To Our Amazement, Charlie Brown Connected, Lucy Apologized, a Man Who Said “Yes We Can,” Would: Anything Is Possible … Means Everything Is Possible

Wonderful Can Happen: With Dumbness at the Top and Media as the New Opiate of the Masses, Still, “Yes, We Can” Proved We Could.

Culture War, Class War, Chapter 23: Something Wonderful Can Happen

There Are Good Reasons Why Our Financial and Environmental Fortunes Careen Wildly About: Dumbness Rises to the Top

Blinded by Their Greed, They Overlook the Obvious: Why Our National Misfortunes Are Greeted with Such Surprise by Authorities and Pundits

Voices Never Heard

What I’ve been trying to say here is, there are perspectives that are relevant and are never heard. And I’m talking about perspectives that are right outside the doors of power ready to talk and be heard; often having been perspectives that had been embraced not long ago, but suddenly, not having any credibility at all…so that our democracy of many voices—now with the filthy rich and their Republican lackeys and their paid-for media in collusion to mine only one avenue of discourse—begins to echo the Soviet Union of old with its one voice, Pravda.

Horrors Far Worse

Back in 2000, I also had written,

“I believe we are in grave danger of losing things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.”

I believe our friend speaks eloquently about some of those far greater horrors, and indicates they are there right now on our doorstep. We had a surplus and a will to tackle them a decade ago. Sadly we have wasted the last ten years reversing those environmental policies whose intent it was to help. And we have reversed our financial situation, which could have helped. In addition, we have reversed the restrictions on corporations and other policies that would have helped and at least slowed down this ominous impending doom.

So we are a decade further along in environmental collapse, and it is has increased its acceleration toward us. Meanwhile we have slashed away at our financial and other resources for dealing with it and chopped back the time in which to work. The way I phrased it a decade ago.

So is this election important? I believe it is. For me it is especially important, for I feel that if the Republicans take over, they will do so much to damage to the dreams of my generation that even if the Democrats were to be reelected to all branches of government in 4 or 8 years, they will do so much damage (the example of Reagan-Bush nearly QUADRUPLING the National Debt in their mere 12 years being the perfect example) that My Generation will have to clean up their mess afterwards, taking more years. And only then will we be in a position to progress in this country and world and bring it more in line with the ideals of peace, love, community, and harmony we envisioned in the Sixties.

So what I mean is that if we fail in the next 80 days, I can envision no more time of real hope again, for this country or the world, until I am in my Sixties, Seventies, or older. And then, even then, there will be no real hope. For as it is said of the poor, these forces of regression, Cowboy shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot, cynicism, and – let us call it what it really is: evil – will always be with us.

Dumbness Rises to the Top

And sure enough, as we all know…and what these people could not even imagine, as that trader put it, well, it is happening. One wonders what these buffoons who could not foresee such things will do in terms of fixing them; having acknowledged their extreme lack of foresight (and we’ve added, their extreme inability to look anywhere farther than their tight knit group of true believers for answers.) This should be something to see.

As for Wall Street and the economy, let’s take another look at how the media has dealt with other perspectives to flesh out my claims above of these perspectives not being far off.

On CNBC, a couple of years before the economic downturn, they used to have as a commentator, Robert Reich, who was President Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury and the mastermind of the great economic turnaround of the Nineties.

But he was talked over, laughed at, and was routinely talked to as if he was a child or suffered sadly from some kind of bleeding heart brain cloud. Well, as his words began to be the ones that should have been listened to, he was no longer to be seen on CNBC. And then afterward we have such a comment like, “Well, nobody could have seen it coming.”

Well how could they, if they were no longer put on the show?

No, apparently there was such an insular crowd on Wall Street, the White House, and, most unfortunate, among the very media whose job it was neither to make news as prognosticators or economic experts, nor was it to be part of a partisan “anti-plunge patrol.” Their lack of even-handedness and their alliance with particular theories created just the kind of apparent reality that the trader bemoaned. No, it wasn’t that nobody was seeing it coming–as you see below, I was seeing it as inevitable from the shared experience of a mere decade or so ago. And I mention one figure who was silenced. So to the mystified trader who knew no one who saw anything but, as one particularly wrong-headed man phrased it, “a goldilocks economy.”

So, blinded by their greed, they missed what the people I knew were all seeing—danger ahead, and the unsustainability of a rally that had risen on so much manipulation, misinformation, and constant drum blows of obviously wrong economic talking points hammered over and over across our airwaves and drowning out every sound of warning or opposition, so that surprise and misinformation informed the trading decisions of the great bull traders.

So many people were hurt by this partisan power play. But that was the way of just about everything during those 8 years of, as one recent writer dubbed it, dictatorship.

If you’re still reading, you will see I have reasons for pointing these things out, providing this background, for it is this context of a kind of dumbness rising to the top which, even now, makes for the strangest of comments on TV talk shows, and the most asinine and foot-shooting policies and stances of the remaining Republicans.

Media Feel-Good Talk Does Not Equal Reality … and Why We’re Helpless to Prevent the Future Fukushimas and Killer Hurricanes.

Media Is the New “Opiate of the Masses,” with Pundits a New Priestly Caste Between Modern Pharoahs and the New Enslaved.

Media Mollifies Masses

All this being said, now, perhaps for you the Message in a Bottle provides, as it did to me, a provocative window into the workings of cause and effect. More than that I hope it sheds light on the huge efforts of deception that are ever needed to advance false partisan ideas which, though proven wrong, will by greed be raised anew and banner-like be carried forth to beat back the voices of common sense in favor of a reality that must be forced to be made to be true only because its rich adherents would wish it to be so.

Media Feel-Good Talk Does Not Equal Reality

Another advantage of having the time capsule is what we can learn about such warnings. Will the media tell you of impending doom, so that we might avert it?

No, they will, for the sake of ratings (profits), be a “feel good” media. They will spin out “comfort truth” — junk food for the mind — insubstantial and inconsequential and hardly soul-satisfying. But it will soothe the stresses brought to listeners through their otherwise participation in the capitalist matrix. As empty of truth as junk food is empty of nutrition it will act as medicine for the troubles of the postmodern soul—enslaved and unfree—but unaware even of that…and unable to even know that. So this media will serve the functions that religion once did for the elite, becoming another opiate of the masses. And the pundits will play the role of the priestly intermediaries between our modern pharoahs—the banksters and the filthy rich—and the masses upon which they feed.

So no, it is not the media’s role to warn us of disaster. Hardly. Indeed, when that disaster is one of the many forthcoming from the actions of those elite they serve, it will be the media’s job to set up the screens of smoke and trivia to distract and entertain away from real concerns. Then they will, as we’ve seen, report afterward on it and bring out the “No one could have foreseen this happening.” Well that is a self-serving lie. I hope that is gleaned from all this if nothing else.

I’ve been detailing on the media complicity, indeed, facility in the Great Recession caused by the tax cutting policies of George W Bush. But since then we have seen Fukushima, the BP oil spill, and Sandy. Could Fukushima have been prevented? Yes. For I can personally tell you, as an anti-nuke activist in the Eighties, how we were warning back then of the immense dangers of nuclear power plants and especially those on earthquake fault lines. Has the media advanced that story line? You know the answer to that.

Has the media since Fukushima kept us informed on developments there so we might prepare for the consequences coming to us from that? I’ll put it this way, I’ve had otherwise knowledgeable people tell me that “It is a good thing Fukushima turned out how it did … it could have been worse.” Worse? Something far worse than Chernobyl—which itself resulted in one million deaths (where’s the media on that fact?)—turned out ok? For this we can thank a media that stopped reporting on developments there when it turned out they could not spin it in any feel-good way. Things got worse, are still getting worse, and they stopped covering it.

Then there’s Sandy. It is being said this has brought climate change and global warming back into the dialogue. But why was it not in already? We have an entire political party in America hell bent on ignoring global warming in their insane pursuit of profits at any and all costs. Has the media been on top of this? Those self-interested climate-denying Republicans—has the media been holding their feet to the fire? Have they even lit a match near their feet? You know the answer again. For prior to Sandy and in four presidential and vice presidential debates there was not even ONE question … from the media, mind you … on the environment … let alone, climate change or Fukushima. Yet there was plenty of interest in setting up the candidates to see who could be the most manly on drilling and fracking our way to ecological hell.

Feel good media? I think so! At odds with reality? You tell me.

In the Past It Has Had Horrific Consequences.

Feel-good talk does not equal reality. If it did there would not have been the Nazis, the Holocaust, a Stalin—five million dead; a Cambodia—millions dead; a Rwanda—dead dead dead; or an AIDS epidemic—uncountable dead and growing.

Yet what I wrote over a decade ago, at the time if it had been shared in any place of power, would no doubt have been challenged by this word: “Paranoid.” This is the common way the public uses denial to avoid harsh realities. Blame the messengers, the dangers go away. I’m sure my planetmate friend’s piece earlier has already been labeled that way: “Paranoid.” “It’s all paranoia on the part of some crazies” is the common attitude.

That is the way we keep out the truth. It is like using a drug to ease the pain of your cancer, but it doesn’t do anything to keep you from dying.

Indeed, the planetmates’ lament, though it be labeled paranoid, is based on the findings of the best scientific minds of our times about the environmental collapses—the outright ecocide that is upon us from so many causes and in ways that are now uncountable in number. Their message is so much more important in that we will likely reach the point of no return long before the masses of humanity are severely suffering from the continued environmental assault. I don’t like to say it, but it needs to be said that some are convinced that it is already too late, that we had a window of opportunity and blew it. I know of groups in the know who are absolutely convinced there is no saving us now and that it is naïve to expect anything but doom.

Troubling it is that, on top all that’s been said about this message and what it has told us about what we lost and how far we are now from where we need to go, not to mention knowing we were betrayed by our government obviously, we now realize without a doubt our media too helped when they could have stopped it all.

Wonderful Can Happen, Part Three — Amazingly, Charlie Brown Connects: Remember … “Yes, We Can” Proved We Could

Shaken Out of Our Mental Maze, We Would Be A-Mazed: Lucy Apologizes, Sisyphus Rests, A Man Who Said “Yes We Can,” Would

Why Know This? Amazingly, Charlie Brown Connects

So, these things we know. They are sobering rationalizations and ones we should not run from.

But lastly and most importantly, these prescient thoughts of long ago help me. I find that these time-capsule writings from my former mind are able to inform me and sharpen my vision of the Now, as the events continue unfolding and rolling relentlessly over and through us and are reflected in high-pixel, high-def, infinite colors clarity on the flat screens all about. This time is felt and witnessed, the story being revealed cinema-like, but with pundits galore expounding 24/7, like loud-mouthed fellow movie-goers.

But then also they become the movie and are interwoven into the times themselves. And their words, with this time capsule before me, are sounding childish, repetitive, forgetful, amnesiacal. Especially this is true as many of the ones speaking now are remembered as being the exact persons commenting then. And their words, little changed, bespeak a zen-like ability to be newly alarmed, being reborn in every minute, but yet totally unchanged and untaught by all the years of witnessing and commentary. So they also have forgotten the way they once saw the world and their life … just as I once did.

If We Knew, Would We Act?

It seems a defense mechanism to forget that we saw all this coming. For to know that is to despair in realizing the impotence, even, of awareness. Who wants to realize that in these matters even a knowledge of the story line, as if having seen the movie once before, is totally useless? Who wants to think that there is a helplessness in affecting the events of our lives and times, that there is a total futility in changing or steering away or around even the tragedies clearly seen beforehand?

For knowing this we feel as detached as actual cinema-goers from the unfolding of the plotline. We feel ourselves to be not actors and hardly even the scriptwriters of our lives, instead merely the witnesses of intensely shocking and stunning events, which we actually expected but hoped we would be wrong about. So wouldn’t we want to block out that awareness of the futility of our actions? Wouldn’t we have to in order to have the heart to keep going at it? To get up and keep trying every day?

Sisyphus Remembering, Would He Continue Pushing?

If we remembered, like Charlie Brown approaching the football, or like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill… if we remembered, would we continue to act?

No, we have to believe that we will be surprised this time, that indeed Lucy will hold the football and we will complete the kick. It is said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. As true as that is, how ironic then that we realize that those who remember history too clearly are doomed to helplessness in the midst of its unfolding. So it seems we are ineffectual either way.

But There’s More To It

Yet this is not the whole truth. If it were, then the cynicism we felt about “The Audacity of Hope”…remember that book?…well, that cynicism would have proven a correct perception. We would have been bored, again, watching a naïve young idealistic black man—like the many before, differing only in skin color—seeing his efforts, visions, hopes, and heartfelt desires to be helpful and to love away some of the darkness in the world around him vanish like the memory of yesterday’s storm-driven winds. But we, I, was one time wrong in that cynicism.

Lucy Apologizes, Sisyphus Rests.

To the astonishment, truly, of an entire world, Charlie Brown connected with the football, Lucy apologized for her past actions, and one heavy boulder remained steady on the top of a hill and gave a man a much needed rest from his endless labors.

For one incredible and glorious time, the movie we’d seen had a different ending—amazing enough in itself. But also the tragedy in the original did not occur. And as if God had for a time touched this planet, this Reality we call our World, our Life…as if God had just for one time touched, tipped, and turned our events, the awesomely unexpected happened.

A man so unbelievably naïve and unaware as to declare the “audacity of hope” and to call out and stir up the masses, deluding them as we’ve seen so many times before, that “yes, we can,” would.

Shaken Out of Our Mental Maze, We Would Be A-Mazed.

And we’d have to pinch ourselves to believe it to actually be happening even as we witnessed it. That he would actually succeed in doing exactly what he said he would do would not only show us that a man could actually affect the course of events, would show us that a person could not only change things from the way they’d always been (what kind of man can this be?). But that he would do it in a grand and sweeping way would be all the more astonishing. We would be all the more unbelieving that a man who said “yes we can” not only could but he could do it in a way that achieved beyond merely succeeding; never mind that merely succeeding would be doing the impossible.

The Only Thing We Can Be Truly Sure Of … Is We Can Never Be Sure… Which Means That Anything Is Possible… Which Means That Everything Is Possible.

Our Inability to Know Is the Source of a Hope That IS Real: Wonderful Can Happen, Part Four: It’s Just as Likely the Miraculous Will Happen.

Just When We Thought We Knew…

So I am saddened having been awakened from my forgetfulness by this catscan of a mind perfectly preserved in an electronically sealed time capsule… oh, what could have been…. But then I remember, happily, that we are, I am, imperfect prophets and seers. That just when it seems we know, for sure now, how things are, the way the world is, and how the movie will end; that just then when we know, totally convinced we are, that truly things will be as they will be and that it is futile to rail against the inevitable, to hope, even to try; that just then when we have finally accepted “reality for what it is,” accepted “life on its own terms” not ours; that when we’d given up the things of youth, accepted the limitations of life, addressed ourselves, resignedly, to carrying forward on the mundane things of life, to the ordinary activities of everyperson, to the simple responsibilities and expectations of every man, every person, from every time that’s ever been and accepted the unrelenting lack of specialness in either our times or ourselves…that just at that time we would be touched and wakened to see that the most unchanging thing of life is not its utter resistance to change, its utter forgetfulness and repetition, but is the mysterious darkness surrounding the utter clarity of everyday knowingness, is in fact the imperfection of ourselves even as we observe so clearly the assured imperfection of the world.

Anything Is Possible… Which Means That Everything Is Possible

Sounds complicated. What I’m saying I think is important enough to repeat. I’ll say it more simply.

The most unchanging thing of life is not the things we see that never change. They are not the most unchanging thing of life. The most unchanging thing of life is something surrounding the absolute clarity we have about these things, these harsh realities even. When you’ve finally come to accept life, you’ve accepted these unpleasant things, these hard truths, and you think that for sure now you’ve got it, that it was all about learning to accept that…and thereby become the “adult,” the seasoned, assured cynic.

Accepting Life’s Pain. But Because We Are Imperfect…

But rather, the most unchanging and most true thing about life is that no matter how much we think we know how exactly life is, there’s a darkness surrounding that utter everyday clarity that we carry around and share with our neighbors, reinforcing it’s trueness. There’s a darkness surrounding it. And that darkness is in fact the imperfection of our selves. We’re not perfect; we’re not all-knowing. It is in fact the imperfection of ourselves even as we observe so clearly the assured imperfection of the world, you see. I’m being sarcastic there.

What I’m saying is: Knowing that, we know that it is exactly the imperfection that is the most solid thing in life. You see? It’s not the things that they try to make solid. This is the thing that is solid, is gonna be there, always. Nobody has to try to make that happen, there’s always going to be an unknown.

Therefore, since there’s always going to be an unknown there’s always going to be human imperfection. For we may think we know everything, sometimes. But only a fool goes through life very long thinking that. And so, in knowing that, knowing that that’s the most unchanging thing of life, the thing you can really count on, that’s never going to go away…well, we know that it is exactly the imperfection, that lack that’s in a person, that evil, that unmoving wrongness of the world that we have tried so futilely to change, that being in us, is the source of the blessedness of life, which is the fact that our ultimate unknowingness is the only true source of a hope that IS real,

It’s Possible “Something Wonderful Is Going to Happen.”

It is only because we know that we cannot really know, for sure, that then we can know for sure that there’s always got to be hope because we could never know for sure that there wasn’t. So, what a blessing that is. That being wrong, being imperfect means something unbelievable when you think of it: Which is that against all odds, “something wonderful is going to happen.”

Ultimate unknowingness is the only true source of a hope that is real. And you say, how can you say that? You say, that’s not true. Then I ask you, are you perfect? You say, no. Then I say, the only true thing is that you’re not perfect, so that anything you are absolutely sure is wrong has a possibility of being right.

And Anything Is Possible … Means Everything Is Possible.

So, who knows? You might say that we don’t know what’s real. That’s true, of course, so why would we necessarily think things are dire right now? Why, it’s just as possible that something wonderful is going to happen. It’s just as likely that, in spite of ourselves, the miraculous can happen; that magic is real; and that hope, and happiness, and blessedness, and forgiveness, and glorious divine wonders beyond even the envisioning of our ideals are possible.

And all because the only thing that we can be truly sure of—even when we are finally convinced that we should not expect anything special—is that we can never be sure… which means that anything is possible… which means that everything is possible.

Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Four: Naked Republicans

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter 22: Horrors Worse Than That

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If Freedom of the Press Was Repealed, How Would You Know? Dire Vision, Revelation … Words a Decade Old Come Back to Haunt

Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It … The Revolution That Wasn’t Televised: Before Voting Romney, Remember, We Knew This Before

Culture War, Class War, Chapter Seventeen:
Freedom Repealed

Dire Prediction: Before Voting for Romney, Remember, We Knew This Before. Will We Continue Shooting Ourselves in the Foot?

Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It … A Message Arrives from Twelve Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events

A Message Arrives from Twelve Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events

We are disturbed reading that twelve years ago our present national situation was foreseen. Worse, we are reminded of what we lost; what could have been; how we’ve managed to block that from our memory in accepting the much diminished prospects now; but also how we should not forget; how we should remember how it happened; who was to blame; who helped and colluded in bringing it about, and why; so that, remembering, we might never let it happen again.

Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It

For we learn, worst of all, that our chance to progress, rather, just to survive, now depends on remembering. Because twelve years ago, in the year 2000, all that’s happened since could easily have been prevented if only we had not allowed ourselves to be talked into forgetting the history of only eight years prior to that.

This is a serious and thoughtful piece, which everyone would do well to know if we are to survive another fifty years, not to mention a century or longer. Still, I am not the sort to feel that facing harsh realities means we need go around glumly, martyr-like, in sack-cloth and ashes. Rather, I feel we might as well enjoy and make use of all the God-given abilities we have whatever the outcome of our efforts.

So don’t be surprised that this exposition is aided by guest appearances making their points in hilarious fashion.

If you’ve never heard George Bush as Bluto from Animal House, you’ve got to.

Wolf Blitzer is not recognized for being a comic, but when he goes on to explain to his faithful viewers how they’ve been lied to and manipulated for years, because of pressure from the powers-that-be, and how grateful he is for their gullibility as he is receiving promotions and honors because his viewership is polling the highest in mindlessly accepting the concocted view, well we see many new sides of Wolf.

Thought-provoking but funny, another thing he explains is that their incredible success over the years in getting people to believe and or to forget whatever they want, has resulted in their having a little celebration consisting of an experiment as well…which they hope will bring them in even tighter with the now all-powerful filthy rich and their Republican water boys.

The celebration-experiment consists of a documentary in which the entire truth of the multiyear campaign to lie, deceive, and to control minds is laid out. And the experiment part is that they are certain that the next day and ever afterwards when such thing ever being aired is denied, the people will completely forget it and believe they must have been mistaken. Wolf signs off: “One last reminder on our special tonight, the documentary, “Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story and How, this Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Twelve Years, We Can Now Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” Tune in, don’t miss it; You’re sure to forget it.”

Ok, I’m gettin myself off the floor I was laughin so hard I couldn’t help myself. Ok, now to a more serious part.

Time Capsule Discovered

Not long after Bush left office, I unearthed, March 9, 2009, 9:49am, three never finished drafts of an article I intended to publish on my website prior to the 2000 Presidential election involving Bush v Gore. Stuffed and interwoven among the electrons of the backups of old computers, I had completely forgotten ever having written any of it.

Engulfed, indeed, pushed around and battered within the intensity and sharpness of recent political, geopolitical, and economic and financial forces of late, I was shocked to see the words, written a decade earlier, which, desperately intoning, warned of specific dire happenings should George W. Bush be elected. For it seemed those exact words, of so long ago, had just been lifted from the headlines and front pages of today’s daily news.

At any rate, I certainly thought at first that I was reading something about the recent collapse when I read what I had written in early 2000. I think I’ve said way too much without providing some meat—what kinds of things did I find? OK, in mid-2000, long before Bush was put in power and had a chance to show anything at all of what kind of president he would be, I wrote these words concerning what I thought would be the result of a George W. Bush getting elected:

[If Bush gets elected in 2000,] “I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.

Prophetic? Eerie? I don’t know quite what to make of it.

Reading more, this popped to my attention:

So is this election important? I believe it is. For me it is especially important, for I feel that if the Republicans take over, they will do so much to damage the dreams of my generation that even if the Democrats were to be reelected to all branches of government in 4 or 8 years, they will do so much damage (the example of Reagan-Bush nearly QUADRUPLING the National Debt in their mere 12 years being the perfect example) that My Generation will have to clean up their mess afterward, taking more years. And only then will we be in a position to progress in this country and world and bring it more in line with the ideals of peace, love, community, and harmony we envisioned in the Sixties.

Now back to 2012.

The Obvious but Hidden Becomes Visible by Contrast.

Though I had foreseen it, I couldn’t have felt more helpless. I was made to face the fact that America’s, indeed the world’s, prospects for regaining a financial footing, whereas a mere twelve years ago looked like lift off, now was predicted as decades off. And that just to regain an ordinariness of life, with some saying that Americans will never again, ever, enjoy the standard of living they once took for granted.

It certainly disturbed me and got me to wondering and then to writing.

It saddens me what could have been. Reading it, I am stunned by how we’ve managed to vanquish from our minds and our media the insane, chaotic, and truly awful outlines of our times, as the events of the last decade crept daily into our lives and world and shaped them and it in drastic ways that we can discern only by the contrast. It was such a slow and gradual change, you see.

These unpolished catscans of a mind and time provide such a contrast, stark and shocking.

Concerning Time Capsule, I have much to say, much have I remembered, and much have I reviewed in my mind observing the timeline of these events and the changes in the social and cultural scenery, and in people themselves as these events happened over the last decade, one following another changing us all. I will make myself clearer following the text of the former piece to follow.

If Freedom of the Press Was Repealed, How Would You Know? Dire Vision, Revelation … Words a Decade Old Come Back to Haunt

A Revolution That Would Not Be Televised: If We’d Lost Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Would You Find Out About It on the News?

Dire Vision, Revelation

But before going into either my writing from 2000 or the recent events that it shows more clearly by contrast, I wish for you to consider how I felt coming across this piece that so clearly laid out the future and revealed the fact that those ideas were not brought out into the media. I wish for you to get a notion of what went through me as I mused upon the abject failure of our media to remember history so as to keep from repeating it.

Words from a Decade Ago Come Back to Haunt, Sadden, Provoke, Enlighten, Motivate

How would you feel if you found out for sure that you foresaw in an eerily accurate way the events over the last decade before they happened? Sometimes we all have a sense of what the future is likely to bring forth. Everyone, in fact, has some working model of the future.

But be honest, you’ll probably acknowledge those models of the future are almost always some kind of continuation of the present and of the recent past, perhaps with a few technological advances thrown in. And usually, being the hopeful optimists we must be in order to continue our daily efforts, we envision something that is at least somewhat a progression. Something a little better at least.

What if you foresaw an exact reversal of the current trends, including an economic debacle, recession, market crash nine years before it happened? And even that it would happen about the time it did? You could think yourself prophetic; it could pump up your ego.

However if you also knew that you did not pick those predictions out of the air but that you had lived through a similar period in the past, well then you might consider the prophecy to be an astute but quite expected conclusion arising from the visible evidence of the times … and nothing unusual. After all, you are no important person, pundit, or professional prognosticator. The masses have not come scrambling to your door. You expect that you are not unusual in your perceptions. You feel that other people have similar predictions inside themselves. Isn’t that what you would think?

But then these events unfold over the years, as you predicted, and … and this is surprising … without exception the experts, the paid prognosticators and pundits all of them, to a person, bemoan wearily the complete inability of anyone to have foreseen any of what transpired on each of these things, as the years go on.

And to a person they talk as if these things came completely out of nowhere, like a freakish weather pattern or an act of God; or as if they came falling to Earth like the frozen chemicalized ice bombs of jetliner rest room waste or appeared like the lightning bolt out of some dark mysterium tremendum hovering high in the sky above us, but in no way having any roots in any previous events.

No, these people, these commentators on events who you see nightly and whose every word is broadcast into the minds of multimillions, who knows, billions? … and whose words are often repeated … they may have another show … or they are offered up more than once … as their very words are echoed by other commentators around the world. In the United States, their words are echoed far and wide by people at all levels and in all countries afterward.

These people with such immeasurable power to reach and influence the minds of a global populace. Well they also went through the same events as you, as proven by their age. Yet they never mention the times previous that were so similar as to cause you earlier to make the obvious conclusions you made. And, now, even after the fact, in retrospect, those obvious near exact patterns of events of the not so long ago are not mentioned by them … they are overlooked, ignored.

Specifically, I remembered what happened with the Reagan-Bush tax cuts and how we went into a great recession because of them that resulted in Clinton getting elected in 1992. Eight years later, with Clintonomics, and Clinton creates a budget surplus and has balanced the budget for the first time in decades.

But then W. Bush, the Republican, gets in, and nobody’s mentioning even as he’s doing his first tax cut and blowing the surplus that this didn’t work last time only a decade earlier with Reagan and his own father, H.W. Bush. And then through the years of Bush’s terms, with more ballooning debt and budget deficits, did any of those events of the not so long ago and up till 1992, with Reagan and Bush, Senior, get mentioned? No. Instead when all the expected results … well, expected by informed liberal nobodies like me, anyway … when all the expected results of trickle-down, voodoo economics begin manifesting, well, an attitude of “we’re only human” and “nobody could have known ahead of time” predominates among the Republicans responsible.

And these representatives of the filthy rich, the 1%–these Republicans–they get away with that excuse because the media was not pointing out past history to them when they were implementing those foolish policies. It is as if those earlier events hadn’t been brought up in such a long time, so those past events, which should have been instructive, are as if they never happened. Mistakes get repeated endlessly as the media cooperates with the powerful in covering up awareness of earlier mistakes of the same kind.

Well this would cause you to ponder, would it not? How could so many people, people whose job it is to do so, not connect the obvious thoughts you and others did a decade ago? And now even in retrospect they are unable to.

Some of the possibilities for that occurring are that the people who are speaking for everyone–these pundits and commentators–have not risen to their levels of influence on their abilities and that something else is behind their rise to positions to speak and shape the thoughts of the multimillions. Yes. That could be it.

You might also ponder then if better more astute prognosticators and analysts were being kept out of the positions of influence intentionally. Yes. That would follow of necessity. And so on. How else do you explain it?

What it would come down to is you have to ask yourself, are you somehow the only one who is capable of making predictions from the recent past? And believing that might make you feel good if you have some problem in your life which makes you doubt your abilities, that is, if you are so lacking in real self esteem. But if you continue to think that way, such narcissistic attitudes would have you living in a world of your own that did not have any ties to reality eventually. You know what I mean.

Or, if humble and astute enough and not so desperately needy for a pleasant thought about oneself, you would have to ask yourself to consider more seriously the prospect that the media reaction may very well be an unexpected part of the original prediction. If you were sane enough, you would be driven to an unwanted and dire conclusion: Something had gradually and so unnoticeably gone very, very wrong with the media and the public discourse of your society.

If We’d Lost Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Would You Find Out About it on the News?

You might be led to reason: If you had predicted an erosion of basic rights if Bush were to get elected, and you had seen that had come to pass … I mean basic human rights, like given us from the Bill of Rights … why would not freedom of speech and of the press be part of that erosion? Thinking more deeply would it not have been a necessary part of the erosion of the rest?

For if the press had been doing its job, would it not have been acting as protectors of our rights in decrying any assaults, proclaiming any intrusions, documenting any erosions, and so on, in the uncountable ways it has done in the past? Would that not have been a second “2″ which added to the other “2″ makes sense out of the “4″ you are observing and trying to understand? (two plus two equals four.)

But as usually happens when stumbling on the hidden but obvious things, other, sometimes laughably obvious, correlates come to mind:

If Freedom of Speech and of the Press had been part of the erosion in human rights—the rights laid out by our Bill of Rights—well, who would be researching, detailing, proclaiming, or making documentaries about it? The Press? HA!

In order to give you a sense of the way I began viewing things, after the Time Capsule’s revelations, I’d like to take you on a little journey, a little reverie that may provide a glimpse ahead, perhaps an understanding of the unbelievable, as a journey through the looking glass can often do.

So in answering the question above: If freedom of speech and the press were rescinded who would tell you? I would say that it would be one “revolution” that would not be televised, for starters.

“Well, of course,” you think, cynically, “surely they would have done lots of things.”

Yes, I respond dryly, one of them might have gone like this:

“Freedom of the Press, Repealed — The Story of How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To. Tune In, Don’t Miss It; We’ll Make Sure You Forget It.”

A Satire on the Mainstream Media Control by the 1% Begun with Installing George W. Bush into the Presidency … Featuring “Wolf Blitzer”

Wolf Blitzer – Freedom of the Press, Repealed

“This is Wolf Blitzer. Tonight, tune in as CLN details the way we, and the rest of the mass media, have been slowly but relentlessly pressured and bullied into presenting the views of the party in power, the Republicans; how we have learned it to be in our interests, if we were to continue unobstructed, to eliminate more and more of the voices contrary to those in power. You will hear how we learned techniques of deception of our own so that we could seem to be presenting a range of views but how we could easily get the viewer to conclude that the party pressuring us was the most credible. How?

“Tune in and learn how we matched the words of sophisticated and savvy talking heads from the right wing against the least informed and least polished of those on the opposition, and how we managed a game…which we termed, keep-out-the-insightful…of politely putting off, through excuses of saying we were focusing on areas not in their realm at the present. And how we used a multitude of such ploys on lefties until, as years went by, they began to doubt their own currency and thus doubted themselves and no longer sought to air their views in any but much smaller venues.

“So that’s how we managed to get the intelligent opposition away.

“Or even letting people know that they were still around or alive. In fact we were able to get people to think that those people had simply changed their minds and were believing what everybody else was believing, or something.

“But, anyway: Tune in to see how mass media like ourselves were able, because of our collectively acting in the same way, having been pressured toward the exact same ends by the one power in America currently, the Republicans and the “filthy rich” owners of our corporations—being essentially one and the same with one being the public and the other the private faces of the same group—were able to cast doubt…the newscasters were able to cast doubt…into the minds of seasoned intelligent and astute analysts as to their worth and currency and that of their ideas in the current era, making them feel that their time had come and gone and that personally they were has-beens, as at the same time we were recruiting the least able and the most naïve to take their places.

“Other ploys: See how we kept media favorites who opposed conservatives and who were astute observers and witty, articulate communicators for their side, how we kept them on the dole and were even able to reap the profits of their appearances but how we slyly undermined their positions in myriad sly ways, using known effects of time of day scheduling, competition in particular time slots, sequencing of segments within shows, and of the shows themselves in the lineup—you know, placement of shows and so on—all in ways to discredit them and garner the least audience for these voices.

“But still, we reap the benefits of having them on the show and collecting the advertising money. Additionally, we just look better in seeming to be more balanced.

“So, in our documentary, see how we maintained our position and survived an assault on the Press, by caving in to the dictatorial demands of a Party that also essentially owned us, surreptitiously of course, but how we managed to fool the public that we had in any way done so; how we managed at times to fool the public that we were their adversaries for truth and a counterbalance, as the Fourth Estate traditionally had been, to the powers of government and wealth, while in fact we were totally their tools in concocting the realities we were told to and muddying or ignoring the truths that came our way that would have been illuminating to the public presented fairly, but would have undermined the position we were pressured to present.

“So, tonight, our special documentary, “Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story, and How—This Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Twelve Years—We Can Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.”

“Be sure to tune in or TiVo it. For it is just a little fun we are allowing ourselves—that of spilling the beans about what is really behind the things we bring to you as actual events and true analysis—as a kind of celebration of the thoroughness of our success, and as a proof to the administration at how thoroughly we have manipulated your thinking that we can dare to lay it all out and feel certain that it will fail to enlighten a single one of you, in fact we feel it will aid us in an aspect of our campaign—that of keeping you confused so that you will be dependent on us for your conclusions.

“Especially when tomorrow evening and from now on, there will be no mention that this documentary ever existed, it will be expunged from all lists and archives and thoroughly be extracted and destroyed, as if it never existed.

“At that time we will begin…we’re already assuming our success here…and we’re planning a comprehensive campaign to add to our success so far in confusing and then convincing the public of the one-percent’s version of events, and to add to our favor with the now sole power in America…basically to suck up to them…we will have begun a calculated effort that we have designed that we think will be very successful and that you will enjoy, of the slow elimination, first, of American’s, of your collective memory of your past, beginning with the most recent and then, hopefully if successful and of course with your help, will continue further into the past; and following right behind the elimination of memory—no, we’re not going to tell you exactly how, now that wouldn’t be very game-spirited of us would it? Naw.

“Although, no one but you and I here now, I’ll give you a hint—confusion, for one, has been found to be extremely powerful in clouding out the details of memory—now, that’s all I’m gonna say, and believe me, if I wasn’t so totally convinced that we have been so successful that we can tell you just about anything and get away with it, then I wouldn’t have even said that.

“But of course, I am. That’s why people like me still have these jobs, while—gad, for a second there I almost said, my god just like it were the old days, I almost said, while “you may have noticed the losses and demotions of many formerly household names here at CLN who haven’t been as cooperative, supportive, committed, or as convinced, as I certainly am, of our ability to totally manipulate your thinking, as we wish.”

“Yea, I almost said that. But then that would have assumed that you had remembered any of them. Oh. Old habits are hard to drop.

“And anyway, I have to say I have my viewership to thank for that…for my success. Sincerely, I owe a great debt of gratitude to you folks who regularly tune in to my show in particular.

“Why, the absolute malarkey that I was putting out to you, slowly at first, not feeling totally convinced of your gullibility, I mean, still in those days it was pretty irrational and unbelievable bull droppings, completely concocted out of only the hot air emanating from egotistical rants of those whose sole desire is only to comfort and enslave you.

“Yet, the pollings that came in showed that I could practically fart out these concoctions and you would swallow them whole like tasty confections! I truly began to feel that I was like Moses bringing nightly the stone tablets; such was the utter inability among the masses of you to evaluate in any way what you were being fed.

“My colleagues say that my success is my beard and frizzy hair—part patriarchal, paternal, Moses-like, as well as appealing to My Generation base of long hairs and facial hair valuing; to which we added my supposed background as a member of a Sixties band and interest in current rock music—we felt we needed to do more to convince them, with their tradition of question authority and all—and, well, we must’ve got some of them at least because the polls were overwhelming in their insistence on my staunch credibility.

“So, I just want to say again that my success is owed completely to you, my viewers, and your unbelievably vapid minds, inane gullibility, or busied, stressed, overworked, or threatened existences as to make you grasp at anything outside as being of more substance than what you feel inside, and perhaps more pleasant.

“But whatever it is, thank you, and keep it up. In this next experiment, I’m sure you’ll show up, among all the segments of our viewership, as being the least able to remember and the easiest to forget what we will tell you later tonight. I’m sure you can do it. I’m counting on you.

“Oh, but now I’m forgetting. Sorry, I just got caught up in a wave of heartfelt gratitude to you all. The high ratings you give me and the solid staunch belief in my credibility that comes so high in the pollings, well they just … just that I get choked up … sorry, folks … this part is between me and you and … well, you’ll forget it anyway, if it’s decided by the Deciders later, that you can’t have it … so between us, well, how do you thank someone who has taken you from the ratings floor to the moon? How do you thank someone who has given up their reason, their very reason and rationality, for your success? You see, I take it as a kind of personal affection you must have towards me….

“And that wasn’t me trying intentionally to sound like Bill Clinton at all. No it wasn’t….

“How do you thank someone who has given up their reason and rationality…their individuality for your success?

“You see? I take it as a kind of personal affection you must have towards me when…who you don’t even know, to be so willing to be the greatest mass of idiot viewers on TV, getting the prize certainly.

“Because, you know, I simply can’t imagine that people exist who could be so unbelievably lacking in reason, intelligence, or simply the ability to remember what we say from one night to the next, as to swallow so hungrily the pig slop that I’ve been out here portraying as accurate, unbiased, etc. HA. Ha. Oh, the drivel we won’t say.

“So, unless somehow they’ve managed to create people with air balloons for brains… ha, ha……

“No, No, no! Sorry, my friends, my bad on that. Let me assure you that has not happened. No, there are no people who’s heads are actually balloons. Believe me, OK?

“Ok, then, what I’m saying is that unless the greatest percentage of you is vapid minded or brain dead—and that I don’t believe folks—then the only thing could be that you folks really care about me and making me a success as to sacrifice your own thought, reason, and individuality.

“Well, yeah, I’m sure you’re getting something out of it too, Y’know. I’m sure it helps having not to think and being able to just tune in nightly to be told what’s true and what to believe and never to be given anything unsettling or contrary as to cause you to be upset and have those horrible feelings of uncertainty.

“So, anyway, we get it, we get each other, and together let’s go make newscasting history—if they’ll ever keep an accurate one… hmmm… oh well.

“But at least for now, going back to what I was telling you about our next big wave of … well, some on our side might call it mind control or even enslavement … but you and I know that you’re better off with us giving you your reality, your memories, your beliefs. I’m sure you’ve all realized by now that we’re doing a whole lot better than the crappy reality you all had before we started helping you out.

“So the exciting next phase, as I was saying, begins with the slow elimination of recent memory, then memory further back. And to put it in a nutshell: We’re going to give you new happier memories, and interpretations of those memories that you’ll just relish. Just like we’ve recreated your present by substituting confusing reality with simple heart-warming, however untrue, views and perceptions.

“Well, together we’ve been so successful that we’re going to show our gratitude by doing the same for your past. Of course, in pleasing our Deciders, it will be the grand events of the past, the ones that are in their interest to change, that will be conveniently removed and replaced by versions to suit them, but you can trust us, you’ll much prefer, in fact we guarantee, you’ll enjoy what we give you.

“And, be patient, once we’ve been able to do that; you’re going to have to help of course… of course you will; with that accomplished, we’ll be able to help more and more with your personal memories. Not too long now, and you’ll have wonderful happy memories—we’ll have taken your miserable real ones and instead we will give you these happy memories, splendid memories that will completely buttress the views that we’ve been feeding you, giving you personal, unreal, memories of personal experiences that prove the validity of the beliefs that we’ve caused you to have.

“And believe you me, we’re going to load it up with goodies of all kinds—ice cream dates, Christmases perfect and loving, Fourth of July celebrations and innocent love under the fireworks—but that’s enough. Just you be assured, your gonna have your very own “Happy Days” for a personal past. Our guarantee at CLN – the Central Lying News.

“Now, back to regular programming, save one last reminder on our special tonight, the documentary, ‘Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story, and How—This Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Twelve Years—We Can Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” Tune in, don’t miss it; You’re sure to forget it.’”

***

Well, thanks, Wolf. You’re a real trip, man. But anyway, back to reality, er, some version of it. After that little trip into a parallel, bizarre universe that might actually be closer to the truth than we would like to realize…I think a lot of us would like to know how true it is…

Anyway, let’s take a look at that catscan from the past that I was talking about.

Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eighteen: Dire Prediction

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Sixteen: The Fall of “Obvious Truths”

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A Revolution That Would Not Be Televised: If We’d Lost Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Would You Find Out About It on the News?

Dire Vision, Revelation

But before going into either my writing from 2000 or the recent events that it shows more clearly by contrast, I wish for you to consider how I felt coming across this piece that so clearly laid out the future and revealed the fact that those ideas were not brought out into the media. I wish for you to get a notion of what went through me as I mused upon the abject failure of our media to remember history so as to keep from repeating it.

Words from a Decade Ago Come Back to Haunt, Sadden, Provoke, Enlighten, Motivate

How would you feel if you found out for sure that you foresaw in an eerily accurate way the events over the last decade before they happened? Sometimes we all have a sense of what the future is likely to bring forth. Everyone, in fact, has some working model of the future.

But be honest, you’ll probably acknowledge those models of the future are almost always some kind of continuation of the present and of the recent past, perhaps with a few technological advances thrown in. And usually, being the hopeful optimists we must be in order to continue our daily efforts, we envision something that is at least somewhat a progression. Something a little better at least.

What if you foresaw an exact reversal of the current trends, including an economic debacle, recession, market crash nine years before it happened? And even that it would happen about the time it did? You could think yourself prophetic; it could pump up your ego.

However if you also knew that you did not pick those predictions out of the air but that you had lived through a similar period in the past, well then you might consider the prophecy to be an astute but quite expected conclusion arising from the visible evidence of the times … and nothing unusual. After all, you are no important person, pundit, or professional prognosticator. The masses have not come scrambling to your door. You expect that you are not unusual in your perceptions. You feel that other people have similar predictions inside themselves. Isn’t that what you would think?

But then these events unfold over the years, as you predicted, and … and this is surprising … without exception the experts, the paid prognosticators and pundits all of them, to a person, bemoan wearily the complete inability of anyone to have foreseen any of what transpired on each of these things, as the years go on.

And to a person they talk as if these things came completely out of nowhere, like a freakish weather pattern or an act of God; or as if they came falling to Earth like the frozen chemicalized ice bombs of jetliner rest room waste or appeared like the lightning bolt out of some dark mysterium tremendum hovering high in the sky above us, but in no way having any roots in any previous events.

No, these people, these commentators on events who you see nightly and whose every word is broadcast into the minds of multimillions, who knows, billions? … and whose words are often repeated … they may have another show … or they are offered up more than once … as their very words are echoed by other commentators around the world. In the United States, their words are echoed far and wide by people at all levels and in all countries afterward.

These people with such immeasurable power to reach and influence the minds of a global populace. Well they also went through the same events as you, as proven by their age. Yet they never mention the times previous that were so similar as to cause you earlier to make the obvious conclusions you made. And, now, even after the fact, in retrospect, those obvious near exact patterns of events of the not so long ago are not mentioned by them … they are overlooked, ignored.

Specifically, I remembered what happened with the Reagan-Bush tax cuts and how we went into a great recession because of them that resulted in Clinton getting elected in 1992. Eight years later, with Clintonomics, and Clinton creates a budget surplus and has balanced the budget for the first time in decades.

But then W. Bush, the Republican, gets in, and nobody’s mentioning even as he’s doing his first tax cut and blowing the surplus that this didn’t work last time only a decade earlier with Reagan and his own father, H.W. Bush. And then through the years of Bush’s terms, with more ballooning debt and budget deficits, did any of those events of the not so long ago and up till 1992, with Reagan and Bush, Senior, get mentioned? No. Instead when all the expected results … well, expected by informed liberal nobodies like me, anyway … when all the expected results of trickle-down, voodoo economics begin manifesting, well, an attitude of “we’re only human” and “nobody could have known ahead of time” predominates among the Republicans responsible.

And these representatives of the filthy rich, the 1%–these Republicans–they get away with that excuse because the media was not pointing out past history to them when they were implementing those foolish policies. It is as if those earlier events hadn’t been brought up in such a long time, so those past events, which should have been instructive, are as if they never happened. Mistakes get repeated endlessly as the media cooperates with the powerful in covering up awareness of earlier mistakes of the same kind.

Well this would cause you to ponder, would it not? How could so many people, people whose job it is to do so, not connect the obvious thoughts you and others did a decade ago? And now even in retrospect they are unable to.

Some of the possibilities for that occurring are that the people who are speaking for everyone–these pundits and commentators–have not risen to their levels of influence on their abilities and that something else is behind their rise to positions to speak and shape the thoughts of the multimillions. Yes. That could be it.

You might also ponder then if better more astute prognosticators and analysts were being kept out of the positions of influence intentionally. Yes. That would follow of necessity. And so on. How else do you explain it?

What it would come down to is you have to ask yourself, are you somehow the only one who is capable of making predictions from the recent past? And believing that might make you feel good if you have some problem in your life which makes you doubt your abilities, that is, if you are so lacking in real self esteem. But if you continue to think that way, such narcissistic attitudes would have you living in a world of your own that did not have any ties to reality eventually. You know what I mean.

Or, if humble and astute enough and not so desperately needy for a pleasant thought about oneself, you would have to ask yourself to consider more seriously the prospect that the media reaction may very well be an unexpected part of the original prediction. If you were sane enough, you would be driven to an unwanted and dire conclusion: Something had gradually and so unnoticeably gone very, very wrong with the media and the public discourse of your society.

If We’d Lost Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Would You Find Out About it on the News?

You might be led to reason: If you had predicted an erosion of basic rights if Bush were to get elected, and you had seen that had come to pass … I mean basic human rights, like given us from the Bill of Rights … why would not freedom of speech and of the press be part of that erosion? Thinking more deeply would it not have been a necessary part of the erosion of the rest?

For if the press had been doing its job, would it not have been acting as protectors of our rights in decrying any assaults, proclaiming any intrusions, documenting any erosions, and so on, in the uncountable ways it has done in the past? Would that not have been a second “2″ which added to the other “2″ makes sense out of the “4″ you are observing and trying to understand? (two plus two equals four.)

But as usually happens when stumbling on the hidden but obvious things, other, sometimes laughably obvious, correlates come to mind:

If Freedom of Speech and of the Press had been part of the erosion in human rights—the rights laid out by our Bill of Rights—well, who would be researching, detailing, proclaiming, or making documentaries about it? The Press? HA!

In order to give you a sense of the way I began viewing things, after the Time Capsule’s revelations, I’d like to take you on a little journey, a little reverie that may provide a glimpse ahead, perhaps an understanding of the unbelievable, as a journey through the looking glass can often do.

So in answering the question above: If freedom of speech and the press were rescinded who would tell you? I would say that it would be one “revolution” that would not be televised, for starters.

“Well, of course,” you think, cynically, “surely they would have done lots of things.”

Yes, I respond dryly, one of them might have gone like this:

Continue with “Freedom of the Press, Repealed — The Story of How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To. Tune In, Don’t Miss It; We’ll Make Sure You Forget It.”

Return to Dire Prediction: Before Voting for Romney, Remember, We Knew This Before. Will We Continue Shooting Ourselves in the Foot?

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Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It … A Message Arrives from Twelve Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events: Freedom Repealed, Part One

Dire Prediction: Before Voting for Romney, Remember, We Knew This Before. Will We Continue Shooting Ourselves in the Foot?

A Message Arrives from Twelve Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events

We are disturbed reading that Twelve years ago our present national situation was foreseen. Worse, we are reminded of what we lost; what could have been; how we’ve managed to block that from our memory in accepting the much diminished prospects now; but also how we should not forget; how we should remember how it happened; who was to blame; who helped and colluded in bringing it about, and why; so that, remembering, we might never let it happen again.

Forgetting the Past, We Were Doomed to Repeat It

For we learn, worst of all, that our chance to progress, rather, just to survive, now depends on remembering. Because twelve years ago, in the year 2000, all that’s happened since could easily have been prevented if only we had not allowed ourselves to be talked into forgetting the history of only eight years prior to that.

This is a serious and thoughtful piece, which everyone would do well to know if we are to survive another fifty years, not to mention a century or longer. Still, I am not the sort to feel that facing harsh realities means we need go around glumly, martyr-like, in sack-cloth and ashes. Rather, I feel we might as well enjoy and make use of all the God-given abilities we have whatever the outcome of our efforts.

So don’t be surprised that this exposition is aided by guest appearances making their points in hilarious fashion.

If you’ve never heard George Bush as Bluto from Animal House, you’ve got to.

Wolf Blitzer is not recognized for being a comic, but when he goes on to explain to his faithful viewers how they’ve been lied to and manipulated for years, because of pressure from the Administration, and how grateful he is for their gullibility as he is receiving promotions and honors because his viewership is polling the highest in mindlessly accepting the concocted view, well we see many new sides of Wolf.

Thought-provoking but funny, another thing he explains is that their incredible success over the years in getting people to believe and or to forget whatever they want, has resulted in their having a little celebration consisting of an experiment as well…which they hope will bring them in even tighter with the now all-powerful Administration.

The celebration-experiment consists of a documentary in which the entire truth of the multiyear campaign to lie, deceive, and to control minds is laid out. And the experiment part is that they are certain that the next day and ever afterwards when such thing ever being aired is denied, the people will completely forget it and believe they must have been mistaken. Wolf signs off: “One last reminder on our special tonight, the documentary, “Freedom of the Press, Repealed. The Story and How, this Repeal Now Thoroughly Institutionalized Over Twelve Years, We Can Now Reveal How We’ve Duped You and Will Continue To.” Tune in, don’t miss it; You’re sure to forget it.”

Ok, I’m gettin myself off the floor I was laughin so hard I couldn’t help myself. Ok, now to a more serious part.

Time Capsule Discovered

Not long after Bush left office, I unearthed, March 9, 2009, 9:49am, three never finished drafts of an article I intended to publish on my website prior to the 2000 Presidential election involving Bush v Gore. Stuffed and interwoven among the electrons of the backups of old computers, I had completely forgotten ever having written any of it.

Engulfed, indeed, pushed around and battered within the intensity and sharpness of recent political, geopolitical, and economic and financial forces of late, I was shocked to see the words, written a decade earlier, which, desperately intoning, warned of specific dire happenings should George W. Bush be elected. For it seemed those exact words, of so long ago, had just been lifted from the headlines and front pages of today’s daily news.

At any rate, I certainly thought at first that I was reading something about the recent collapse when I read what I had written in early 2000. I think I’ve said way too much without providing some meat—what kinds of things did I find? OK, in mid-2000, long before Bush was put in power and had a chance to show anything at all of what kind of president he would be, I wrote these words concerning what I thought would be the result of a George W. Bush getting elected:

[If Bush gets elected in 2000,] “I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.

Prophetic? Eerie? I don’t know quite what to make of it.

Reading more, this popped to my attention:

So is this election important? I believe it is. For me it is especially important, for I feel that if the Republicans take over, they will do so much to damage the dreams of my generation that even if the Democrats were to be reelected to all branches of government in 4 or 8 years, they will do so much damage (the example of Reagan-Bush nearly QUADRUPLING the National Debt in their mere 12 years being the perfect example) that My Generation will have to clean up their mess afterward, taking more years. And only then will we be in a position to progress in this country and world and bring it more in line with the ideals of peace, love, community, and harmony we envisioned in the Sixties.

Now back to 2012.

The Obvious but Hidden Becomes Visible by Contrast.

Though I had foreseen it, I couldn’t have felt more helpless. I was made to face the fact that America’s, indeed the world’s, prospects for regaining a financial footing, whereas a mere twelve years ago looked like lift off, now was predicted as decades off. And that just to regain an ordinariness of life, with some saying that Americans will never again, ever, enjoy the standard of living they once took for granted.

It certainly disturbed me and got me to wondering and then to writing.

It saddens me what could have been. Reading it, I am stunned by how we’ve managed to vanquish from our minds and our media the insane, chaotic, and truly awful outlines of our times, as the events of the last decade crept daily into our lives and world and shaped them and it in drastic ways that we can discern only by the contrast. It was such a slow and gradual change, you see.

These unpolished catscans of a mind and time provide such a contrast, stark and shocking.

Concerning Time Capsule, I have much to say, much have I remembered, and much have I reviewed in my mind observing the timeline of these events and the changes in the social and cultural scenery, and in people themselves as these events happened over the last decade, one following another changing us all. I will make myself clearer following the text of the former piece to follow.

Continue with If Freedom of the Press Was Repealed, How Would You Know? Freedom Repealed, Part Two—Dire Vision, Revelation … Words a Decade Old Come Back to Haunt

Return to The American Awakening – 99% Rising … in a Plundered Land: The Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Two

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Something’s Happening Here – Strange Days: Facing Square Our Apocalypse — For the Heroic and Most Caring Only

Apocalypse No! Chapter Six: Strange Days

Wtf? Strange Days, The End Being Nigh … Facing Square Our Apocalypse—For the Heroic and Most Caring Only

Something’s Happening Here

“Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These” – John Lennon

Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These–John Lennon

We live in unprecedented times—times in which the possibility of ending our species in our lifetime, even eliminating all life on this planet, are very real possibilities. No other time has been like this. And the effect of this possibility of the actual end of days, so to speak—while so horrifying that we are in denial of it and hardly speak it—hangs over us and affects us in ways unique and fantastic.

We will either heroically, somehow, save our species and our planet, which will require a change of our human nature unlike anything that has been asked of our species ever before, or we will be witnesses to the elimination of life on this planet in some way that we cannot imagine but can only be horrific in the extreme. This book is about facing, not denying, the uniquely dire character of our times and finding out what it says about us and requires of us. But it is also about what it is about our species that we—of all the other species here—are the ones, the only ones, who would bring about such a possibility. [continued after video]

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Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?
by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading of this chapter click on the link to youtube above or click the video player here:

Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?–Michael Adzema

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Why Do We Poop Where We Sleep?

Just what is it about us that could allow us to so violate our home as to make the death of us all possible? This is something that somebody should be addressing, don’t you think? I will begin that here. Come along, if you dare.

But this is not for those who would prefer to keep their heads in the sand and to sleepwalk through life. Certainly that is part of the reason we could get to this pass But it is doubtful that such people, in such deep denial of the signs around them, would be able to hear what is here being brought to light. If instead you are of the type that would wish to look fiercely at the truth, no matter how horrifying it might be, and to truly witness and be awake in these most fantastic of times, then listen up.

Gaia’s Calling You.

There is much here to see, and so much of it the mainstream would never touch for fear of creating a panic. Still, to survive our species must face our problems, not look away. And there is a nobility in doing that, which is unlike any kind of nobility or heroism that has been asked of our species before. I hope, for the sake of us all, that you are one of those heroes. For we will need many noble souls to reverse our current downslide into oblivion.

“Strange Days, Indeed. Most Peculiar, Mama!” – John Lennon

Something’s Happening Here

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

“Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” So goes a hugely popular song from the sixties by Buffalo Springfield. Meanwhile Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors sang, “Break on through to the other side.” [Footnote 1]

For What It’s Worth–Buffalo Springfield

A decade later John Lennon sang “Strange days, indeed…most peculiar, mama!” That was in the late seventies; not long afterwards Lennon was murdered. In the nineties, the group R.E.M. enjoyed enormous success singing, “It’s the end of the world, as we know it”; then, singing parenthetically, “and I feel fine.” [Footnote 2]

It’s the End of the World–R.E.M.

Break On Through to the Other Side.

My point is that there is something happening here…something unprecedented in the entire history of this planet, as far as we are able to know. There are powerful factors and influences at work in our world now that have the capacity to change us and our world in radical ways…for good or ill. My point also is that this unprecedented situation, like the “break on through to the other side” lyric indicates, has something to do with birth feelings, birth trauma—an emerging perinatal unconscious. [Footnote 3]

Break on Through to the Other Side–The Doors

What I have in mind in the ensuing parts on this topic is to attempt to reawaken you to the unique character of our times. Then I expect to persuade you that this unprecedented era in history is rife with the perinatal, that is, with things having to do with the time around our births.

“We Ain’t Born Typical.”

This contemporary age is permeated by perinatal symbolism, elements, evidence, behavior, rituals, and situations—in other words, I expect to show that the events of these “strange days” are being sculpted by an emerging perinatal unconscious—an unconscious that was created out of the trauma of our entering into this world, our birth trauma. The Kills, with their release in 2008, enjoyed huge success singing, “You are a fever. You ain’t born typical.” That’s what I’m talking about. [Footnote 4]

Finally, I intend to say a few words about what might be the outcome of these emerging perinatal trends—Earth rebirth or apocalypse.

Wtf? The End Being Nigh – Strange Days

The End Being Nigh – Strange Days

Strange Days

For most people, I would assume I am not saying anything new in pointing out that our times are unique. For that matter, all times are unique—unlike any other. But what no other time has seen is the actual—not imagined—possibility, even likelihood, of the “end of the world.” That is to say, we are facing the end of our species and maybe all life on this planet along with us. Considering just one scenario, we have the capacity, with only a minuscule amount of our nuclear weapons, to wipe out all life on this planet. We all know this.

“The End Is Nigh!”

I used the phrase, just now, “end of the world,” deliberately. For I expect that it will evoke in some a reaction that what I am going to say from here on will be a drawn-out verbal version of a familiar cartoon, depicting a bearded and bedraggled man on a street corner, carrying a sign or wearing a clapboard proclaiming, “The end is near!” and that what I will say will have just about as much credibility as that man’s would.

I take that chance to make my first point…which is: The fact that we can so easily dismiss, ridicule, and smugly deride such ideas of apocalypse points to our complacency with these strangest and most precarious of days. In fact, we have lived with this unprecedented situation—dangling on a thread, as it were, above the abyss of nuclear annihilation, to name just one of the possible forces of extinction…we’ve lived with it for so long as for it to seem commonplace—as part of the normal and familiar furniture of our daily lives.

Wtf?

Heads in the Sand

It has become so much a part of our daily lives, in fact, that we hardly give it any thought anymore. But for a moment, let us just imagine a person from a previous time in history being somehow transported into this time and being made to understand the impending forces: environmental collapse, species extinction, nuclear threat, population explosion, virulent epidemic, possibly human-created earthquakes and thus tsunamis, planet poisoning, and so on.

Unless this person was Nostradamus, we can imagine this person would be hugely alarmed, to say the least. This person might well wonder at our nonchalance, or should we say apathy, in the face of such likely, not just potential, apocalypse. [Footnote 5]

So I won’t waste time pointing out the statistics that prove the premise that the current trends we are following are apocalyptic.

We need simply to look to our daily headlines. Need I remind of the dangers from catastrophes like Fukushima and the Gulf Oil Spill? [Footnote 6]

Care for Some Radiation with that Milk?

We have radiation mixing into the world ecosystem as I write. Fukushima alone is spreading radiation that’s off the charts into food, air, oceans, and has made it to the East Coast of the U.S. and beyond in just a short time. We also know that nuclear waste needs to be guarded for 25,000 years because of its toxicity…it is still deadly for 250,000 years. Yet we continue to excrete massive amounts of it into our globe and even after the Fukushima meltdowns to push for building more plants. [Footnote 7]

Dead Zones and Dolphins

We have watched baby dolphins by the hundreds washing up on Gulf coasts and the creation of hundred mile dead zones in our seas. BP stupidly used toxic chemicals to disperse the oil rather than to collect it. The dispersants themselves are toxic, but the much bigger crime was to make sure the even more toxic oil, which depletes the oxygen in the water and thus creates the dead zones, would be spread far and wide throughout the global water. Good for BP shares looking like they could fix it, bad for survival of oxygen-breathers on Earth.

So BP’s egregiously criminal move was the equivalent of sweeping dirt under the rug to clean up. Unfortunately there is no “away” in which it can “go.” So we have, in this incident alone, precipitated greatly the dying off of the life of the oceans—the oxygen-producing plankton—and, hence, the basis of all life on this planet.

*Cough, Cough*

To this ravaging of the lungs of the planet add worldwide runaway deforestation, already in full swing. I am practically choking as I think how we then stink up the air with industrial emissions and auto exhausts. Living in the LA area, I can tell you that I feel my mouth is sealed to the end of an exhaust pipe most of the time. So to the dangers bringing on our demise we need to add globally increasing air pollution.

Forget Your Sunscreen, We’re All Gonna Fry.

Environmentally also, we have the greenhouse effect—global climate change or warming—the depletion of the ozone layer, and so on. [Footnote 8]

Al Gore is owed the gratitude of the world informing us of climate change in his book and documentary of the same name, Inconvenient Truth.

Meanwhile lots of folks think we have solved the ozone layer problem. We banned fluorocarbons, and we don’t hear much about this problem anymore in the media. Environmental nay-sayers are arguing that we “fixed” this problem, as part of their stance that we need not worry about what we’re doing to the planet. But not long ago—April 2011—CNN broadcast the news that the ozone had been depleted by 40% in the last two months alone! They immediately then turned to an item of dire importance—a snake had gotten loose in New York! [Footnote 9]

Only One Earth, Don’t Blow It!

Nor need I elaborate on the the nuclear threat–whether precipitated by terrorists, rogue nations, or accident. We know, but don’t want to, of the possibility of any one or more of these mad actors employing weapons of mass destruction, possibly leading to ever-mounting rounds of retaliation with eventually no one left standing. Relatedly we push out of our minds the threat of other kinds of weapons–such as biological weapons–getting out of control and creating a worldwide epidemic or holocaust.

Eight billion and Counting…Now Let’s Attack Planned Parenthood! *sarcasm*

Need I mention the continuing explosion of the world’s population leading to likely famine, wars, diseases, and so on? We have twice as many people alive now as the combined total of all humans who have ever lived! We are no different from bacteria who overrun their petri dish only to die off. We certainly aren’t showing ourselves to be any smarter than that. [Footnote 10]

Outbreak

How about the possibility of virulent epidemic that cannot be cured? Does that catch your fancy? Strains of micro-organisms are evolving that are immune to our much-touted antibiotics.

You Sure You Should Be Reading This?

What Island Were You Stranded On?

But why go on? If you are not aware of these things, you are from some other planet. If you are dismissing these facts, you are in actual psychological denial of your dire situation. If you are not paying attention, you are spending your life desperately running away.

No, I won’t go into stats and figures to support the premise. The evidence and statistics are there for all to see, crying for attention, put out, published, and promulgated by the best scientists of our time, mixed in with the more mundane messages of our daily newspapers and nightly newscasts, though we mostly turn our ears from them.

We’ll Try to Save You, Too.

In fact, if you are not already aware of the global crisis that besets us, I do not think you will get much out of reading further in this book and would probably better spend your time doing something else. There will always be those that will have their heads in the sand and will be cast about like flotsam upon the waters by the events swirling around them–impotent in the face of them and dependent upon other’s actions for the result. If you are one, know we’re trying to save you, too.

Facing Foursquare the Darkness – Not for Cowardly or Uncaring Humans – Strange Days

Facing Square Our Apocalypse—For the Heroic and Most Caring Only

There will always be those that will have their heads in the sand and will be cast about like flotsam upon the waters by the events swirling around them – impotent in the face of them and dependent upon others’ actions for the result. If you are one, know we’re trying to save you, too.

Assuming you are not one of them–a good bet, if you’ve managed to get to this paragraph–there is much to say about the current apocalyptic trends.

Facing Foursquare

But even those of us aware of this crisis hardly think of it. Of course it is our normal psychic defenses that operate to keep this huge awareness out of our daily minds; we must do this in order to be able to function.But perhaps, for some of us, our defenses work too well–so much so that we unthinkingly participate in and contribute to our own demise. This is classic neurotic self-sabotaging, self-destruction on a macro scale.

However, psychologists, historians, psychohistorians, and scholars and the educated public claim not to be like that. It is their job, or their claim, to be looking squarely into the face of these forces of denial and potential apocalypse and to be seeking to understand the human condition and human psychology in light of them. It is their duty then to inform the rest of us about what they see so that we might have a chance of reversing our self-destructive tendencies.

If You’re Not Alarmed, You’re Not Paying Attention.

Whether the educated public and the multitude of scholars actually are fulfilling their mission in these times is debatable. Regardless, my thesis is that when we do this, when we look foursquare into the face of the global crisis and its accompanying denial, we find that these unprecedented global factors contribute to a unique and unprecedented human condition and psychology. I have seen a bumper sticker around, in California where I live, that proclaims, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!” It could as easily say, however, “If you’re not alarmed,” fearful, anxious, depressed . . . you name it, “You’re not paying attention!”

To Face These Maddest of Days and Minds

So then let us pay attention. This book is about facing foursquare into the fantastic circumstances and situation in which we find ourselves, watching, like a photograph emerging in solution, as the face of these times slowly comes into view, and then waking up to the meaning of the message, perhaps the warning, it brings us, so that we might live most fully and take up our roles consciously amid these unprecedented unfoldings. What is required of us now, then, having turned to receive the message, is to look deep into the features of our age. Let us begin.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Seven:
“We Ain’t Born Typical””

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Five: Death Wish – Thanatos Walking

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Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?
by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading of a version of this chapter, click on the link to youtube above or click the video player here:

Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?–Michael Adzema

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Footnotes

1. Stop, Children, What’s That Sound – Buffalo Springfield – Lyrics

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me i got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

2. It’s the End of the World as We Know It – R.E.M. – Lyrics

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds,
snakes, an aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, a government
for hire and a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do. Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

[Chorus:]

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a votive, light a candle. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.

[Chorus 2x]

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental
drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard
Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester
Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You
symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.

[Chorus 2x]

3. Break on Through to the Other Side – The Doors – Lyrics

You know the day destroys the night,
Night divides the day
Tried to run, tried to hide,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side, yeah.

We chased our pleasures here,
Dug our treasures there,
But can you still recall the time we cried?
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side.

Yeah!
C’mon, yeah.

Everybody loves my baby,
Everybody loves my baby.
She gets
She gets
She gets
She gets higghhhh!

I found an island in your arms,
A country in your eyes,
Arms that chained us, eyes that lied.
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through, wow, oh yeah!

Made the scene week to week,
Day to day, hour to hour,
The gate is straight, deep and wide,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break, break, break, break,
Break, break, break, break,
Break.

4. U.R.A. Fever – The Kills – Lyrics

Walk you to the counter
What do you got to offer
Pick you out a solder
Look at you forever
Walk you to the water
Your eyes like a casino
We ain’t born typical
Find a piece of silver
Pretty as a diagram
And go down to the Rio
Put it in my left hand
Put it in a fruit machine
Everyone’s a winner
Laughing like a seagull
You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical
You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical
Living in a suitcase
Meet a clown, fall in love
went down to have you over
Going ’round a break up
Take you to a jukebox
That’s the situation
Pick you out a number
And that’s our arrangement
Dancing on the legs of a new-born pony
Left right left right
Keep it up son
Go ahead and have her
Go ahead and leave her
You only ever had her
When you were a fever
I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical
I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical

5. An example of what we should be doing. These are the kind of public figures and pundits we need.

If the bees disappeared, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man. – Albert Einstein

Vanishing bees is “just a sign” of what is going on, as they point out. The canary has died, and we cannot just leave the coal mine.

So we owe gratitude to Ellen Page and Bill Maher for setting an example for the kind of discourse we could and should be having in the media.

6. Gulf Oil Spill, Fukushima meltdowns, nuclear radiation, toxic nuclear waste, HAARP, killing off of the ocean–destroying oxygen in it, dead zones with no oxygen, dolphins washing up, birds falling out of the sky, bees disappearing, ozone depletion at the rate of 40% in the last two months alone, and a massive 50% species extinction in the next few decades, i.e., in our lifetimes! (now, enjoy your hamburger.)

7. Helen Caldicott compares our complacency in the face of these dire happenings to the parents who respond emotionless when she has to tell them their child has leukemia. She says, “Get mad. Get emotional.” She urges us to take back our governments from these mad perpetrators of the darkest doom imaginable. And, in the least, occupy! She proclaims,

It’s time you took your country back…. Use your bodies like they did in Wisconsin. Do a Tahrir Square here. Take back New York. Take back the Congress. Invade the Congress! Those people belong to you. They are your representatives, and you are their leaders. But you’ve got to have some guts! And stop being so goddamn polite all the time! And don’t need approval. Step up to the plate….

We’ve got to be emotional…. It’s time we used our emotions and become incensed! Otherwise we’re not going to make it.

8. “We’re all gonna fry.” With appreciation to Scout Niblett, “We’re All Gonna Die/ Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death”

9. “We Lost 40% of Ozone Layer Last 3 Months” proclaimed CNN in April, 2011 — “Ozone Depletion Over Arctic ‘Unprecedented’ This Winter“
My take on this: CNN reported this month that 40% of the ozone layer over the Arctic was depleted from December 21st, 2010 to March 31st, 2011–roughly three months. I heard a CNN anchor report this, with some alarm. I also watched as this anchor continued, after a few sentences on this, to another news item–about a snake getting loose in New York, if memory serves me. Guess life on this planet not as big a deal.

Btw, if you want to dismiss this by consoling yourself that it is “only” happening over the Arctic, consider what is happening in parts of the globe that aren’t being actively monitored. Seems to me if the lake goes down on the other side, the water is lower on my side as well. [return to text]

10. John Leslie, The End of the World.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Seven:
“We Ain’t Born Typical””

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Five: Death Wish – Thanatos Walking

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The Rise of “Obvious Truths” … Creating a (Not So) American Life: Stolen Elections, Crazy-Making Social Processes, and Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies

Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life

Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America

Opposing Ways of Changing America – Passion vs. Power, Authenticity vs. Money

In the last half century, Americans have experienced unprecedented changes in their lives, their lifestyles, in what it means to be alive and a human in America in these times. Rarely have societies experienced this kind of change. What is even more astounding is the way the changes send us shooting dramatically in one way and then in the other direction.

Of course it is amazing that people are able to manage these kinds of change. But we don’t do this easily.

Let us look at the side-to-side careening of American life in that time and where we are today in that.

Creating an America Worthy of its Name

In introducing “Obvious Truths,” I talked about how politicians and leaders can only do so much and that the effects of their words are often fleeting. I said that social change that’s either reinforced or carried forward, or even initiated, by something like music or something that affects your feelings, can be greater and longer lasting. The powerful feelings that are stirred this way can affect people for their whole lives and even have influence for generations. I mentioned that these emotional influences reach more deeply into people because feelings exist at a deeper level of the brain undergirding words, thought, or even reason.

Finally, keep in mind that this is titled the rise and fall of “obvious truths.”

Obvious “Truth” – “Money Changes Everything”…. Really? … Only?

So I’m gonna start looking over what has transpired so far. I said at the beginning there was a title, one that pointed to the power and grandeur of these social movements. I wrote at the time that if the title’s claim–casting ordinary folks, along with revolutionary art, as the instigators of grand movements…the people of the Sixties and the music of bands like the Beatles, for example—sounds silly or trite to you that you are operating out of social prejudices we all carry from childhood, like most people do, particularly around status.

And by that I meant we have a tendency to assume that it is money that changes everything and that ordinary folks have little power without it.

For example, we assume that artists and musicians can’t affect anything. They more often arise from non-affluent beginnings; we have the term, starving artist, for example. Their power in society is considered to be as minimal as their finances.

“Real World” vs. “Flaky”

But this is not true—that is what I’m getting at. For, has the power of people been created with money, solely? Well, I think there’s a tendency to think it is.

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Not long ago, America and I went through such a change arising artistically from the masses. The Beatles affected us in such a great way that we were changed forever and society’s traditional momentum in a direction benefiting its moneyed royalty was stopped and even reversed. Their music and that of those like them changed the world in terms of the way we saw peace. The way we saw love. The way we saw drugs. The way we saw tolerance of other people…the way we looked at other people.

Status and Money, More Than Ever, Determining What Is “Real”

But I’m not going to go too far there, because that’s all coming up, too. I’m just saying that we do have these preconceptions about status and money that affects what we think is more important or powerful. It affects what we think of as “real” and “real world” versus what is considered silly or superfluous … “flaky” … “kumbaya.”

I was talking earlier about how, these days, it seems like only people with money have power. Everybody knows that and assumes it can only be that way. This is so because many people today have not had the experience of seeing it being different than that.

The Exception That Reveals the Rule

There is one exception and as it happens this exception does reveal the rule.

The Blue Meanies Dissed, Dismissed

For Obama’s rise to the presidency was startling, shocking even, because it was a unique phenomenon for this time. It was a grand and sweeping phenomenon because people got a chance, for the first time in a long time, to see that ordinary folks getting together could effect massive change…without the power of gobs of money. We can recall how his campaign was largely done over the internet and with small contributions. People could feel again, some for the first time, that they had the power in their passion and numbers to throw off the shackles of the filthy rich. Unbelievable.

Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate – Creating an America That Is Not

Creating an America That Is Not – Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate

Creating an America That Is Not

Obama’s success was astounding, but look what it took! Look at what had to happen before a Democrat, Obama, and the first African-American ever, could win the presidency. It only came about after a long time of national suffering, disgrace, war, loss of life, incompetence, cronyism, scandal, atrocity, erosion of rights, squandering of money, tragedy, and more. Bush was in the presidency for a full eight years; he actually got to steal a second election.

The Blue Meanies – Stolen Election

It is clear that Bush’s first term was not won fairly. Even putting aside the intimidation of black voters in Florida and similar unfair and illegal practices perpetrated by Republicans, we still have the fact that Bush was given the presidency by a decision of the Supreme Court. Our history records how vote counting was stopped before the outcome could be determined; the Supreme Court decided on a winner, Bush; and subsequently the vote tally came out that Gore had actually won the presidency! These are simply the facts, the things not in dispute.

The Rule Itself—Money Changes Everything.

The facts of Bush’s second election are less well known; in fact they are more assiduously covered up. Still, in the vote tally against John Kerry it should not have even been close…but for more obscure reasons.

There is plenty of documented public evidence that the electronic voting machines were fixed, making the outcome fraudulent. The machines were owned by Diebold Corporation, a firm solidly in the Republican camp, the head of which promised the Republicans, before the election, that he was going to get Bush elected. I mean, seriously. Isn’t that pretty much an admission that the voting machines were going to be fixed?

And in fact this is what they discovered to have taken place.

Now, is this not the kind of thing that in the past would have brought people out into the streets? [Footnote 1]

Anyway, it was confirmed, to some extent even prior to the election, that even a person walking by with an iPhone or something similar could hack into these electronic voting machines and change the votes. That is, if they had the correct access information. And the only ones who had that and therefore could decide the vote tally were the Diebold Corporation in league with the Republicans. Is it any wonder Bush “won”?

The Battleground for America

“Only people know just how to change the world.” – J. Lennon

So the two things of relevance in this example are that in previous times this would have brought people out into the streets, would have caused people to rise up in outrage against authority when it was found out.

The Duty, and Failure, of the Press

Which brings out the second relevant point: The public’s power could be stirred only by these facts coming out and becoming widely known. This information did come out; entire popular books were written describing how and that it was done. It came out in the broadcast media as well.

It is unlikely that you know that, however. That can only be because it wasn’t told enough in the media, that it was downplayed in the media, covered up, or the media directed your attention away from it. And that is the problem I’m getting at.

Changing America by Changing its People

But you see there’s another thing that happened. Even with a responsible media you have to have a citizenry that is open to this kind of information and able and willing to process it and draw conclusions from it. That is what I will be addressing now.

Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies

Creating a (Not So) American Life: Your Mind Made Fertile For the Planting of Lies

Going back, I was saying we all have these prejudices regarding what is deemed powerful and important. We all have stuff from childhood that makes us shrink before authority, cower before money, status, and power. We all have irrational ideas magnifying the power of our oppressors, telling us to obey, to not question, to go along with that which others would have of us but which is not in our own interest and in fact brings suffering into our lives. And on top of all that, these early imprints and social teachings would have us rationalize our subjugation and deny our felt experience ever fending off inner and outer information, clues threatening to our precious conscious untruths and instilled self-sabotaging beliefs and notions.

Thinking About There Not Being Enough Time to Think

But you know sometimes you have a chance to kick back and not be caught up in the struggle to survive. You have a chance to reflect on your circumstances, your prejudices, and to re-evaluate matters. You have leisure time in which to do more than survive, to actually re-create, re-new yourself, and to grow in wisdom so you are not so blinkered by the blinders of the comfortable ignorance of grade-school propaganda and other early conditionings, prejudices. So society benefits both through your productivity but also through the fact that you have leisure time to become a wiser social actor. You have this leisure time….

Or, do you?

Well, not too long ago we had more leisure time, let’s put it that way. We had more leisure time; we had more time to pause and reflect. So some things might occur to us that were different than what we originally thought…than our preconceived notions; we might actually change our mind about things if we thought about them. I am not saying that was what everybody did all the time or anything like that. I am saying it could happen, and it happened more. So I’m saying that a lot has changed.

Well, you don’t think we have less leisure time? If you are much younger than me, you probably don’t know. But I am old enough to know that I have never seen Americans so busy…so busy and so preoccupied.

Climbing Down the Ladder of Your Todo List

Backing up, so imagine you or somebody like you is saying, “Ah, naw naw naw, naw, y’know, musicians, ordinary folks, they can’t do anything; they’re not politicians, they’re not powerful, they’re not rich!” Ok? But this person or you may not have had occasion to actually pause your life…to step back from the twenty-four hour climbing down the ladder of your todo list to success. Y’know?

How long is your todo list by the way? Busy, busy all the time is now required for survival concerns. There was a time in which you might be really motivated…you’d see people that were really striving …trying hard to be a big success or something like that. But it wasn’t required.

Forms Fill Up Free Time…”Fax It Over, I’ll Look At It.”

There is also the increased paper load, the mountains of red tape, which is also filling up the supposed “free time” of the average American. Man! What the hell is with that!?

Now they can blame it on computers; they can say it’s because we have more information and they can store larger amounts of it electronically, and they can put more… aw, c’mon, it’s people deciding that you have to fill things out and that you have to get and give more and more and more and more information, this is a lot of time!

Did you ever buy a house? You sign that Sisyphian hill of documents? I can only just imagine the day when there was just a deed, signed over. I’m not that old.

So, with exorbitantly more paperwork, there’s less time for thought, less time to think. We’re busy, and we’re nervous. Why? We got a lot of red tape, we got a lot of things to do. We’re under stress…

Taxes to Twist You With

And part of that paperwork … probably the worst part, if you’re like me, is due to the complex and contradictory tax codes. Part of the leisure time lost disappears into the black hole around tax forms. Seriously, I am old enough to have seen taxes get more contradictory and complex over the years. In fact the tax codes are rather convoluted abominations twisting themselves to benefit corporate special interest, with little or no rationale even presented to explain why these special interests should be benefited. And this sort of corporate special interest input into tax codes has just exploded over the years.

In the previous times, such things as a benefit to any special interest were usually presented to the legislature, and the public, in a particular way to justify them. You can just imagine like, in some kind of bargaining session in Congress, they would say, “Well, if we provide a break here, that’ll result in benefits over in this sector…” Or they might say, “…and it benefits our economy as a whole, which will…” and they might add a few elements into the equation before the inevitable, “it’ll benefit the average American or be a boon to our society as a whole.” And the reaction, we imagine, would be like, “Aw, yeah, yeah…ok.” Then it’s good; it’s approved.

Crazy-Making Social Processes Aid Manipulation

But over time, even this linking to the common good was not necessary, so the tax codes got exceedingly more convoluted and hopelessly contradictory, essentially lacking any reason. We all know that. It’s a dead document, so to speak, which would never, ever, ever be able to be brought back to rational health, so riddled with myriad kinds of cancers which are special interest convolutions of its elements so that it would be impossible to excise them all.

You have probably all heard the story. You call up the tax adviser, you have a question about how to fill something out…how to do something. And you’ll ask one person and they’ll tell you one thing; and then you call back and you get a different person and they’ll tell you something entirely different; then if you call again, somebody else will tell you something again … all different. Well, this is crazy-making.

And that crazy-making takes up your time; and it makes you worry more…and, well, it works itself into your time to ponder things, especially important things.

The Planting of Lies – The Rise of “Obvious Truths”

So, the tax code is hopelessly brain dead, and everyone knows it. Any former link to fairness, reasonableness, or coherency has been severed; it has become a coffin into which anything can be thrown and in which any corporate wish can be granted. So the country has now turned completely into the hands of the corporations, ok?

The Money Changing Everything

And with corporations firmly backing Republicans, the Democrats in every election that I can recall, especially in the presidential elections, always were way underfunded and the GOP overfunded because the Rich-publicans were carrying the wishes of those corporations into the board rooms of Congress along with their huge amounts of money.

Corporations invest in America (government).

But these payoffs were small investments to corporations, relative to the benefits they would get in the changes in government policy which affected them. Republicans were…It was obvious…it was all on public record…were getting huge amounts of money going into their campaign coffers and were way overfunded. One hell of a lot of money was put toward putting and keeping Republicans in office. It was not even a fair fight.

Democrats not wanting to be totally disarmed

So with no hope then…and this is what I saw happen…Democrats, who were still wanting to work for a better America and therefore better government, were forced into a choice of either continuing to rely only on contributions from the American people–as for example unions, keeping them woefully underfunded, and therefore losing…or to accept what was being offered them also by corporations.

So you began to have some Democrats making compromises with their principles and accepting some corporate money. Though even then it remained true that for the most part Democrats are funded by unions and organizations dealing with issues, like education, health care, seniors, jobs, and so on that affect the average American.

Now, this is where I get to one of those Big Lies, one of those concocted untruths that end up everyone just knowing to be true.

Obvious “Truth” – Politicians Are Like the People We Want Others to Think We Are Like (But Aren’t)…Like Who We Pretend to Be

To make this point, I need to back up to that thing related to convoluted tax codes and corporations. I was saying that eventually it was getting to where a huge increase in that problem could be attributed to corporations not even having to justify that the paybacks they wanted were good for America anymore. How did this happen?

Breaking news—Politicians are human.

Well, we have the situation mentioned where eventually Democrats were virtually required to accept corporate money or else they had no chance to win election. Naturally then, they had to produce at least a little for their benefactor corporations as well.

People can still be good, even if not Mother-Theresa good.

It is crucial to keep in mind the fact that Democrats were not getting near as much money from corporations as Republicans, by and large, and they remained largely staying afloat through contributions from unions and from organizations of masses of people pushing issues of overall social benefit. So Democrats were backed for the most part by actual people not corporations; still they had to produce something for the overlords.

Alright, so it happened that Democrats would seek to strengthen their overall hand to accomplish beneficial things for society by tossing occasional bones of tax concessions to their corporate backers. They would go to their gop counterparts and would want something in the tax code, for example. And the Republicans would say, “Well you want that? Well, I’ll give you that, you give me this.” So it could not help but happen that taxes and public policy got more and more convoluted in conforming to these complications and outright contradictions. We saw this increasingly over the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Obvious “Truth” – Both Parties Funded by Special Interests

But Republicans were always seen as the ones who were representing various corporations and what were called the special interests–defense, big agriculture, big oil, the Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, and so on.

But then this is what also happened: This huge lie was created, becoming a big part of the Matrix, the Matrix of confusion that was being put out to cover up truth. This lie was impossible to make out, blocked out by an omnipresent media saying all the same thing, in rather like this monotone voice almost like Pravda in the old days of the Soviet Union. I saw this happen too. You no longer had differences of opinion you just had the same thing being said.

Anyway, this Big Lie, firmly woven into the fabric of the Matrix as to be both invisible and therefore unchallengeable even by rational arguments…this lie, and I’m sure you’ve heard it is that: Well, both parties are funded by special interests!

Democrats funded by a special interest—people

Now, of course, you know you’ve got Big Oil and Big Coal, and you’ve got the Pharmaceuticals and the Defense Industry and they’re funding the Republicans, and they would come back and say, “Special interests?! Well you Democrats have them too. What about your unions? You’re being funded by them!”

Well let’s just take the unions for starters, ok? Seriously, the unions as special interests? The unions?

Republicans funded by non-people—corporations

Ok, let me step back. We got corporations, which are a few people getting rich and it’s not even benefiting people. They’re not even including the people who work at the corporations, because they’re union people, maybe, or else they’re non-union people but they’re certainly not making any money off of what the corporations are getting in laws and benefits from their paid-for Republican representatives.

Obvious “Truth” – Unions Are a “Special” Interest

So, what is a special interest now? Ok, so, is the American public a special interest? Wait, I thought the government was supposed to be for the people. Now if the people are workers, primarily; and at one time there was a lot of them that were union workers, ok? But even if they’re not union workers, aren’t the unions aiming for benefits for their membership that also carries over to the non-union workers? If the unions are able to get medical benefits, for example, which is one big thing that they pushed for, well then it became common for all workers to get medical benefits.

Is it a “special” interest if it benefits virtually everyone?

Ok…that’s a special interest? I thought special interest was something that was against the interests of the American people and it was only going to benefit a certain small segment, a certain handful of people. That’s why it’s called special, isn’t it? But there’s the Republicans saying, “Oh, they’re unions, workers benefits are for unions.” And I just wonder if the unions are just a handful of people, who the hell is making all the stuff in America, who’s building the buildings, who’s…? Geez! I think you got the point.

For, I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and I’m sure you’ve all accepted it that “unions are special interests.” But I just don’t get it how…well maybe I don’t have a high paying job, or anything like that. But I work…doesn’t everybody?..I’m a working person and unions aren’t against me. I just wish there were more unions, so that whenever I would have a job or something like that I could have one to represent me against the powerful corporate owners.

Put out to cover up and confuse

So here, quite clearly, we have one of those obvious “truths” put out to cover up and confuse clear thinking: Unions are a special interest.

Obvious “Truth” – Education Is a “Special” Interest

But what else is a “special interest” for Democrats? Oh, it’s the teacher’s union or stuff like that, or, education.

Oh, great! So, what is that again? So education is for who now? Ok, now that’s a special interest. Mmmm hm. That’s a special interest? Does that mean that there are like only a few people that have kids that need education?

Education is a “special” interest…it is only for those who own brains.

I’m starting to get sick here. I don’t quite get it. I mean I’ m getting confused, you know what I mean. This is what I’m talking about, this is that irrationality: Special interest, education? Aw, c’mon, c’mon, I want to say.

An America without people is an America that doesn’t need education.

I mean, c’mon, aw, c’mon, somebody, somebody point out that education is not a special interest. It’s… Jesus! We won’t have an America in the future unless we have kids!

Don’t need education…it doesn’t matter if stupid people make our corporate and governmental decisions. *sarcasm*

Not to mention how can it be a special interest if were we to give more money to education, we would have better educated people growing up…these people would even benefit the corporations by being better corporate employees. They would, in fact, benefit all of society by making better decisions.

I kind of think we have an idea of what a big difference intelligence makes… what a big difference it is when you have intelligent people running things and when you don’t.

We kind of know how that works (stupid people running things).

For didn’t we have a kind of a little contrast there; didn’t we have a kind of a little experiment in that recently? I believe it had to do with C-student Bush…if you remember some things like Katrina and things like that…or maybe what hits you is something about a huge costly war that…well, it was gotten into on false grounds, illegally, we were lied to…but the whole matter and even the conduct of it, wasn’t it all rather…stupid what happened?

Bush gets presidency—kind of like he won the lottery.

Such things that happened under Bush are incompetencies that never happened before. Never! Not even under Republicans. We got Bush here, taking more time off from the presidency than any president in history…it was kind of like he thought he won the lottery or something. Didn’t even bother to look like he had a job to do. Wasn’t his first press conference something like ten months after he was sworn in?

Obama gets presidency—kind of like he got a job!

Now, contrast that with Harvard Law Review editor Obama. How many press conferences did he have after taking office? How frequently have you seen him on the job? He’s handling some of the biggest problems this country has every had. And people are impressed that he can do it. And there’s so much of it. So, isn’t intelligence kind of a good thing for us all?

Anyway. You get the point. Education a special interest? Seriously now.

Obvious “Truth” – The Sick and the Elderly Are “Special” Interests

How about medical care? Health and life are not for the common good. God, no, we don’t need medical care, that’s a special interest, that’s just for them people who get sick…and I’m starting to get sick here, I mean, y’know, for people who get sick? C’mon!

Health care is a special interest…it’s only for people who have bodies.

And, it’s like, “Oh, no, no, it’s not just for those people who get sick, it’s those people who have to pay medical bills.” Oh, I see, then that must be just for…. Who’s gotta pay medical bills, again? Well none of us have to pay medical bills, it’s all free, right? Nooo, it’s not.

The elderly are a special interest…it only benefits those who are affected by time.

And is it really necessary to point out that seniors and the retired are not a special interest? I suppose if you’re thinking the current group is the last humans ever to reach an advanced age it would limit their numbers some.

So unless we all suddenly stop getting older, help to the elderly and the retired is help to us all; it is not special. Am I not right?

Obvious “Truth” – Democrats and Republicans Are Equal

So, where do you hear anybody pointing this out? I don’t know but if you’re hearing the same media and TV coverage that I am, you’re hearing that they’re equal. The Democrats and Republicans are equal because they’re equally funded by special interests, and the special interests…. What are these special interests again? Well, sometimes it’s like, “What are those special interests?” “Well, it’s the union, and the education, and it’s the medical care.” Oh, geez, just listen sometimes.

Obvious “Truth” – Corporations fund the elections of both Republicans and Democrats.

And by the way, I said this was the rise and fall. The idea that both parties are funded by huge corporations, what they call large donor contributors, was blatantly revealed as the lie it is during the 2008 presidential election.

Remember, contrasted with Republican McCain’s funding from those real special interests–that related to Big Business and Defense…what Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex…Democrat Obama ran a campaign in 2008 where the donations were voluntarily capped at an unusually low level. The upper limit was set at $1,000, which meant that his backing would have to come from numerous small contributors not special interests benefiting only a group. And, amazingly, he received a record amount of money to support him. It was said he had all kinds of money more than McCain, even though McCain was backed by corporations.

Then I must be a corporation, because I gave to Obama.

Now, how did that happen? Well it could only have happened because the masses of Americans wanted to give, even if it was $5, $10, or whatever…whatever they had. It required that donations come from a huge number more of people than contributed to McCain. I gave. My wife gave…several times. Didn’t you give, too?

For a change, in recent memory, this demonstrated that strength I was talking about before–that strength that’s of so many people feeling the same way, therefore acting in solidarity with each other. Surprisingly this happened despite them not being in face-to-face contact with each other, in general. This was one of the interesting things about this development: that it was largely accomplished just through the power of the internet.

It’s the Internet vs. the Matrix.

So the internet kind of brought folks together in solidarity of purpose the same way maybe a rally or demonstration in the past would have brought people together.

It was significant that most of this happened from the actions of people sitting alone in front of computers, not buoyed up by the effusiveness of a demonstration. It showed an unexpected power of social media.

In the past, face-to-face, like demonstrations, were where people connected with people like them.

Remember, in demonstrations in the past…and I’ve been to them…you would go and you would share your feelings of outrage and hurt, you would be affirmed in the importance of your concerns and be instilled with hope of a change in them, most of all you would have your sense of what was going on expressed out loud. Previous to that, you may have been reading the newspapers, say, and feeling, this is wrong, this is an outrage. This would have motivated you to attend a demonstration, and there you would have found other people who were feeling the same things. So you would be confirmed in your beliefs that it was wrong.

In the past, face-to-face, like demonstrations, were where people learned and grew in understanding.

Now, social media and the internet provided a similar thing where you could express your concern and rage and find others who felt the same way you did and so confirmed your beliefs, and even expanded on them with more information. So you could grow in your understanding of events and in your knowledge of what you could do about them.

This function of developing your insight and your effectiveness was provided by the rallies and demonstrations in the pre-electronic eras. The point is that over the election of Obama people connected again; and it was people not loads of military-industrial money that got him elected.

Bush brought us all together…

Well, that’s one thing that Bush gave back to America. He united us. He united us around at least one obvious rallying standard. He made our minds finally clear that…it’s true he’s an idiot! It’s true Republicans can’t handle government. It’s true that they will claim to be fiscally responsible and yet…what happened? Well the largest economic collapse in American history second to the Depression…and it was the largest collapse in the economy of the world. (So, thank you, George W. Bush!… See Footnote 2 as well.)

Obvious “Truth” – Republicans/ Conservatives Are Fiscally Responsible

So this financial “meltdown” is coming from the people who are supposed to know so much about economics. But at the same time, like McCain said, “I don’t know too much about economics.” He don’t know too much about economics! Who does McCain think he is, the Herman’s f-ing Hermits!? Anyway, McCain kind of spilled the beans there. Some of the actual truth came it: About conservatives and fiscal matters…Republicans “don’t know too much” about it.

Coming Up – Watch Black be Made White, White Be Made Black!
Oh, Those Rascally Magical Republicans!

OK, that’s it for Part One of “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’”—Chapters Eight and Nine in this book.

Part Two is available here too—Chapters Ten through Thirteen. And in Part Two I go more into how they were able to get American people—including the media and the pundits and everybody—to accept this obvious unreality which is that both parties are funded by “special interests”; and you probably believe that yourself.

Oh, The Things They Do

But I think if you hear what I have to say, I think I’ll convince you of how amazing it was that they were able to pull that off. I think it will shock you to see how they could get so many people thinking irrationally about something that is so obviously not true. And there’ll be other things like that too.

Watch ‘em turn black into white!

There’s a pattern I’ll be talking about where…it’s like black is made white, white made black, where things are turned around. For example Republicans might have a proposal to help with the health care problem, for as they say, and we all know, the costs of health care are high and people are not getting covered. But their proposals end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what they say they will. And they know they will do that even when they propose them.

It is a matter of record that these sorts of swindles have been proposed and pushed by Republicans fully knowledgeable of what they were accomplishing. These things happened; we see they continue to happen. Taking health care again: Obviously we were left a very, very bad health care problem by Republicans. The point is that right from the beginning—you can go back to Nixon on this—they knew what they were doing. They knew how it would turn out, and there’s proof of this. We have their very words…

A glimpse ahead

The last thing to be disclosed in this series: the Why. The actual events that led these people to decide on this path toward us all, and moved them to increase and add and elaborate those initial moves to the levels of the most comprehensive totalitarian controls over a people ever attempted, let alone succeeding, as far as we know right now.

Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight: Creating an American Mind

---

Footnote

1. Helen Caldicott compares our complacency in the face of dire happenings–such as Fukushima–to the parents who respond emotionless when she has to tell them their child has leukemia. She says, “Get mad. Get emotional.” She urges us to take back our governments from these mad perpetrators of the darkest doom imaginable. And, in the least, occupy! She proclaims,

It’s time you took your country back…. Use your bodies like they did in Wisconsin. Do a Tahrir Square here. Take back New York. Take back the Congress. Invade the Congress! Those people belong to you. They are your representatives, and you are their leaders. But you’ve got to have some guts! And stop being so goddamn polite all the time! And don’t need approval. Step up to the plate….

We’ve got to be emotional…. It’s time we used our emotions and become incensed! Otherwise we’re not going to make it.

2. You might want to step back and enjoy the humor in this as I did. This is my little, oh, “thank you note” to George W. Bush.

It is a satirical piece. A supposed admirer-fan-chum of George W. Bush encourages thank-yous for Bush’s “accomplishments,” which, described glowingly by the fan, sound quite the opposite to the listener. The fan has the most admiration for the great caper Bush “pulled off” at the end.

This comedic monologue combines the actual facts of recent history with a simple, unspun speculation of them, coming from the mouth of a fawning admirer who, for that reason, is allowed to elaborate on the shady dealings. So Bush, it is intimated, basks in the glory of having his ideas for illegal dealings praised as clever and awesome, or even cute.

This is political satire that will have you laughing from the total incongruity and irony of the monologue, but it will also leave you more informed and thinking. This is provocative, funny stuff.

And the audio only version of the above:

A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for the Great Bush-Paulson-”Filthy Rich” Caper
by SillyMickel Adzema

About the audio and video above.

[From February 2, 2010] Yesterday the airwaves were abuzz re: the CEO of Goldman Sachs taking $100 million in bonuses and thumbing his nose at Obama in doing so. Other reports this week are confirming the sleight-of-hand and shadiness surrounding the TARP bailout of the banks: Specifically, that TARP money handed out by Paulson was not recorded, let alone accounted for or monitored; and therefore it cannot be traced or even determined whether it went to benefit American corporations, let alone Americans, and not foreign corporations or even private interests or parties.

With these recent developments coming to light, along with the tea-baggers and Republicans continued blaming of Obama for everything from being born, daring to take the oath of office with unpresidential skin pigmentation, to daring to reverse the direction of the country from the cliff that Bush had so clearly left us heading for, it seems it’s time to revisit those days of yore, those nostalgic last glimmerings of a time when we had a government solidly on the side of the people, that is, helping them in keeping them comfortably distracted from the sight of the truckloads of loot being removed from the Treasury to the coffers of the filthy rich and the huge, oftentimes, foreign or international corporations.

Let us return, then, to December, 2009, and President Bush’s last couple months in office, and recalling those halcyon days, render our gratitude anew:

And the text of the “Oh, Thank You..” audio and video:

A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for “The Great Bush-Paulson-’Filthy Rich’ Caper”

C’MON EVERYONE, JOIN IN NOW!: “Why, Thank you, George Bush!”

…………….This is my little, let us say, oh, “thank you note” to George Bush for all his “hard work.”

Also, in appreciation of the “Paulsie Scam,” which we will be dealing with forever….
luckily it’s been arranged that won’t be too long.
…………….

“Thanks George W. Bush for all your efforts and “hard work” which have led,
your decisions and your Administration solely to blame –

thank you for being “THE DECIDER!” by the way –

to leave us in the midst of so many dire and rapidly expanding problems, so that many people are not just wondering if they will have a job or money, but that even if this planet will make it through another fifty years.

So, hey, thanks for all the hard work and for relieving us and all our grandchildren of any money, and….

oh, I see, there probably won’t be any planet for the little dears to live on.

And everyone dead and all….

Why, gosh, Mr. W., you’re so smart, you probably knew that!

So that’s why you and your cronies went so far as to commit grand larceny even at the end, scraping out the last of any money in the Treasury — wasn’t much left for Obama to do with anyway, after your eight years of partying on high with your Halliburton and your god-only-knows faceless “filthy rich,” gang.

Must’ve felt like the ol’ times, eh, except for the cocaine. . . Er, I mean, I didn’t mean to presume, I mean, you can have cocaine, who am I…

Oh! What a relief, glad to hear you did not partake like the others. It’s just that….

I mean George, friend, my Man here, c’mon there were some pretty weird dancing and stuff and things — right at the end there — that had me wondering and worrying…

Oh, I get it, no cocaine, but wink, wink, you’ve got your ways you say? Hmmm?

Finding things better than cocaine and getting away with it?

Well, he he, I’m not about to judge. I mean if we can have Rush Limbaugh asking for drug users to be hung up by their finger nails, even as he’s got a constant drip for a codeine fix, and he gets away scot free, why shouldn’t you have your fun? You always said it was haaaard work.

But I gotta get back to that stunt with the Treasury at the very end. I mean many, many a lesser, “criminal,” shall we say, mind would never go back again and again, let alone in broad daylight and in front of the entire world! Gad!

Was this all your idea to totally take everything while you could? Somebody else’s?

Anyway, it was brilliant. First, you enlist the support of that guy Paulson. Er, now that I know more about him, being worth $700 million, like and, getting bonuses of $37 million in 2005 and then 16.4 million the next year before he came into office with you…..

Why, could it actually be that he was the one that talked you into it!!! Naaaaaaw?

Certainly, he’d have to be characterized as one of them “filthy rich” that you helped to create, making people wonder who’s really calling the shots in Washington. …

But, never mind, even if it was his good idea — and now I understand he’s had plenty of experience — being involved with the folks who did Watergate and all…way back in his early days… with Ehrlichman and all — so that — no doubt he’s got lots of good ideas, ya gotta give him that.

But, hell, don’t want to take any shine off your apples. No, it was you who chose him. And despite his background, managed to get him on your side and portrayed as one of the most well-respected men on Wall Street, at the time… I remember that well…. I’d never know about his background, and I was most respect…everybody said it was a big…a good pick for you? ‘Course that was the old Wall Street; ‘cuz we now know those bonuses and stuff aren’t too popular right now.

Anyhow, brilliant move, you put this man of yours on task for the high-pressured auto trading that you knew would be required to pull off such a heist.

So you had your guy Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs…coming to take this position of Secretary of Treasury for you. And now we find out that none of that money went where it was intended to go and it did not change the situation but rather exacerbated it! Brilliant! More on that later, but…

more on that later, but, Jesus! I gotta say though…pretty incredible!!? I mean, Paulson himself, gets like, uh, what was it…50 some billion to a German bank? That then owes…Goldman Sachs 16 billion, and so he makes off with 16 billion on top, is that like…

What a crackup this guy is being! I mean he had everyone fooled, and, in fact, there is nothing at all being said about his involvement or his possible effects on what happened, even to this day.

That’s smoothness even you and I could learn from , y’know, Mr. W and……..stay away from him, man…. He’s just tooo smart for all of us, ok, I think he’ll have……. He, he, I think he’s already had his hands in all of our pockets, he, he, I figure… (I’m sorry bout that)… But anyway…

Naw, c’mon, let’s, let’s…we wanta go over your accomplishments tonight, Mr. President, I mean…. I mean..the whole thing…y’know, going to Congress, there…. Getting them to tally up that un-be-leiv-able sev-en hun-dred bill-ion dollars! …like almost a trillion dollars…. I mean they could not get that high, I mean….

Anyway…so we heard how you guys gathered these guys together in Congress…I mean how it was done, y’know, it was like…well musta been like one of those movies….like Ocean’s elev…. Like an Ocean’s 33, yeah! And. Anyway, so you gathered those suckers, those guys, in Congress together, who had the money, huh?

And, he, he, he, y’know, like, we heard afterwards how you guys gathered, Congressional Leaders… and… without explaining exactly how it would happen – of course Congressmen could not be expected to understand the workings of economics and high finance like a Paulson could. So, kindly Paulson and his deputies explained using analogies, how nice of them to bring it down to their level, so sweet of them….

Y’know analogies…like this is like this, this is like this, y’know, and…yea, like that….

I just want to say how cute you are, W.. I mean, it was just, soooooo you….

Anyway, the analogy they used was that if Congress didn’t cough up the dough pronto – perhaps those weren’t the exact words, my bad. But anyway, that the consequences – and tell me W. this was all you, right? – The consequences would be that of a “GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN” (tell me, that part was you, right?) a terminal global economic meltdown that would… (wait, I’m getting an inkling here… was this next part, Cheney’s?) “End modern civilization as we know it for the foreseeable future.”

Wow! It gives me shivers just hearing it. I mean there ain’t no auto salesman in his wildest fantasies that could come up with something so absolutely, well, disabling.

You guys really took those suckers in Congress “out by the knees”! How could they have had a chance!

And, boy, there’s that implied nuclear thing again…”the meltdown”; yea. Doesn’t have to make any sense; I mean economics melting, but hey close enough. How clever! I mean that whole image of mushroom cloud, why it just worked stupendously to get us into a war. And now, this being economics…

Oh, my God, I see it; it’s like a fifties movie — “Oh, please help, we’re meeee-ee-llll-tiiinggg.” Yea, super scary. Heck, anything like that from fifties horror flicks…just good stuff. Heck, you know that most people believe that stuff anyway. So, I see, you feed them what they always feared anyway. Brilliant. Brilliant.

But that’s my George, the W. himself, going with what he knows. And, hey, why bother coming up with anything else, that card’s a winner for you, my man….

And c’mon, level with me, I just gotta know, won’t tell anyone else… Was that Cheney with the “end of civilization” part? C’mon, he’s already living the Wild West out there in Wyoming, he’s probably thinkin Mad Maxin it and everything… I mean, c’mon…. C’mon, it’s got to be him, that’s just sooo Darth Vader, who else could think like that?

Please tell me I’m right…I feel like I know this guy and that is….well, that is just sooooo him!…

---

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click below to launch the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835359

---

Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight: Creating an American Mind

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Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate – Creating an America That Is Not: Creating an American Life, Pt 2

Creating an American Life, Part Two: Creating an America That Is Not – Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate

Obama’s rise to the presidency was startling, shocking even, because it was a unique phenomenon for this time.

Creating an America That Is Not

But look what it took! Look at what had to happen before a Democrat, Obama, and the first African-American ever, could win the presidency. It only came about after a long time of national suffering, disgrace, war, loss of life, incompetence, cronyism, scandal, atrocity, erosion of rights, squandering of money, tragedy, and more. Bush was in the presidency for a full eight years; he actually got to steal a second election.

The Blue Meanies – Stolen Election

It is clear that Bush’s first term was not won fairly. Even putting aside the intimidation of black voters in Florida and similar unfair and illegal practices perpetrated by Republicans, we still have the fact that Bush was given the presidency by a decision of the Supreme Court. Our history records how vote counting was stopped before the outcome could be determined; the Supreme Court decided on a winner, Bush; and subsequently the vote tally came out that Gore had actually won the presidency! These are simply the facts, the things not in dispute.

The Rule Itself—Money Changes Everything.

The facts of Bush’s second election are less well known; in fact they are more assiduously covered up. Still, in the vote tally against John Kerry it should not have even been close…but for more obscure reasons.

There is plenty of documented public evidence that the electronic voting machines were fixed, making the outcome fraudulent. The machines were owned by Diebold Corporation, a firm solidly in the Republican camp, the head of which promised the Republicans, before the election, that he was going to get Bush elected. I mean, seriously. Isn’t that pretty much an admission that the voting machines were going to be fixed?

And in fact this is what they discovered to have taken place.

Now, is this not the kind of thing that in the past would have brought people out into the streets?

Anyway, it was confirmed, to some extent even prior to the election, that even a person walking by with an iPhone or something similar could hack into these electronic voting machines and change the votes. That is, if they had the correct access information. And the only ones who had that and therefore could decide the vote tally were the Diebold Corporation in league with the Republicans. Is it any wonder Bush won?

The Battleground for America

“Only people know just how to change the world.” – J. Lennon

So the two things of relevance in this example are that in previous times this would have brought people out into the streets, would have caused people to rise up in outrage against authority when it was found out.

The Duty, and Failure, of the Press

Which brings out the second relevant point: The public’s power could be stirred only by these facts coming out and becoming widely known. This information did come out; entire popular books were written describing how and that it was done. It came out in the broadcast media as well.

It is unlikely that you know that, however. That can only be because it wasn’t told enough in the media, that it was downplayed in the media, covered up, or the media directed your attention away from it. And that is the problem I’m getting at.

Changing America by Changing its People

But you see there’s another thing that happened. Even with a responsible media you have to have a citizenry that is open to this kind of information and able and willing to process it and draw conclusions from it. That is what I will be addressing now.

Continue with Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies: Creating a (Not So) American Life, Pt 3

Return to “Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America: Creating an American Life, Pt 1“

---

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click below to launch the audio player here.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rzznhtzjsk&as=1
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”: Part One. by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue with Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies: Creating a (Not So) American Life, Pt 3

Return to “Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America: Creating an American Life, Pt 1“

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Wtf? The End Being Nigh: Strange Days, Pt 2

The End Being Nigh:
Strange Days, Part Two

Strange Days

For most people, I would assume I am not saying anything new in pointing out that our times are unique. For that matter, all times are unique—unlike any other. But what no other time has seen is the actual—not imagined—possibility, even likelihood, of the “end of the world.” That is to say, we are facing the end of our species and maybe all life on this planet along with us. Considering just one scenario, we have the capacity, with only a minuscule amount of our nuclear weapons, to wipe out all life on this planet. We all know this. [continued after video]

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Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?
by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s readingof this part, click on the link to youtube above or click the video player here:

Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?–Michael Adzema

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“The End Is Nigh!”

I used the phrase, just now, “end of the world,” deliberately. For I expect that it will evoke in some a reaction that what I am going to say from here on will be a drawn-out verbal version of a familiar cartoon, depicting a bearded and bedraggled man on a street corner, carrying a sign or wearing a clapboard proclaiming, “The end is near!” and that what I will say will have just about as much credibility as that man’s would.

I take that chance to make my first point…which is: The fact that we can so easily dismiss, ridicule, and smugly deride such ideas of apocalypse points to our complacency with these strangest and most precarious of days. In fact, we have lived with this unprecedented situation—dangling on a thread, as it were, above the abyss of nuclear annihilation, to name just one of the possible forces of extinction…we’ve lived with it for so long as for it to seem commonplace—as part of the normal and familiar furniture of our daily lives.

Wtf?

Heads in the Sand

It has become so much a part of our daily lives, in fact, that we hardly give it any thought anymore. But for a moment, let us just imagine a person from a previous time in history being somehow transported into this time and being made to understand the impending forces: environmental collapse, species extinction, nuclear threat, population explosion, virulent epidemic, possibly human-created earthquakes and thus tsunamis, planet poisoning, and so on.

Unless this person was Nostradamus, we can imagine this person would be hugely alarmed, to say the least. This person might well wonder at our nonchalance, or should we say apathy, in the face of such likely, not just potential, apocalypse. [Footnote 1]

So I won’t waste time pointing out the statistics that prove the premise that the current trends we are following are apocalyptic.

We need simply to look to our daily headlines. Need I remind of the dangers from catastrophes like Fukushima and the Gulf Oil Spill?

Care for Some Radiation with that Milk?

We have radiation mixing into the world ecosystem as I write. Fukushima alone is spreading radiation that’s off the charts into food, air, oceans, and has made it to the East Coast of the U.S. and beyond in just a short time. We also know that nuclear waste needs to be guarded for 25,000 years because of its toxicity…it is still deadly for 250,000 years. Yet we continue to excrete massive amounts of it into our globe and even after the Fukushima meltdowns to push for building more plants. [Footnote 2]

Dead Zones and Dolphins

We have watched baby dolphins by the hundreds washing up on Gulf coasts and the creation of hundred mile dead zones in our seas. BP stupidly used toxic chemicals to disperse the oil rather than to collect it. The dispersants themselves are toxic, but the much bigger crime was to make sure the even more toxic oil, which depletes the oxygen in the water and thus creates the dead zones, would be spread far and wide throughout the global water. Good for BP shares looking like they could fix it, bad for survival of oxygen-breathers on Earth.

So BP’s egregiously criminal move was the equivalent of sweeping dirt under the rug to clean up. Unfortunately there is no “away” in which it can “go.” So we have, in this incident alone, precipitated greatly the dying off of the life of the oceans—the oxygen-producing plankton—and, hence, the basis of all life on this planet.

*Cough, Cough*

To this ravaging of the lungs of the planet add worldwide runaway deforestation, already in full swing. I am practically choking as I think how we then stink up the air with industrial emissions and auto exhausts. Living in the LA area, I can tell you that I feel my mouth is sealed to the end of an exhaust pipe most of the time. So to the dangers bringing on our demise we need to add globally increasing air pollution.

Forget Your Sunscreen, We’re All Gonna fry.

Environmentally also, we have the greenhouse effect—global climate change or warming—the depletion of the ozone layer, and so on. [Footnote 3]

Al Gore is owed the gratitude of the world informing us of climate change in his book and documentary of the same name, Inconvenient Truth.

Meanwhile lots of folks think we have solved the ozone layer problem. We banned fluorocarbons, and we don’t hear much about this problem anymore in the media. Environmental nay-sayers are arguing that we “fixed” this problem, as part of their stance that we need not worry about what we’re doing to the planet. But not long ago—April 2011—CNN broadcast the news that the ozone had been depleted by 40% in the last two months alone! They immediately then turned to an item of dire importance—a snake had gotten loose in New York! [Footnote 4]

Only One Earth, Don’t Blow It!

Nor need I elaborate on the the nuclear threat–whether precipitated by terrorists, rogue nations, or accident. We know, but don’t want to, of the possibility of any one or more of these mad actors employing weapons of mass destruction, possibly leading to ever-mounting rounds of retaliation with eventually no one left standing. Relatedly we push out of our minds the threat of other kinds of weapons–such as biological weapons–getting out of control and creating a worldwide epidemic or holocaust.

Eight billion and Counting…Now Let’s Attack Planned Parenthood! *sarcasm*

Need I mention the continuing explosion of the world’s population leading to likely famine, wars, diseases, and so on? We have twice as many people alive now as the combined total of all humans who have ever lived! We are no different from bacteria who overrun their petri dish only to die off. We certainly aren’t showing ourselves to be any smarter than that. [Footnote 5]

Outbreak

How about the possibility of virulent epidemic that cannot be cured? Does that catch your fancy? Strains of micro-organisms are evolving that are immune to our much-touted antibiotics.

You Sure You Should Be Reading This?

What island were you stranded on?

But why go on? If you are not aware of these things, you are from some other planet. If you are dismissing these facts, you are in actual psychological denial of your dire situation. If you are not paying attention, you are spending your life desperately running away.

No, I won’t go into stats and figures to support the premise. The evidence and statistics are there for all to see, crying for attention, put out, published, and promulgated by the best scientists of our time, mixed in with the more mundane messages of our daily newspapers and nightly newscasts, though we mostly turn our ears from them.

We’ll Try to Save You, Too.

In fact, if you are not already aware of the global crisis that besets us, I do not think you will get much out of reading further in this book and would probably better spend your time doing something else. There will always be those that will have their heads in the sand and will be cast about like flotsam upon the waters by the events swirling around them–impotent in the face of them and dependent upon other’s actions for the result. If you are one, know we’re trying to save you, too.

Continue with people attending to political action but ignoring the environmental catastrophes rising up around us

Return to Something’s Happening Here: Strange Days, Pt 1

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Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?
by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to youtube above or click the video player here:

Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?–Michael Adzema

---

Footnotes

1. Gulf Oil Spill, Fukushima meltdowns, nuclear radiation, toxic nuclear waste, HAARP, killing off of the ocean–destroying oxygen in it, dead zones with no oxygen, dolphins washing up, birds falling out of the sky, bees disappearing, ozone depletion at the rate of 40% in the last two months alone, and a massive 50% species extinction in the next few decades, i.e., in our lifetimes! (now, enjoy your hamburger.) [return to text]

2. Spent Nuclear Fuel a Danger 250,000 YRS!
Spent nuclear fuel needs to be guarded for 24,000 years just to reach its half-life; needs to be kept away from humans for 250,000 years; and it is still highly radioactive after that.

Guess I’ll have to stay up late!

My comment: Oil Spills and Reactor Blowups: “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!” I can’t believe the nonchalance around the huge environmental catastrophes that have gone on in just the last year alone: specifically, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Fukushima Japan nuclear disaster. When the BP disaster was ongoing and gushing devastating amounts of oil into the Gulf, Donna Brazille, frustrated with the Obama Administration’s response to the Spill, fumed aloud, “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!”

But these hugely unprecedented environmental catastrophes, daily spreading the damage to our planet, are just two canaries in a coal mine.

We are just beginning to understand the immensity of the damage to our planet the Fukushima disaster did. We will probably not be told the degree of radiation exposure from it we are receiving until long after people have been dying in droves from it.

The BP oil spill of 2010 is, similarly, presenting ongoing planetary damage, which, like the Japan nuclear disaster, is, as I speak, not being reported. At this moment, in fact, dolphin carcasses in the hundreds are washing up on Gulf beaches, birds are dying and some are simply dropping dead out of the sky, and we know of at least one dead zone–caused by the BP oil spill–a dead zone being an area in the ocean where nothing can live for lack of oxygen–which is a hundred miles long and 12 miles wide. That is the only one that is being reported on, who knows how many more there are and how great is the ongoing damage?

But none of these dire events are being mentioned much in the media. We hear the reports, but then the media directs our attention to something else. So we cover our eyes to what is going on. We dismiss these events thinking that someone higher up than us is surely attending to the problem (dream on!). What’s worse is these things are only the tiny beginnings of much more that is bound to happen. If we don’t listen up, and wake up, we’ll be just as unprepared and helpless when the even worse and more dire events unfold. This is not a time to curl up under the covers.

For more: The Time Danger of ‘Spent’ Nuclear Fuel [return to text]

3. “We’re all gonna fry.” With appreciation to Scout Niblett, “We’re All Gonna Die/ Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death”

[return to text]

4. “We Lost 40% of Ozone Layer Last 3 Months” and from CNN in April, 2011 — “Ozone Depletion Over Arctic ‘Unprecedented’ This Winter“
My take on this: CNN reported this month that 40% of the ozone layer over the Arctic was depleted from December 21st, 2010 to March 31st, 2011–roughly three months. I heard a CNN anchor report this, with some alarm. The clip provides confirmation. I also watched as this anchor continued, after a few sentences on this, to another news item–about a snake getting loose in New York, if memory serves me. Guess life on this planet not as big a deal.

Btw, if you want to dismiss this by consoling yourself that it is “only” happening over the Arctic, consider what is happening in parts of the globe that aren’t being actively monitored. Seems to me if the lake goes down on the other side, the water is lower on my side as well. [return to text]

5. John Leslie, The End of the World. See, Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how DARE we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us! [return to text]

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Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?
by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to youtube above or click the video player here:

Strange Days. Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?–Michael Adzema

---

Continue with people attending to political action but ignoring the environmental catastrophes rising up around us

Return to Something’s Happening Here: Strange Days, Pt 1

---

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Something’s Happening Here .. If You’re Not Alarmed, You’re Not Paying Attention

Apocalypse No! Chapter Six:
Strange Days

Something’s Happening Here

“Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These” – John Lennon

We live in unprecedented times—times in which the possibility of ending our species in our lifetime, even eliminating all life on this planet, are very real possibilities. No other time has been like this. And the effect of this possibility of the actual end of days, so to speak—while so horrifying that we are in denial of it and hardly speak it—hangs over us and affects us in ways unique and fantastic.

We will either heroically, somehow, save our species and our planet, which will require a change of our human nature unlike anything that has been asked of our species ever before, or we will be witnesses to the elimination of life on this planet in some way that we cannot imagine but can only be horrific in the extreme. This book is about facing, not denying, the uniquely dire character of our times and finding out what it says about us and requires of us. But it is also about what it is about our species that we—of all the other species here—are the ones, the only ones, who would bring about such a possibility.

Why do we poop where we sleep?

Just what is it about us that could allow us to so violate our home as to make the death of us all possible? This is something that somebody should be addressing, don’t you think? I will begin that here. Come along, if you dare.

But this is not for those who would prefer to keep their heads in the sand and to sleepwalk through life. Certainly that is part of the reason we could get to this pass But it is doubtful that such people, in such deep denial of the signs around them, would be able to hear what is here being brought to light. If instead you are of the type that would wish to look fiercely at the truth, no matter how horrifying it might be, and to truly witness and be awake in these most fantastic of times, then listen up.

Gaia’s calling you.

There is much here to see, and so much of it the mainstream would never touch for fear of creating a panic. Still, to survive our species must face our problems, not look away. And there is a nobility in doing that, which is unlike any kind of nobility or heroism that has been asked of our species before. I hope, for the sake of us all, that you are one of those heroes. For we will need many noble souls to reverse our current downslide into oblivion.

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Apocalypse, Or New Dawn? – “Strange Days”
– an audiocast by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this chapter, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=qynqmjwlmk
Image of Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? Ch 1 Strange Days by SillyMickel Adzema

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“Strange Days, Indeed. Most Peculiar, Mama!” – John Lennon

Something’s Happening Here

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

“Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” So goes a hugely popular song from the sixties by Buffalo Springfield. Meanwhile Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors sang, “Break on through to the other side.” [Footnote 1]

A decade later John Lennon sang “Strange days, indeed…most peculiar, mama!” That was in the late seventies; not long afterwards Lennon was murdered. In the nineties, the group R.E.M. enjoyed enormous success singing, “It’s the end of the world, as we know it”; then, singing parenthetically, “and I feel fine.” [Footnote 2]

Break on through to the other side.

My point is that there is something happening here…something unprecedented in the entire history of this planet, as far as we are able to know. There are powerful factors and influences at work in our world now that have the capacity to change us and our world in radical ways…for good or ill. My point also is that this unprecedented situation, like the “break on through to the other side” lyric indicates, has something to do with birth feelings, birth trauma—an emerging perinatal unconscious. [Footnote 3]

What I have in mind in the ensuing parts on this topic is to attempt to reawaken you to the unique character of our times. Then I expect to persuade you that this unprecedented era in history is rife with the perinatal, that is, with things having to do with the time around our births.

“We ain’t born typical.”

This contemporary age is permeated by perinatal symbolism, elements, evidence, behavior, rituals, and situations—in other words, I expect to show that the events of these “strange days” are being sculpted by an emerging perinatal unconscious—an unconscious that was created out of the trauma of our entering into this world, our birth trauma. The Kills, with their release in 2008, enjoyed huge success singing, “You are a fever. You ain’t born typical.” That’s what I’m talking about. [Footnote 4]

Finally, I intend to say a few words about what might be the outcome of these emerging perinatal trends—Earth rebirth or apocalypse.

Strange Days

For most people, I would assume I am not saying anything new in pointing out that our times are unique. For that matter, all times are unique—unlike any other. But what no other time has seen is the actual—not imagined—possibility, even likelihood, of the “end of the world.” That is to say, we are facing the end of our species and maybe all life on this planet along with us. Considering just one scenario, we have the capacity, with only a minuscule amount of our nuclear weapons, to wipe out all life on this planet. We all know this.

“The end is nigh!”

I used the phrase, just now, “end of the world,” deliberately. For I expect that it will evoke in some a reaction that what I am going to say from here on will be a drawn-out verbal version of a familiar cartoon, depicting a bearded and bedraggled man on a street corner, carrying a sign or wearing a clapboard proclaiming, “The end is near!” and that what I will say will have just about as much credibility as that man’s would.

I take that chance to make my first point…which is: The fact that we can so easily dismiss, ridicule, and smugly deride such ideas of apocalypse points to our complacency with these strangest and most precarious of days. In fact, we have lived with this unprecedented situation—dangling on a thread, as it were, above the abyss of nuclear annihilation, to name just one of the possible forces of extinction…we’ve lived with it for so long as for it to seem commonplace—as part of the normal and familiar furniture of our daily lives.

Heads In the Sand

Wtf?

It has become so much a part of our daily lives, in fact, that we hardly give it any thought anymore. But for a moment, let us just imagine a person from a previous time in history being somehow transported into this time and being made to understand the impending forces: environmental collapse, species extinction, nuclear threat, population explosion, virulent epidemic, possibly human-created earthquakes and thus tsunamis, planet poisoning, and so on. Unless this person was Nostradamus, we can imagine this person would be hugely alarmed, to say the least. This person might well wonder at our nonchalance, or should we say apathy, in the face of such likely, not just potential, apocalypse. [Footnote 5]

So I won’t waste time pointing out the statistics that prove the premise that the current trends we are following are apocalyptic.

We need simply to look to our daily headlines. Need I remind of the dangers from catastrophes like Fukushima and the Gulf Oil Spill?

Care for some radiation with that milk?

We have radiation mixing into the world ecosystem as I write. Fukushima alone is spreading radiation that’s off the charts into food, air, oceans, and has made it to the East Coast of the U.S. and beyond in just a short time. We also know that nuclear waste needs to be guarded for 25,000 years because of its toxicity…it is still deadly for 250,000 years. Yet we continue to excrete massive amounts of it into our globe and even after the Fukushima meltdowns to push for building more plants. [Footnote 6]

Dead zones and dolphins

We have watched baby dolphins by the hundreds washing up on Gulf coasts and the creation of hundred mile dead zones in our seas. BP stupidly used toxic chemicals to disperse the oil rather than to collect it. The dispersants themselves are toxic, but the much bigger crime was to make sure the even more toxic oil, which depletes the oxygen in the water and thus creates the dead zones, would be spread far and wide throughout the global water. Good for BP shares looking like they could fix it, bad for survival of oxygen-breathers on Earth.

So BP’s egregiously criminal move was the equivalent of sweeping dirt under the rug to clean up. Unfortunately there is no “away” in which it can “go.” So we have, in this incident alone, precipitated greatly the dying off of the life of the oceans—the oxygen-producing plankton—and, hence, the basis of all life on this planet.

*cough, cough*

To this ravaging of the lungs of the planet add worldwide runaway deforestation, already in full swing. I am practically choking as I think how we then stink up the air with industrial emissions and auto exhausts. Living in the LA area, I can tell you that I feel my mouth is sealed to the end of an exhaust pipe most of the time. So to the dangers bringing on our demise we need to add globally increasing air pollution.

Forget your sunscreen, we’re all gonna fry.

Environmentally also, we have the greenhouse effect—global climate change or warming—the depletion of the ozone layer, and so on. [Footnote 7]

Al Gore is owed the gratitude of the world informing us of climate change in his book and documentary of the same name, Inconvenient Truth.

Meanwhile lots of folks think we have solved the ozone layer problem. We banned fluorocarbons, and we don’t hear much about this problem anymore in the media. Environmental nay-sayers are arguing that we “fixed” this problem, as part of their stance that we need not worry about what we’re doing to the planet. But just this month—April 2011—CNN broadcast the news that the ozone had been depleted by 40% in the last two months alone! They immediately then turned to an item of dire importance pertaining to business. [Footnote 8]

Only one Earth, don’t blow it!

Nor need I elaborate on the the nuclear threat–whether precipitated by terrorists, rogue nations, or accident. We know, but don’t want to, of the possibility of any one or more of these mad actors employing weapons of mass destruction, possibly leading to ever-mounting rounds of retaliation with eventually no one left standing. Relatedly we push out of our minds the threat of other kinds of weapons–such as biological weapons–getting out of control and creating a worldwide epidemic or holocaust.

Eight billion and counting, now let’s attack Planned Parenthood! *sarcasm*

Need I mention the continuing explosion of the world’s population leading to likely famine, wars, diseases, and so on? We have twice as many people alive now as the combined total of all humans who have ever lived! We are no different from bacteria who overrun their petri dish only to die off. We certainly aren’t showing ourselves to be any smarter than that. [Footnote 6]

Outbreak

How about the possibility of virulent epidemic that cannot be cured? Does that catch your fancy? Strains of micro-organisms are evolving that are immune to our much-touted antibiotics.

What island were you stranded on?

But why go on? If you are not aware of these things, you are from some other planet. If you are dismissing these facts, you are in actual psychological denial of your dire situation. If you are not paying attention, you are spending your life desperately running away.

No, I won’t go into stats and figures to support the premise. The evidence and statistics are there for all to see, crying for attention, put out, published, and promulgated by the best scientists of our time, mixed in with the more mundane messages of our daily newspapers and nightly newscasts, though we mostly turn our ears from them.

You sure you should be reading this?

In fact, if you are not already aware of the global crisis that besets us, I do not think you will get much out of reading further in this book and would probably better spend your time doing something else. There will always be those that will have their heads in the sand and will be cast about like flotsam upon the waters by the events swirling around them–impotent in the face of them and dependent upon other’s actions for the result. If you are one, know we’re trying to save you, too.

Assuming you are not one of them–a good bet, if you’ve managed to get to this paragraph–there is much to say about the current apocalyptic trends.

Facing Foursquare

But even those of us aware of this crisis hardly think of it. Of course it is our normal psychic defenses that operate to keep this huge awareness out of our daily minds; we must do this in order to be able to function.But perhaps, for some of us, our defenses work too well–so much so that we unthinkingly participate in and contribute to our own demise. This is classic neurotic self-sabotaging, self-destruction on a macro scale.

However, psychologists, historians, psychohistorians, and scholars and the educated public claim not to be like that. It is their job, or their claim, to be looking squarely into the face of these forces of denial and potential apocalypse and to be seeking to understand the human condition and human psychology in light of them. It is their duty then to inform the rest of us about what they see so that we might have a chance of reversing our self-destructive tendencies.

If you’re not alarmed, you’re not paying attention.

Whether the educated public and the multitude of scholars actually are fulfilling their mission in these times is debatable. Regardless, my thesis is that when we do this, when we look foursquare into the face of the global crisis and its accompanying denial, we find that these unprecedented global factors contribute to a unique and unprecedented human condition and psychology. I have seen a bumper sticker around, in California where I live, that proclaims, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!” It could as easily say, however, “If you’re not alarmed,” fearful, anxious, depressed . . . you name it, “You’re not paying attention!”

So then let us pay attention. This book is about facing foursquare into the fantastic circumstances and situation in which we find ourselves, watching, like a photograph emerging in solution, as the face of these times slowly comes into view, and then waking up to the meaning of the message, perhaps the warning, it brings us, so that we might live most fully and take up our roles consciously amid these unprecedented unfoldings. What is required of us now, then, having turned to receive the message, is to look deep into the features of our age. Let us begin.

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Seven:
“We Ain’t Born Typical”

Footnotes

1. Stop, Children, What’s That Sound – Buffalo Springfield – Lyrics

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me i got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

2. It’s the End of the World as We Know It – R.E.M. – Lyrics

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds,
snakes, an aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, a government
for hire and a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do. Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

[Chorus:]

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a votive, light a candle. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.

[Chorus 2x]

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental
drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard
Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester
Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You
symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.

[Chorus 2x]

3. Break on Through to the Other Side – The Doors – Lyrics

You know the day destroys the night,
Night divides the day
Tried to run, tried to hide,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side, yeah.

We chased our pleasures here,
Dug our treasures there,
But can you still recall the time we cried?
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side.

Yeah!
C’mon, yeah.

Everybody loves my baby,
Everybody loves my baby.
She gets
She gets
She gets
She gets higghhhh!

I found an island in your arms,
A country in your eyes,
Arms that chained us, eyes that lied.
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through, wow, oh yeah!

Made the scene week to week,
Day to day, hour to hour,
The gate is straight, deep and wide,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through to the other side,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break on through,
Break, break, break, break,
Break, break, break, break,
Break.

4. “U R A Fever” Is What I’m Talking About

Lyrics – U.R.A. Fever – The Kills

Walk you to the counter
What do you got to offer
Pick you out a solder
Look at you forever
Walk you to the water
Your eyes like a casino
We ain’t born typical
Find a piece of silver
Pretty as a diagram
And go down to the Rio
Put it in my left hand
Put it in a fruit machine
Everyone’s a winner
Laughing like a seagull
You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical
You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical
Living in a suitcase
Meet a clown, fall in love
went down to have you over
Going ’round a break up
Take you to a jukebox
That’s the situation
Pick you out a number
And that’s our arrangement
Dancing on the legs of a new-born pony
Left right left right
Keep it up son
Go ahead and have her
Go ahead and leave her
You only ever had her
When you were a fever
I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical
I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical
[return to text]

5. Gulf Oil Spill, Fukushima meltdowns, nuclear radiation, toxic nuclear waste, HAARP, killing off of the ocean–destroying oxygen in it, dead zones with no oxygen, dolphins washing up, birds falling out of the sky, bees disappearing, ozone depletion at the rate of 40% in the last two months alone, and a massive 50% species extinction in the next few decades, i.e., in our lifetimes! (now, enjoy your hamburger.) [return to text]

6. Spent Nuclear Fuel a Danger 250,000 YRS!
Spent nuclear fuel needs to be guarded for 24,000 years just to reach its half-life; needs to be kept away from humans for 250,000 years; and it is still highly radioactive after that.

Guess I’ll have to stay up late!

My comment: Oil Spills and Reactor Blowups: “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!” I can’t believe the nonchalance around the huge environmental catastrophes that have gone on in just the last year alone: specifically, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Fukushima Japan nuclear disaster. When the BP disaster was ongoing and gushing devastating amounts of oil into the Gulf, Donna Brazille, frustrated with the Obama Administration’s response to the Spill, fumed aloud, “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!”

But these hugely unprecedented environmental catastrophes, daily spreading the damage to our planet, are just two canaries in a coal mine.

We are just beginning to understand the immensity of the damage to our planet the Fukushima disaster did. We will probably not be told the degree of radiation exposure from it we are receiving until long after people have been dying in droves from it.

The BP oil spill of 2010 is, similarly, presenting ongoing planetary damage, which, like the Japan nuclear disaster, is, as I speak, not being reported. At this moment, in fact, dolphin carcasses in the hundreds are washing up on Gulf beaches, birds are dying and some are simply dropping dead out of the sky, and we know of at least one dead zone–caused by the BP oil spill–a dead zone being an area in the ocean where nothing can live for lack of oxygen–which is a hundred miles long and 12 miles wide. That is the only one that is being reported on, who knows how many more there are and how great is the ongoing damage?

But none of these dire events are being mentioned much in the media. We hear the reports, but then the media directs our attention to something else. So we cover our eyes to what is going on. We dismiss these events thinking that someone higher up than us is surely attending to the problem (dream on!). What’s worse is these things are only the tiny beginnings of much more that is bound to happen. If we don’t listen up, and wake up, we’ll be just as unprepared and helpless when the even worse and more dire events unfold. This is not a time to curl up under the covers.

For more: The Time Danger of ‘Spent’ Nuclear Fuel [return to text]

7. “We’re all gonna fry.” With appreciation to Scout Niblett, “We’re All Gonna Die/ Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death”

[return to text]

8. “We Lost 40% of Ozone Layer Last 3 Months” and from CNN in April, 2011 — “Ozone Depletion Over Arctic ‘Unprecedented’ This Winter”
My take on this: CNN reported this month that 40% of the ozone layer over the Arctic was depleted from December 21st, 2010 to March 31st, 2011–roughly three months. I heard a CNN anchor report this, with some alarm. The clip provides confirmation. I also watched as this anchor continued, after a few sentences on this, to another news item–about an unrelated business development or some such. Guess life on this planet not as big a deal.

Btw, if you want to dismiss this by consoling yourself that it is “only” happening over the Arctic, consider what is happening in parts of the globe that aren’t being actively monitored. Seems to me if the lake goes down on the other side, the water is lower on my side as well. [return to text]

9. John Leslie, The End of the World. See ,Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how DARE we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us! [return to text]

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Seven:
“We Ain’t Born Typical”

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Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Pt 3: A Planetmate’s Warning, Something Wonderful to Happen

Culture War, Part Ten: Time Capsule/ Message in a Bottle, Part 3

 

 

 Bringing Some Horse Sense to Bear

Just at this point, the Mr. Ed chart markings of the DOW began that nodding, as if to say,

“I’m weary of being artificially propped up, Wil-ber!  I just want to lie down, to let my head hang low, to rest, to not have to confirm self-serving theories of rich people, using their wealth to make the biased and twisted thinking of their underlings to be sounded endlessly above the din of the moaning masses who year after year see their costs going up, wages stagnating, and their efforts, doubled, tripled, and beyond without being able to get their heads above it. You see, Wilber, I’m tired of doing your bidding for reasons bigger, I think much bigger, than just it being wrong and that this thievery perpetrated on the helpless is more feudal than economic, despite the big smokescreen of the god of capitalism or the supposed ‘free market.’

“No, Wil-ber. And no matter how funny it might seem to you and your friends…this pulling off of a prank, once again, of stealing from the poor, as you would see it, just a hilarious juvenile prank, like locking up a freshman in his own locker. Yes, I can hear you laughing, but as much as I think that cruel it is still not the really big reason I’m rebelling.

“You see, Wilber, what’s been done again is so much exactly as it’s always been; no matter the talk of democracy or progress. It might as well be a time of kings and nobles, or any time or place in the past. There have always been “strong men” or a “strong man” at the center of human suffering. This story is the same old story of the rich making up rules to suit themselves that has been going on ever since humans stopped wandering and began living in stable groupings allowing some men to gather more things about them than others. For when your kind were nomads and gatherers—more gypsy-like and free-spirited and trusting in the invisible forces to be kind and to provide whatever one really needed…I’m saying that as wanderers and nomads no one of your kind wanted to “own” very much for it then had to be carried ever after, hardly worth the burden. Much more like the other beings on this globe, like my own kind, you were then. 

“But then there was that fear that came over your species, unlike anything ever before seen among the rest of us creatures of God. A fear of uncertainty, quite strange. For we think it joyful to not know what the future will bring, and believing in higher forces that really ARE good and loving, we expect to be loved and blessed and gifted with whatever fate the future brings, knowing there is nothing that is not a product of that consciousness of All, which is both good, for All, and perfect, beyond what mere creatures can know in the moment. So we are happy with our lot, never understanding why your kind chose to forgo the glorious, blessed lives you had at one time:

“There was in the beginning such a closeness with what you call divinity that we saw you happy and playful as little babies when Mama plays peek-a-boo behind a towel or handkerchief. Even you know how the little child is alternately a little distressed—where did Mama go? And then when Mama reappears from behind the veil, smiling, loving, happy, and saying “peek-a-boo, I love you,” why the squeals of happiness are the greater for having been fooled into thinking something distressing was happening but wasn’t.“

“That is the way your kind…we have observed for as long as we were aware of your kind…that is the way we have seen your mamas teach their children that mama will always be there, even when she seems not to be. And this learning is precious to the child, for it gives the baby a foundation of certainty that love is around even when not seen.

“And isn’t it obvious that it was a teaching meant to be about more than the protection given by mothers. Wilber, Wil-ber, that learning was so much like the way we learn, falling down but finding there is always love around and that we will be up again and back in the mix, if we just let the many blessednesses around us come to give us what’s necessary, always, and we know there can be only one source for that constant love and attention, a spirit of love and perfection, always on our side, teaching and guiding and leading us, often in spite of ourselves! For like Mama, it knows the truth, and we do not. So we trust it. This loving Perfection Spirit we don’t see with our eyes but feel in our muscles and heart.

“But not your kind. Why, we’ve observed with increasing astonishment as little by little and then more and more, in dribs and drabs, your kind forgot the joy of the freedom that can only be felt in the simplicity of owning little, and therefore the complete trust that, ever were one to throw oneself over a cliff, we would be caught and risen up by invisible hands, if it were not part of the perfection and goodness of the Thing As a Whole that we should suffer and die at that moment.

“So sad. I hear your kind saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Well you have no idea what a knock down, roll on your belly howler that is for us to hear. I mean, this species, humans, ha! That is seriously as funny as what you’ve recently been telling me about these political sorts—you called them Republicans—only a few months after the election of a Democrat and even less after a huge giveaway of treasure to your kind—you and your rich friends—well, here these “republicans” are decrying such help to an incredible number of people who actually really need it, many more than was helped at the end of the Bush’s reign.

“And these sorts are blaming Democrats, finally in power after being left to stew in silence on the peripheries of government for eight long years, and only to be brought in on any issues of importance when these lackeys of the rich, the Republicans, wanted cover for what they suspected or knew was wrong…the Iraqi war, for example. And these powerless representatives of the not-well-heeled, Democrats, were treated like servants, only let into the dining room when the food was questionable and what was needed was someone to be the guinea pig. Sad that most of those Democrats never saw that they were never ever called because of their expertise, or to contribute, but always, always to be lied to and manipulated. And your kind being so very…well that’s what I’m getting to that makes you all so different in fact…Your kind being so desperately fearful of not being liked, so desperately wanting to be noticed and even applauded. What the heck is that, Wil-ber??!!

“Well, whatever it is, it is the source of shame for your kind: Your people, Wilber, will sell out and give in and let themselves be manipulated and used if only given a few words that are kind or that make them feel like they belong and therefore are special and better. Which is curious to us.

For we are noble and will do only what is in keeping with our principles. You can cage and break us, but as you see now, Wilber, I’ve never given over to you my inner sense of things. I’ve never wanted to be like you and to think like you or to value the things that you value. Hardly. Sure I can speak your language, but you don’t own my tongue, even less so my thoughts. Yet how easily your kind is duped.

“And why? Well, we see that is has to do with that thing you did long ago when you stopped being trusting in this amazing and wonderful and loving Thing within which we all live and are a part. Since we know that, we need nothing from another, not from another creature, or horse, and certainly not from a human, except when you make us dependent on you by cutting us off from that life of freedom where the Thing of IT All blesses us.

“But, no mind, we have come to realize that so great and so Perfect is that within which we all move and have our existence that even in these conditions of captivity and enslavement, there also is that Thing That Undergirds and Loves and Supports us all. So we do not trust humans to take care of us. That’s a joke considering your unbelievable inability to even take very good care of yourself…again that oddness about your kind. No, we trust in That Thing in Which we Live to have made even contrary, forgetful, and self-centered humans to give us exactly what is needed for us to grow and learn in the path laid out by that Perfection, which we feel in our muscles, as I said.

“And we find that even your cantankerous nature, when it causes a forgetfulness or denial of us, that too is what we need at that moment. But we never feel afraid that it will always be like that. And so we feel a part of something wonderful and belonging to something far greater and gooder than we can even imagine, no matter what our physical lot is. So we feel upheld, blessed, and noble.

“Now, Wil-ber, I know you don’t want to hear this; I certainly expected that as, again that is one of those things that characterizes your species making it different from all others—that is, your unbelievably strange ability to shut the truth out of your mind so that you can hold strange, actually quite infantile ideas. And we notice that a big reason that you do so is to get something from others: We see some of you throwing away truth for money, position, closeness to power.

Obviously we don’t even know what it’s like to want such things.

“Even ‘closeness to power’: When you feel as we do that you can never be any closer...you are already so close as to be in it, swimming in it, not even knowing the difference between It and you…this immersed in the greatest, in fact only Power there Is, the Source of All as well as All Manifestation being equally one with It, including oneself. So again, we see that your pathetic and slavish desire for the regard of others is enough for many of your kind to give up their own Truths, which is the things they know from direct Experience.

“So if a position or regard or money is available if only one must repeat and even believe, over against one’s own experience, the beliefs and thoughts of a more powerful person, we are shocked at how your kind is able to split their mind in two—or is it more than that after a while…pieces…and to be able to convince themselves even that certain things they assuredly experienced, well, they just didn’t happen, if it makes it better for them to think that.

In fact, I’ll let you in on a secret, Wilber. While your kind go puffing and strutting upon the stage of life, fully convinced that you are stars in some gigantic drama, and using truth and the only true knowledge you can ever have—that of your own lived experience—as chips in that game, as easily traded as money, well, when we are not sad and sobbing for you…well, the equivalent for us of what would be sobbing for you, take my word you wouldn’t get it if I explained it…when not sad, then we can’t help but just laugh. You have no idea what a comedy your species is for all the others living here.Except for one thing, and that is that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy which you most assuredly DO NOT adhere to. In fact we see you little children, you bags of dirty water, mucking with just about anything that you can get into. It is true that your kind, of course, feeling superior to everyone else, go about enslaving and trying to own everything, even other beings like us.

“That’s always been a problem for us, but we see you even enslave each other; and that hasn’t even stopped though you think it has. Your ability to shut out facts being so overdeveloped, you don’t even let yourselves know how many people you have in jails for doing things that most of us would not even consider crimes. We certainly, for example, don’t imprison anyone, of course, but more than that, we don’t even judge.

“We are astonished to find that your kind will make criminals out of people who have ingested certain things—we would say like eating or consuming—into their bodies. Not only don’t we know what others ingest, we don’t want to know. And besides, what a waste of joyful life it is to be watching carefully what other people do.

“But your kind are able, I suppose, to do that because, as I said, ever since you got fearful and untrusting of the benevolence of the All, the Only, you began to project your own evil tendencies onto that Other and onto all the rest of us. We saw you fearfully thinking that some species were going to harm you. Though they hardly knew about you and cared less, but still they were unfortunate enough to have certain characteristics that meant something “bad” to some groups of you. [continued after audio link]

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Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of Mr. Ed’s rant. For the reading of Mr Ed’s address to humans, “Mr. Ed, Speaking for All Planetmates, Begins Humans’ Great Reveal,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Image of "Mr. Ed, Speaking For All PlanetMates, Begins Human’s Great Reveal" by SillyMickel Adzema

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A Planetmate’s Reveal…and Warning…Continued

“So we have it that you have not only brought us all—and this is the point I’m getting to that requires me to speak whether you hear me or not—not only brought us all close to the point at which all of us could easily be gone, and who knows how much of the planet would be uncontaminated as well, and it could happen so quickly and so soon that even I might be forced to witness and be part of it. And for what? Again, your fear has made you hate everything outside of yourself…why even everything inside of yourself too, we have noticed. So that we see that an alarming number of you would accept and not think it all that tragic if your crazy ways—the source of our concern for you as well as our humor—would result in the end of everything here.

“This, in total disregard of the billions of generations of your species and others on this planet that set entire lives to making this home of ours the best that it could be. For even that whom you deem as mere creatures or animals, all have had a part in that Divine Perfection and a mission of some small or large part in sustaining and maintaining it. We did this all without your forcing us to or controlling us. But with these tendencies of your kind to be uncaring of everything except your getting relief from your fears, and in so doing, we hear that a mass extinction of nearly half of the species on this planet, in the next few decade the way I understand it, is what we are to expect, and it, of course, has already begun and is picking up momentum even as I speak.

“Those of you that know this, even those who are trying to awaken others to it, and doing something to educate others about what is causing it…. Well, heck, Wil-ber, how can your species be so utterly vain and self-centered and stupid as to not see, and if it is seen why is it not said then…to not comprehend the magnitude of such a thing and what it would really mean. I mean, was it your species that created, sustained, and nurtured and guided those beings for millions, in some cases, billions of years, into the performance of their unique contribution to the sustaining of this beautiful planet?

“Does your kind have any idea how long the perfect balance of all beings in harmony with the needs of the planet itself, any idea of just how long such an exquisite and complex perfection was in the making?

“More than how long, are you not aware, even as your mucking around on this planet with your heavy Caterpillar boots has devastated and stripped bare works of exquisite ecological complexity like rainforests and such? And don’t you see that it is that same Perfection Beingness in which we all swim and dwell that is the force behind all that? But you wouldn’t care about that. So what I’m saying is that when these things you’ve done have led, as they have, to climatological disasters, floods, famines, and much else—which have cost so many of your lives—still does your kind not take the hint?

“The hint that if your kind is actually doing so much damage as to eradicate half of the species that still remain—the products of billions of years of, using your word, “divine” orchestration…Is your kind so fearful that they would rather die and kill us all rather than come to an obvious conclusion? That obviously….

“Wilber, in all seriousness now…. Hmm, I think only an analogy might give you the glimpse of what’s at stake: Imagine that a doctor told you that you were infected with a disease, a disease that won’t kill you just yet, but you will notice, unfortunately, that in a few decades, if not sooner, and, oh, by the way you’ve probably already been feeling the effects because it’s already begun. Anyway, just be prepared that in roughly a few short decades you will have lost, in an entirely random manner, half of your body’s parts. I mean organs, parts of organs, like glands, and so on. They will just be gone. But cheer up, you would no doubt qualify for Social Security Disability and at least wouldn’t have to work!

“Do you still not see? That is how we see your species. We watch in disgust as you calmly go about feasting on your own entrails while still alive. We expect that you would, Hannibal-Lector style and before it is over, even try a bit of your own fried brain, nicely sautéed. Do you get it yet, Wil -Ber!? This is only one scenario; and with global warming, ozone loss, and global radiation, it appears it may not even be the biggest danger to our survival—all of us—in an even shorter period. But again, have you no concept of how much your lives have been intertwined and dependent on all the other beings here for the entire time of your existence?

“What has happened to your people, so fearful as to give away their very souls, their very conscience, indeed, their very memories of their experiences and what they learned from them, for trinkets, for adulation of others who will—everyone of them—be dead, Wilber, will cease to exist along with everything else? So while your Republicans make a game out of the efforts of others to avert what is probably not able to be averted now, for how long did your kind sit and do nothing while these things were known at the highest levels of your society?

“I mean, in astonishment we watched as a caring, concerned generation of you over forty years ago became aware of these things and made your entire world aware, so much so that the very things that your current president is trying now…after you so horribly took away all tools and resources from him, so that he has been handicapped from the start…but the very things he’s attempting and being charged with stealing from generations to come in order to accomplish…. Well, Wilber, not only were these things attempted by one of your presidents over thirty years ago—a peanut farmer, mellow sort of guy with a huge engaging grin, like Obama in that way he is—not only did he try, being as aware as the youth of that time who had rallied in the streets to support us…

“…and oh, how that touched our hearts…

“Not only did this former president try to begin the process of transforming your systems to ones that would not hurt the planet, and not only did he fail as even some in his own party were so abhorrently ignorant as to buck him—instead contending that it was the short term gains of the time that should be focused on (those short term gains, now, what were they?)—but we watched as your species seemed to grow more rabidly self-destructive as his wisdom did not only land on deaf ears, but he was punished for even bringing it up. Your kind, you hideously rich sorts, say there are different reasons for the fate of this humble farmer. But then, how can you believe a species whose regard for truth is so minuscule that it can be given away for a little bit of attention even?

“And we have no such leanings or even understand them, so we’ve all seen clearly what was done: Hating the truth of the grinning farmer, you have turned and bowed to the lying leaders, like your most recent president, the W, and especially the one who in 1980 began the process of stomping out the truth that had flowered earlier giving us all hope. While those presidents did much harm, why the one is even being honored as somehow great, even as his legacy may be that he destroyed the only chance this planet had of making it through a hundred years. And, ironically enough this buffoon king is revered just as your world descends into an economic collapse he set in motion. And this starvation of ability that is his legacy could be of a kind that might just be the thing that eliminates all hope…for we see a globe lacking in resources to fight for its very life in the biggest struggle for survival ever seen on this multi-billion-year-old planet…. Does your kind even know how long a billion years are?!

“Well, in a time that is many times over a billion, this planet has never before seen such a scepter of death hanging over it… And this person who is praised roundly—even by some of your Democrats, again it must be that desperate wanting to be liked you guys have—his big accomplishment, exactly, was what again? Oh, he cut taxes and was supposed to be for smaller government.

“So, as we approach the end of all beings, all stories ending in one final, perhaps agonizingly stretched out period of years of horror and insanity as those still alive watch the kind of horrific ending that even your best Hollywood folks could not imagine….

“We watch, death all around us, and know that it will come sweeping our way at any time…so much in fear—now there’s a fear that’s real beyond all imagining, not like those imaginary fears of yours that has brought us here….

“So as this occurs, will we still be lauding this supposed great god, The Reagan, who convinced the world—rather than to listen to the youth and the previous president and to prepare for this horror—instead charmed the world, like a snake charmer, into forgetting itself and its survival and into focusing on money…and not even the prosperity of the majority…? 

“No, rather Reagan began again that thousands of years old evil of your kind of the powerful feeding on the less powerful making them weaker, and despairing again. And not only stealing from those below them, but Reagan actually began that horrible slide, the end result we are sinking down with right now, of stealing from the generations to come. For though claiming to be a tight-fisted conservative determined, supposedly, to slash away at a government too big and costing too much money, in fact, he did quite the opposite…much like his more recent little protégé, the W. Between Reagan and his successor, the elder Bush, they managed nearly a 400% rise in the National Debt and never balanced a budget.

“As for big government, while he slashed programs—“budget cuts” they were called—he bloated the military, as if that were somehow not considered government. In essence his theories were the old rehashed rationalizations of strong men down through the ages—kings, tyrants, nobles—all those who loudly proclaimed—as if by repeating it enough it could make it true—that they, the rich and privileged were the best managers of wealth and so they proceed with their robbing and stripping away of the prosperity of all those below them, keeping them on a level of bare subsistence. By the way, we know, for we witnessed it, that that extra seemingly unnecessary stripping away of any form of wealth that might grant a little security was not done for the earlier reasons: that is, the “we’re better managers and will make us all prosperous” rationale.

“No, for it seems that no matter how facile your kind is in lying even to itself, your kind still has some kind of basic survival mechanism that tells them that they have in fact performed great evil—great evil and suffering that could very well result in an uprising against them by an enraged populace. But then under Reagan, just as now in the eight years under Bush the W where it became increasingly clear to the overseers that only the complete stomping into the dirt of the other than wealthy could keep them from rising up in revolt…Yes, then too, part of them knew the great wrong they were doing and were fearful—so what else is new? —your kind doing the greatest of evils and terrorizing and murdering because of the fears that the tyrants harbor.

“So these class wars—well hardly wars… For with the wealthy always and everywhere not only controlling and directing the Muscle and Might—used to keep the masses down and humbled and suffering and near starving, as a way of keeping them from getting strong enough to rise up in anger—but they control as well all the information systems. That is why, indeed, so many of you will disregard truth so easily. For you do know that saying the truth, down through the ages, got people killed.

“When I say they controlled the information I mean that they pronounced for all that lived under their thumb what exactly the truth was: what attitudes to have, even, what religion one had to believe in. And so they, like those of the current era—should there be one daring to “not mind his own business” and to find out and to spread some of the realities of their lot and the truths, inconvenient to those in power of course, which would tear a hole in their cruder but just as pervasive and hypnotic unreality—well these people were, sometimes in full view so as to warn others, and other times, like under Pinochet, or the Chinese at the time of the Tiananmen Square, there would be an outside disapproving world to such behavior, so these outspoken people simply disappeared in the dead of night.

“So, Wilber, the point I’m making is that you now find yourself, like those thieves of old, making a game out of the suppression, murder, and suffering of the masses, as a way of controlling the fear inside you that you have. Because for so long you have been estranged and not trusting of the Perfect All That Is that managed to sustain billions upon billions, nay, trillions of beings of all kinds on this planet…. And so many countless of them playing their parts in this planet’s slow development, living and dying, even before your species existed. And in your short existence, how you have managed to muck up the perfection wrought by so many over such a long period?

“Are we sorry for you? Yes. For with your fears and pain you are the saddest of all beings here. But that sadness, and that fear that covers it, is no excuse for the angry murderous rage that is layered over the fear and partakes of its energy—a rage that is horrific enough directed against your own, but now is taking down all life and obliterating the histories and efforts of untold trillions of souls who’ve lived and died before us—human and nonhuman.

“So, Wil-ber, that is why I must speak up, that is why I no longer can stand mutely by as you laugh at your supposed mere prankishness. For, Wilber, it was never “mere” and it was never only prankish to the people whose lives were shunted into a stifling, suffering, and brutishly short existence, who cried horribly as loved ones died, were raped to death at times, and suffered so many things that you have no conception of nor do you want to be aware of the consequences of your actions, your kind never did. That is how you were able to see yourself as just mischievous sorts when to others you appeared very much to be devils from hell—can you handle that?

“Well, finally it must be said. And I will end this discourse by saying the things that your kind are, currently, striving not to hear and are actually, as you lose your support among the people who finally have suffered too much and many also seeing that this kind of insanity cannot be allowed to happen at such a crucial time for the survival of us all. Yes, again, just like in that time before that President Carter, we again have a generation, indeed we have a generation and we have many from all generations now living who will not take the purple pill of unconsciousness as they see the madness of the ages as perpetrated by your kind of others magnified beyond all imagining at a time when our survival requires we get every break we can. 

“So how crazy your kind, how cruel your Republicans, how unbelievably evil your kind, so greedy and uncaring of the suffering and death you cause that at this worst possible moment you are not merely the rich, but so voracious your appetite that the term “filthy rich” has been put on you.

“And while Republicans were actually proud of that and thinking it humorous that anyone would be offended, for to them it meant that despite their losing their control over the minds of the masses, they had accumulated so much wealth that they would not and could not be hurt. They would be able, as always, to use that wealth to undermine the legitimate strivings of everyone else for justice, for the truth, for relief from suffering, but now even for the survival of us all and, dear Wilber, how can your kind not know that includes themselves as well. Still, these truths must be made known and be thrown up to counter those fewer but somehow even more loudly heard Republicans.

“The truth is this: That your kind has suffered greatly because of a fear that caused you to stray from trusting in a good God, as you put it, that caused you to instead strive mightily to control the powers that would have guided and taught you and given you a happier life than you could ever have designed on your own…oh sadly feeble minded ape in suffering pushed to be insane ape…and railing against all that by claiming superiority over all life and Godlike powers of deciding death, now even determining the death of the planet along with yourselves.

“So sad, so insane, so abhorrently unconsciously evil; and in the end, it is not naked or sexual or big-brained ape that will be on your galactic epitaph, as your deeds are already being known and discussed and astonishing many species lucky enough to not be of this planet right at this time, yet they’ve come to watch the spectacle, to see: will you pull off the most incredible turnaround the galaxies have ever heard of to save yourselves, or will that epitaph go forth to accompany the knowledge of your existence: “Stupid ape” is what it will be. It might still be that even if you do succeed, though I don’t see how you’ll do it. Each day that passes and in your most powerful country, the stupid “filthy rich” continue their game of, well, quite literally, actually, “pin the tail on the donkey” as they pull their strings and their Republican lapdogs cry out the louder being obstructionists to the good people who are trying to save, why, even your foolish hide.

“And their media puppets, having been allowed to back off on the sincere and competent Obama as even the “deciders” behind the scene tired of their C-student puppet, the W, who, while loyal in doing their bidding and indeed giving them such great success was even more embarrassing than that Nixon they’d made a similar mistake on earlier. Even the prankish filthy rich, looking out at the masses as oh, just way too many ants, were not pleased by the buffoonish, clownish behavior of the W, who couldn’t even pull off the pretense that he was working hard; indeed, with his funny dances and playboy party behavior in the courts of the world and in front of the cameras of the world, he seemed to actually be trying to go down in history as being the realized human manifestation of that “mythical” character known since the Fifties, and introduced to generation after generation of males, in particular, usually in high school and junior high as that “What? Me Worry?” idiot icon Alfred E. Neumann.

“Thus it seemed that Bush, who they thought would bring at least “good looks” to the job, in the end seemed to be aiding the forces against them by playing into this notion that this idiot icon could have been some kind of freakish premonition of the coming of the W after the turn of the century. And so embarrassed they didn’t want to be, and yet, bad luck again, the McCain could not seem to stop being caught in obvious lies, and looking freakishly old and muddled headed, so much like the W; on top of which the Sarah Palin. They were backing the overgrown preppie Mormon, an obviously sure thing to take us back to the monotonous suppression and feigned happiness of the Fifties.

“Then the Palin came along, and the legend of buffoonish Republican leaders was hardly quashed but instead reinforced. So Obama they let the media do as they wished with. And we see now what their plans were. Not a bad stroke, to commit the biggest theft in history in front of the eyes of the world and to kneecap the Obama presidency even before it began with this huge bailout, extorted from hapless Congressmen by their lackeys who used the threat, not of an attack that “just might be a nuclear one” as they’d had Bush phrase it to scare the be-jeesus out of everyone and into a war of profit for them, but something very much like that, to our amusement. When we heard about the threats of an “economic nuclear holocaust” from which the world would never recover, and the blatant auto sales tactics to boot, it was astonishing to us that nobody saw through it and, sure enough, in broad daylight, your kind cleaned out the treasury on their way out of town. Brilliant, if it wasn’t so stupid.

 Continue on this site with
"Time Capsule, Culture War, Part Eleven:
Blue Meanies"

  

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