fact that this battle is has not gone away at all but is simply being ignored…and consciously dismissed. It is as much here as 200,000 people were there in Wisconsin recently, though the media ignored and dismissed that in keeping with their insidious obedience. Meanwhile the media exaggerates every Tea Party twitch involving handfuls or at the most hundreds of people and broadcasts far and wide every trivial pronouncement coming from their gang of cartoonish figures.

So yes, we are still fighting this culture war. For not only did it never go away, not only has our side not been heard, not only has the other side pounded our positions into rubble; and shouted down, ridiculed, slandered, and misconstrued our points to their own malevolent ends, but… We ain’t won yet!

Filthy Rich, Nobility, Peasants, Slaves.  And before the corporations there were the rich of other economies—the filthy rich nobility that kept the peasants as virtual slaves.

The point, I guess, is that we are all taught something quite different about America, from kindergarten on up. So since it is all untrue, I wonder how different it is from the brainwashing and propaganda that we heard that totalitarian societies engage in, especially the Communists in the Soviet Union that were used as examples for most of my life.  [Footnote 4]

But is it corporations that do these things, the enslaving? Let’s say it exactly so we can pinpoint who are really the actors. Is it not the people who own/run the corporations? So, that, in my opinion, makes it what one network (CNN, I think) who did a documentary a couple years ago on the obscenely increased wealth and power of this class (occurring during the Bush Administration) termed “the Filthy Rich.” I think it is high time we started being specific about who is running this country into the dirt.

White collar slavery and rat racing.  At the same time, it was deemed a good idea to train people for corporate niches that were becoming increasingly complex.

So liberal arts ideals were bulldozed away to make room for the career tracks leading directly into positions in management, medicine, law, and many new and highly specialized niches—usually the kind of specialization that would not occur until the postgraduate years, or after graduation directly on the job. I’m talking about such tracks as international finance and the like.

Students were no longer taught the great ideas of the millennia, ideas that had stood the test of time and influenced numerous societies and nations and individuals. Rather, if corporations were seen or heard to be needing, say, people knowledgeable in inter-managerial, mid-corporate, communicative intercourse and response, well entire four year programs were built around that. Add that kind of narrowly focused citizenry with its ephemeral knowledge and you have the kind of population that will do the bidding of the overseers and be happy for their fat paychecks—until their narrow niche of "knowledge" becomes obsolete because of the development of a new way of approaching or handling things, equally as ephemeral, but more efficient or something, and itself to become outmoded eventually.

Slaughtering smart folks.  They will be happy for their paychecks, not knowing of any higher ideals than greed and accumulation. They will not know of their manipulation, would not know of the historical predecessors to it or the like. They would not have training in original thought but rather in training in decided upon processes and procedures and the jargon accompanying it. So they would become rote learners of narrowly applicable and short-lived "knowledge." This would remove the educated class as a barrier to any kind of totalitarian efforts.

So we can consider ourselves to be better in America. For totalitarianism—as, for example, under Stalin, Mao, or the Khmer Rouge—is usually accompanied by the slaughter of the educated. In my own lifetime, in Cambodia at least one million were killed wantonly, anyone with education was slated for death.

Enlightenment Lobotomies.  But in America, we are better because we just seduce folks away from higher aspirations of the soul to the lower base impulses that are satisfied with what money can buy. The corporations buy their talent and their potential for high achievement and all the rewards that come with rich lives of insight and personal growth. In exchange for their moneyed positions they receive an enlightenment lobotomy.

Should people feel dissatisfied—as we psychologists and liberal arts thinkers know they will sooner or later—others of their kind who took the medical or pharmaceutical tracks have conveniently produced the sedatives, palliatives, and opiates to keep them numb. I guess you could say these are the "breathing holes" that Kurt Cobain talked about. They may put you in a jar, but they’ll give you "breathing holes," and you’ll think you’re happy, he sang.

1984 Comes to America – Slick, Gradual, and Perfect

So this look into American history notices a decades-long and increasing suppression of truth.

Since Kennedy’s time and because of the Vietnam War protests, I have seen an increasing web of deceit cover this land. I have witnessed things with my own eyes that have been changed when reported to the country and written into history books. I have watched the 1984 of George Orwell creep into America unnoticed—slick and gradual and perfect—as only the best minds, paid handsomely by the people with the wealth, can concoct.

American dictatorship.  A well-regarded book about Bush’s America published shortly after George W. Bush left office, and tallying the actions and events of the W’s eight years, concludes without equivocation that America had become a dictatorship.

I believe that to be true.  But even if it did not rise to that level, whatever it did rise to did not happen overnight and just because of one administration. Bush’s dictatorship was the end result of the slick suppression of truth and manipulation of the masses that had its roots in the 50s, took the helm after killing Kennedy, and went into all-out war stance when confronted by the backlash of the educated in the late 60s and very early 70s.

As for what follows from here in this narrative: This is the story of one person’s informed take on those times. This is the perspective of one person intimately involved in those times. For, Forrest-Gump-like, I found himself caught up in all the major trends over the last sixty years either through first hand observation or through the fact that as a writer and avid follower of the events of the day—in an era that seemed my whole life to be peppered with national and international surprises and upheavals, some positive; others mostly not—I could not look away.

In particular, it is the story of my quest for truth during those times. Through a coincidence of birth, genetics, and upbringing, and because in general a quest for truth requires too much time involvement and is usually not a higher priority over things like family and community, my quest for truth, foregoing family, wealth, and community ties, was unusual for my times. I found few fellow travelers. In my quest for truth, I could feel, and was quite carried along with, the ebbs and flows of the tides of my times.

I had a life different from most—one which took me to live, to study, and to participate with groups and in places around and around the country for forty years. Many of these groups and places and the activities and thinking of them would be considered exotic or alien to most Americans. And when folks heard about these developments, for average person it was something that was happening far away from them with people they did not know…and was on top of that reported to them in a way to distort and misinform.

I, For One, Can Tell You Why We Stopped Building Nuclear Plants in This Country…I Helped Make it Happen.

So many of the events of my life would not be well known, although some of the things I was involved in had major influences on our country. For example, the cessation of the building of nuclear power plants in the early 80s. Not many people could tell you why or how that happened. I was one of the people involved in bringing that about. I was not one of the major players up front. But I was involved full-time over a couple year period that led up to the events that stopped nuclear power construction to this day. I can tell you what happened.

 

What’s instructive is that at least one of the other persons involved once tried to get the story of what happened published. He wasn’t a writer and nobody cared to publish the story. It is one of those stories that you will only hear from our opponents and for most people it will have been chalked up to some confusing, mysterious, and random events. It was not. 

No nukes is good nukes.  The cessation of nuclear plant construction was something that was desired, worked for, and hoped for by people who knew the dire consequences of nuclear energy and understood the motives of the people behind nuclear energy who had no concept of that, or conscience.

To put one leg of this narrative on terra firma I can tell you this at this time: Peter DeFazio, Democratic congressman from Oregon, was one of the players. This happened just before he won his seat; and if memory serves me it was one of the reasons that he won. He was one of the people who came in at the conclusion to play a critical role.

I knew him casually, as an acquaintance. He was my neighbor at this time, too, living in the house across the street from me, in Springfield, Oregon. I personally canvassed him at his house on this issue for the organization I was working for which was tackling this problem, Oregon Fair Share . We had a nice talk about the nuclear and other issues. He contributed and was a member of our organization. He is a very, very good man.

I rarely heard of him on TV in the twenty-five plus years since I left Oregon. He is one of the people who would tell you the truth, so obviously he would not be one of those speaking to you on TV. Interestingly, I have seen him on TV a number of times since Obama took office. I don’t consider it to be coincidence in either instance.

Comfortable Ignorance of Grade-School Propaganda Gone Forever

As for my life and my quest, I can tell you that the pursuit of truth is a solitary journey. But, as I’ve alluded, I have an unusual and particular personal history in childhood that turned me a particular way. I also have a very common set of experiences in growing up that led me to the average American’s thorough belief in the transcendence of America, its superiority as a nation and a form of government, and as the leader of the free world, based on individual rights. I was brought up believing that freedom of the press and the other rights and institutions–such as shared powers in government, a balance of powers–gave our country a foundation to provide like no other the discovery and the reporting of events most closely in alignment with the facts, the actual truth. That is the way I was taught; I had no basis or evidence to believe otherwise.

 

So Much for Being Comfortably Dumb.  However, when I had my first personal experience with a major national lie at the age of nineteen–one that involved an obvious collusion of State Department, Department of Defense, and all the major newspapers in America–I was shaken. When I saw that one day later all the local media followed up by headlining stories that further misinformed, and that nowhere was the truth of what one million people experienced on a day that would go down in history ever reported accurately, I was further changed.

Indeed, I have checked the history books and they tell the story of what I saw with my own eyes inaccurately, following the newspaper reports, which followed the reports from unknown sources in the Department of Defense. Even the idea that anyone would take the Department of Defense’s version of the largest anti-war demonstration in history as the basis for the story of that day is telling.

Then I was to find out that the story of that day and its coverage was bigger in some arenas than it should have been. Howard K. Smith lost his job at ABC over the telling of the truth of that day. People remember him from the PBS channel. Some of us who are older remember that he was one of the major anchors at ABC.

 What would cause such a precipitous event as his firing? Well, it had to do with the fact that ABC news was scheduled and fully prepared to do dawn to dusk coverage of Moratorium Day on November 15th, 1969. One million people flooded into Washington, D.C., the largest gathering for an event, save Woodstock, in American history, and for the purpose of stopping a war. Mom, Pop, and the kids and the students came from all fifty states. The buses were lined up and I personally saw buses that came from the West Coast, from Wisconsin, from Washington State, and so on. It was phenomenal.  [Footnote 5]

If a million appeared in DC, and the media didn’t cover it, did it really happen?  Well, before coverage could begin over at ABC, as it turns out, word came down from "on high," meaning outside of the news department. People like to say that it doesn’t matter who owns a media outlet, like, say Rupert Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal. They say editorial policy is not affected by who owns it.

 Well that day whoever controlled and owned ABC decided that their personal interests were going to be hurt by showing a gathering of that many people amassing against the war–one out of every 200 people living in America managed to personally show up, how many more would have come if they could, how many more would be at home watching and would be stirred and influenced by such a sight?

When Woodstock saw such numbers it was talked about in the media and it became history.

Media masters.  But the people who pull the strings in this country pulled the strings at ABC that day and changed what would be reported as history. And it would be a lie.

As for the News Department at ABC having independence: Well, Howard K. Smith, veteran and senior news reporter at the time, was so incensed and so insistent on finding out who and how and why this coverage was changed from dusk to dawn to practically nothing that it led to his dismissal. If he was angry about it, angry enough to get fired over it, can you not imagine that the entire News Department was against the change?

 Where’d Wisconsin go?  While this is history not news, it is current news as well…though we can’t call it "headline" news for reasons that have to do with the media. Something disturbingly similar happened more recently regarding media coverage of the Wisconsin pro-union rallies. While the largest rallies in Madison, Wisconsin history were going on–an estimated 100,000 showed up on one day, 200,000 people a week or so after that–hardly anything about them was mentioned in the mainstream press or media.

Tea Party patsies.  Keep in mind that this same media has covered and continues to promote and "tout" (even) rallies of (often paid) Tea Party proponents attended only by crowds in the HUNDREDS! These folks in the photo below have friends in high places, obviously.

Convenient (for the "filthy rich") "Truth." So who determined what would be the truth that day. Well, it certainly wasn’t news reporters.

The story is only that it came from "on high." I guess from that you can discern that ownership made the decision that day; and we have no idea how many other times it has done that. We can only conclude that just the threat of interference will keep the media in line with the interests of ownership.

We decide, you react.  We can only conclude that when senior people, household names, are fired on the spot, that it sends a message that only grows stronger with the years, especially as ownership will make the decisions behind the scenes as to the kind of reporters it will even have working for them.

Rather hear from Dan?  By the way, a more recent example of such a thing happening has to do with the dismissal of Dan Rather. You’ve probably heard the ownership’s slant on that story. You should listen to him tell the story some time. It’s quite different from the "official" version.

President Al Gore. Sorry, I was dreaming about a democratic America.  Dan Rather’s version, if it had not been undermined, might have led to Al Gore, not George Bush, getting the Presidency in 2000 (even with "filthy rich" and Supreme Court support at that time to begin "installing" our presidents). That’s another thing to think about when you think that we have a free press in this country; or if you should think that any ownership involvement in the news has little or no consequences.

Back to my story, this incident has to do with my understanding of the truth, and of history as it relates to the media and their coverage. For on the days following what should have been one of the major events on American public record, and should have been influential in the course the war would take after that day, my belief in America’s premier role, because of its supposed rights, such as "freedom of the press," in being the most reliable in getting to the real story and reporting events as close to actuality as humans are capable of was shattered forever. Never again would I look at a story out of the mainstream press, no matter how widely reported and/or held to be fact, without looking for the possible  agendas and forces that would affect the veracity of what was being said.

Things Ain’t Bad Enough? This Leads Me to Uncover the Most Horrific, Hidden in Plain Sight, Truth of All Time

So, again, this perspective is rooted in my life experience. It rises up and out of my personal, passionate quest for truth; and it details a good deal of truth’s many aspects–personal, historical, social, cultural, political, especially spiritual, and so much more.

Unfortunately while this quest was and is personally gratifying, it led me to the most disturbing truth of all time, something widely known, something dire, something so big that most people–in keeping with the times of smoke and lies–are fearfully distracting themselves from, even at the cost of their lives and those of their children. 

For more:

Continue on This Site With:
Culture War Part 2: Matrix Beginnings, The 60s

 

Whatever Happened to 60s Youth? Media’s Active Refusal, the Big Lie, Puppeteers Controlled Media, Into Culture War (and then Matrix)

Related posts on this include

Read more at sites.google.com

sites.google.com:

"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations—Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009):

http://sillymickel.amplify.com/2010/06/14/americas-lying-times-1963-2009-pt-1-50s-70s-politics-truth-the-furious-market-in-enlightenment-lobotomies/

Culture War, Beginnings: Trauma at the Top: “Our Youth Have Gone Crazy! They Actually Believe That Claptrap About Freedom That We Put in Schoolbooks To Keep the Masses Complacent! They’re Daring to Use Them!”  (on another site)

Invite you to follow me on Twitter: 
http://twitter.com/sillymickel  

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

 

Footnotes

1.  From the Collection of Audio Presentations by SillyMickel Adzema titled:  History Unspun—the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites

2.  Eisenhower gave this address only days before his term was to end. The significance of Eisenhower waiting till he was about to leave office to inform the American public just hit me.

We wonder what has happened to Obama since he took the presidency. We wonder what happened to his ideals, his promises, the change he promised. We suspect something dire, for we have watched as Democratic president after Democratic president—especially Clinton, to some extent Carter—changed once they assumed the presidency. Jesse Ventura, speaking on CNN recently, said Obama was no doubt "taken out to the woodshed." It just never occurred to me till now that those unseen hands might have even been there in 1961, too.

Certainly the forces of the military-industrial complex weren’t as powerful, bloated with power, as they are now. Still, why else would Eisenhower not speak about this until his term was just about over? If he didn’t feel pressured (threatened?) previously, why would he not have been making this an important issue? It was, after all, the summary statement, culminating viewpoint, of his eight years.

Also, if he did feel pressured (threatened?) not to reveal or let some truth be known during his time in office, yet felt it was something of extreme, even dire, importance, might he not have "risked" it at the very end, for the good of the country?…feeling that his conscience needed to relieved as he saw the end of his influence and of his own life in sight (he had gone through several health crises during his term that could have been terminal), that his legacy would be completely blackened, his influence totally skewed in a way he did not wish if he did not "spill the beans" at some point…the end being his last chance to come clean and the only time, perhaps, that he could feel he could go through with it without immediate personal, or some other kind we don’t know of, repercussions? There may be much more to this warning to the nation than had previously been brought out.

3. These are the lyrics to "Sad" by Nirvana:

Rare song by nirvana titled "Sad" or "Verse Chorus Verse." Also known as "Sappy."

Lyrics:

And if you kill yourself,
You will make him happy

And if you save yourself
Then you will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
And you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh….

And if you cut yourself
You will think you’re happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
Then you’ll make him happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
The clues that came to you, oh….. (x2)

And if you fool yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you will seem happy
You’ll wallow in your shit
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now

You’re really in a laundry room (x3)
Conclusion came to you, oh……

 4.  by SillyMickel Adzema:  "Wisconsin reminds us: The Comfortable Ignorance of Grade School Propaganda about Rights that Exist Only on Paper "

5.  While history records only 100,000 to 200,000 attended Moratorium Day in Washington, D.C., Wikipedia reports the preceding month’s nationwide actions and the D.C. event as follows, giving a figure of 500,000 for the November event. I explain in the text why I think even that figure is way low.

The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a large demonstrationUnited States involvement in the Vietnam War that took place across the United States on October 15, 1969.[1] The Moratorium developed from Jerome Grossman‘s April 20 1969 call for a general strike if the war had not concluded by October. David Hawk and Sam Brown,[2] who had previously worked on the unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, changed the concept to a less radical moratorium and began to organize the event as the Vietnam Moratorium Committee with David Mixner, Marge Sklenkar, John Gage, and others. against the

By the standards of previous anti-war demonstrations, the event was a clear success, with millions participating throughout the world. Boston was the site of the largest turnout; about 100,000 attended a speech by anti-war Senator George McGovern. Bill Clinton, while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, organized and participated in the demonstration in England; this later became an issue in his Presidential campaign.

The first nationwide Moratorium was followed a month later, on November 15, 1969, by a second massive Moratorium march on Washington, D.C. which attracted over 500,000 demonstrators against the war, including many performers and activists on stage at a rally across from the White House. Most demonstrators were peaceful; however, late in the day conflict broke out at DuPont Circle, and the police sprayed the crowd with tear gas. Over 40,000 people gathered to parade silently down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where protestors walked single file all evening, each calling out the name of a dead soldier as he or she reached the sidewalk directly in front of the White House. The people of Washington, D.C. generously opened schools, seminaries, and other places of shelter to the thousands of students and others who converged for this purpose. A daytime march before the White House was lined by uniformed police officers, some flashing peace symbols on the inside of their jackets in a show of support for the crowd.

President Richard Nixon said about the march, "Now, I understand that there has been, and continues to be, opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and also in the nation. As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it, however under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it."[3]

Activists at some universities continued to hold monthly "Moratoria" on the 15th of each month[4][5].

At the Moratorium, a quarter of a million demonstrators were led by Pete Seeger in singing John Lennon’s new song "Give Peace A Chance."[6]

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Culture War Is Class War Disguised

Jun 22

Posted by

Culture War Introduction

Culture War is dedicated to exposing the reality behind the biggest divide in America since the Civil War. It explores how this war was instigated and kept alive for forty years by certain elite powers, revealing how and why these privileged powers chose to benefit while tearing families in two and keeping America paralyzed.

This website looks into why America’s "privileged class"—its "royalty," "blue bloods"—started a "culture war" against the middle class, working class, the poor…and the educated, artists, and humanists in the early 1970s. We discover how their fear of 60s activism panicked them into an all-out assault against elements that threatened their wealth and privilege in all institutions of American society—media, education, medicine, government, politics, publication, religion, especially higher education, and so on—and restructured them.

Finally, we see how this culture war continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, tax cuts for the "filthy rich" and corporations, budget battles and cuts in government services and entitlement programs, rampant anti-environmentalism, and anti-minority, anti-immigrant laws and attacks.

For example, we see rabid culture war in the abortion debate; attacks on unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and many other states; ever shrinking civil and human rights, including suspension of habeas corpus; runaway imprisonment of minorities and free-thinkers through egregious anti-drug and anti-sex/anti-gender laws; indefinite imprisonment without trial and torture of political prisoners; and much, much more. A few recent examples of the extremes of this attack include politicians like Congressman Barton who kowtow to corporations, even defending British Petroleum from having to pay for its atrocious oil spill, and a candidate—Republican of course—for the Arizona Senator’s race who actually ran on the platform of doing away with Social Security and Medicare.

To continue, go to Part One, Culture War Beginnings: 50s through early 70s – Politics, Truth and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies.

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

My tweets

Jun 22

Posted by

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

My tweets

Jun 19

Posted by

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

My tweets

Jun 18

Posted by

Posted in Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Tags:

← Older Posts
%d bloggers like this: