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“we are on the verge of either destroying everything — all life and ourselves — or of making a gigantic leap in consciousness….”
“We here, all of us, are existing at a time in a history, a time in the game of humanity and this planet, where we are on the verge of either destroying everything — all life and ourselves — or of making a gigantic leap in consciousness of What Is … that is in becoming closer to God … having “greater participation” you might say.
“…what that means for the people reading this is that we have chosen to put our focus here, and we are getting to be at the center of the most important happening in history … on this planet anyway. There are other kinds of lives. We can have them if we wish. But it is like we are … here and now … in the lives where we wanted to show up at the “climax” of the movie. For whatever reason … to help, to complete a mission, to observe the spectacle … for whatever reason. And however you look at it, those groking this message, then, are involved in “greater participation” in Reality than many others on this planet now, yes … but for sure more than any other time in history….”
– from “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation”
for any other of Michael Adzema’s books, go to Michael Adzema author at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
#history #spirituality #consciousness #life #occupy #follow #tsu #activist #awakening #participation
Love’s Wake-Up Call: If you don’t read anything else by me, you should at least read this….
it is the centerpiece of it all….
It is chapter two of Apocalypse Emergency, titled “Love’s Wake-Up Call”
the kind of person that it would be of interest to — anyone who is….
* human
* alive and wants to stay that way
* has loved ones
Some sample comments on it:
“I have received and read this new version of CHAPTER 2, Apocalypse Emergency. I am delighted and filled with hope and gratitude for the opportunity to grasp these thoughts you have shared with the world. There are many of us as you have written, and there is no way to determine how many we are, but we are many who love and care!”
“I love reading this, I hear the words coming from you, filled with grave concern, angst, disdain and disgust. I love your heart…. “
“An eloquent truthful description of our existential peril.”
CHAPTER 2
LOVE’S WAKE-UP CALL
APOCALYPSE EMERGENCY
There are topics you will rarely if ever hear in the mainstream media. It is not that they are not true; it is that these true things are … well … is there such a thing as too true? Truth that the vast majority of people will either not hear, or will distort, will deny, will conveniently find hard to understand — that is, they will retreat into confusion — and so many other things? Obviously, by the title, you already know the kinds of truths I’m referring to.
Your Child Will Die, How Can You Turn Away?
Our species has never been confronted with such truths — facts about the inevitable demise of our entire species in short order, unless something on a massive scale is done. And it seems our systems have no capacity for it. For indeed such an event has never occurred on our planet in its entire multibillion year history.
So the fact you are even reading this, fully aware of the title, proves you are one of the few who are opting to know the truth — however disturbing — rather than turn your head, as an unbelievable number of people are currently doing, to the likelihood of apocalypse…. Sorry, that’s not something people want to know. But ecocide, planet death, apocalypse will be a certainty unless people get the courage to do something, which necessarily of course starts with LOOKING at the problem!
OK, I’ll try again, this isn’t easy for me either….
The cumulative scientific evidence relating to the fate of this planet has been accelerating in the direction of there being little to no hope that there will be much, if any, life on this planet, at some point only twenty to fifty years from now. So as I was trying to say above, many people are currently turning their head to the likelihood that we will all be dead in what will probably seem the fastest decades ever.
What makes this likelihood so disturbing is that many people know this and yet don’t care. Some even get a charged up thrill, or sense of power at the prospect. And many others just can’t wait! Sadly they have certain misguided religious beliefs — for example, “the rapture” — that have rationalized and made desirable this most abominable thing — wiping out the efforts and strivings and occurrences of billions of years and almost seven billion human souls alone in current time, and negating the passionate struggles of billions of humans prior to us who wanted more than anything else to leave the world a better place. But take a cynical — maddened — generation or two, and they may as well never have lived.
Why am I saying this? If you have children, or grandchildren, even if you might not see it, what kinds of parents exist now that blithely turn away from the trillion-alarm fire that is already waging, which will consume their beloveds in ways too horrible to contemplate? I do not understand it; for in any other situation where they would be threatened, wouldn’t many even risk their own lives?
I need to say this because, despite the madness surrounding us in the minds of people stressed with problems of all kinds that are now at unprecedented levels, I have faith in God and in the nobility of humans at their base. I believe that more and more will not only face this horrible darker-than-night cloud looming and rushing us from the horizon, but will deem it to be the one worthy thing left to do, whichever way it goes. I am using my God-given skills of communication and intellect, along with a lifetime of study into the human mind and its healing, to try to reverse our current plunge.1
I know there are others like myself right now attempting to wake up the noble spirited, the heroic among us, who, once convinced, will add whatever unique qualities God has blessed them to this once in a multibillions chance to be good, kind, brave, hard-working, sympathetic, heartful, strong, God-loving, life embracing, laughter-, song-, and children-loving humans again.
To be humans again, not greedy beasts of prey with green in their eyes and their blood, who have been taking over this planet for several decades now, for idiotically selfish ends. So maddened are they, we have already seen the first incredible detonation of their unconcern for this planet — all God’s creatures on it, and even their own offspring — in this collapse of an entire global economic system in what seemed practically to be overnight in 2007. So insane they, we have seen the consequences of their greedy craving in the increasing radiation of the planet, through accidents like Fukushima, and the dying of the oceans — our oxygen source — with the Gulf Oil Spill.
So when I think the media is soft peddling this dire and vital truth of the approaching death of all as if providing the opium of pleasant reverie to a sick person, instead of providing the truth and giving the person the less pleasant and more strenuous options of fighting for one’s health … when I think of them as deciding for us, as if we are dying children, who they think they are being compassionate to when saying what amounts to “you’re going to be just fine,” and such, even as we, the children, take our last breath, I think of that syrupy mealy-mouthedness, that “comforting,” as enabling us in an addiction and even covering up the suffering that might get us well. Taking a look at the media in this light, I am offended and feel disrespected. For I am not one who appreciates being pampered and protected from upset when it means that it will guarantee my death, do you?
For if a great many people do not quickly and radically reverse their lives — and no I’m not talking boy scout recycling efforts. I am talking about the gearing up and urgency that would need to be far greater than that of the last world war — how can it not be seen that the Nazi holocaust will seem a tea party alongside what’s coming?
Unity Is Our Food Our Destination Our Bliss Our Home …
But it is not warriors we need. That is part of the problem. We do need people as disciplined and caring, but not just of their buddies rather for all life, human and nonhuman, of all creation that God in His/Her great love for us and all life masterfully crafted, slowly, carefully, meticulously, over a near eternity this incredible planet, as finely balanced and perfect and precise, and wondrous and beautiful in infinite ways, precisely moving in perfect harmonious exquisite synchronicity of infinite living elements through the seasons, over the years, languorous and slow and allowing for a plenitude of experience, of possibilities for joyous play, exuberant and bountiful youthful sense of power, pride, belonging — for ALL creatures, and an infinite number of them — each of them single individuals sharing with us this possibility of joy, wonder, happiness, laughter, pain, grief, wisdom…. this divine adventure taken by so many humans even, each doing their best between the poles of the monstrous and the angelic, creating in the end, whatever the outcome, lives as different, as unique, as incomparable as any snowflake to another.
And all the while, surrounded from birth, breathing the divine. God always so close you can’t see. But in every little thing pushing you to the exquisite slow, painful then wonderful unfolding into greater and greater wisdom, goodness, love, truthfulness and loving of truth — no matter how long it takes, or even lifetimes — slowly, slowly, turning, turning, expanding, flowing ever outward in wider and wider encompassing surrounds of wisdom and love — no matter how long it takes.
And on the way the dawnings of blissful openings of being, leaving the darkness of pain and ignorance more and more at our roots. Just as the lotus grows out of the muck of the dirty swamp, feeding on that muck for sustenance. Just as our hardships, mistakes, even our cruelties lead us in time that much more beautifully and committedly loving of love, of life, of goodness, of God. And our eyes ever more aware of the beauty always there but more and more radiant as the darkness slowly dissipates, and the lotus reaches its tender shoot higher and higher into the murky water. It too in time becoming increasingly aware of light that is above and that the darkness is more and more in behind it.
Until, just as we, there is that moment of arriving on the water surface and feeling and breathing, being free and so joyous, blissful, and understanding of the marvelous divine perfection of the experience, even when it seemed hopeless, just as we. And in gratitude and glory it unfolds its perfect, delicate pleasure in the expressions of joy that are the splendid beauteous aromatic creations that we call its many petals, but for the lotus is its song of gratitude. As much as our unfolding may open our hearts so deliciously loving and alive that we must sing to God, to Love, to the Consciousness that is the only Existing thing and equally coursing its wondrous way throughout all creation — lotus, human, in the loving ministrations of all God’s creatures toward each other as we feel the attraction of like to like, of divine to divine….
And would this wonderful incredibly sweet sound of God’s Life in us and around us, harmonizing over billions of years and to the ends of the Universe, the chorus of the divine, the harmony of the spheres, this grand, often dramatic and percussive symphony, the only reality, the only one really desired, the home of all whose sound is even telling you it is Om, where one belongs, where one loves and is loved and dualism-nondualism are irrelevant for equally delightful are the movements of this endless ever changing symphony, which must be separate and forgetful and also awake and one for the sheer beauty of it, for the sheer pleasure of remembering again the most wonderful truth of oneself, and then maybe again.
Of such possibilities and perceptions are the expanses outside, outside one’s skin. As one’s identity is not merely that within the gushing palpitation below the skin but expands to include spouse, family, children, others, all creatures, all beings known and unknown, with malice toward no one. As such unity is our food our destination our bliss our home….
Oh so sad and yet tender and beautiful and juicy we take our prodigal souls ever home. And more and more recognizing our brothers and sisters on the way, delighting in the exquisite separation that we will continue to enjoy until ready to release, to let go. Like a swimmer letting go of the side of the pool to sink deep into the crystal water, where it is then all the Universe that one experiences and then one becomes aware that one is just as much of it as in it.
And slowly delightfully then just not conceiving of any boundaries and the swimmer disappears to those still holding on to the delightful game of pretending that there is any such thing as a thing, as boundaries, as nations, as bodies…. Fun, that game of thingness … for a while….
For it is just a game, a made up concocted set of parameters, boundaries, and rules. That we sit down on a pleasant Sunday afternoon to play, to enjoy the amazingly creative plays, humorous remarks, and outright belly-whomping creative utterances that our playmates entertain with and we enjoy also performing as things we do and say come so perfectly from, well … it’s just there.
We just are, we can’t help be, and whether irritated or laughing uproariously or snickering secretively as we plan our next play … in sweet anticipation of the reactions, surprise! befuddlement! or knowing smiles from another … it is all unknown and to be discovered.
So who would spoil such fun by ever letting on, even, or especially, to oneself that it is all known, there is no separation. Why we even might enjoy it more if we allow ourselves to suppose that the stakes are real — at which point we know we have taken the wondrous forgetfulness game of humanness. One only does that to enjoy the sweetest waking of all, that from the soundest and most undisturbed of all possible dreamings.
However you conceive it, though. You needn’t buy my reverie. In fact how could you? Though you and I could be mirrors to each other it is the absolute knowing that we cannot be the same snowflake. No. You have your world, and your unique way of enjoying sweet existence.
Who Would Want Such an Ending to the Human Story? I’d Rather See People Becoming the Best Humans That Have Ever Lived on This Planet ….
But is it God’s, yours, mine, anyone’s plan that this multi-billion year sweet symphony of consciousness expressing itself as beauteous Nature is suddenly, in eternal time, within the last second or two, to be stomped, crackled, and crashed by the Caterpillar boots of newbie humans? The skin-bound ones. I mean, reaaalyy skin bound.
As for me such horrible catastrophic cacophony of destruction is about as creative and delight inducing as a slow wonderfully silent drive through a countryside in late spring. Fragrant, aromatic … feelings of gratitude to the All That Is. And hearts overflowing in appreciation of the company of such remarkable, loving, and brilliant of friends. So slowly meandering in fragrant meadows and moisty tart forests, one just regrets that the vehicle will have to stop to be charged in a little bit.
That’s pleasant to me, maybe it is or isn’t to you. But who among us would wish for the ride, the symphony, the song, the journey, the adventure, the whatever’s finale to be a split second of angry irritation and then an all too easy wander off of the freeway home? Such that before one is even aware, oneself and one’s friends and God’s delightful chorus is composed … the ending, sixty miles per hour, six friends, the unmovable concrete of an overpass’s supports kissing all six’s bloody bags of water, water-balloon style erased on the slab.
And the percussive sounding to mark the end, over before you even realize it’s begun. But when you in your awestruck wonder slow it to single frames, that sound … that sound so hideous, containing so many others within its one-second elapse. But you hear there are billions. You hear, trillions, more, infinite. Crashing, metal, but within it mixed … why, that is that hell that some speak about. All those voices crying out in loss, in anger:
“How have you the right?” “Why have you robbed…?” And all creatures that have ever lived here crying out in pain at the same time.
Such things well … not fun … not, well … anything.
It seems we were even given the warning so that we could come up with a much better drama, more fun for all for every place in consciousness throughout the Universe. For the Universe has already experienced such a bummer of a symphony, which is now just a red planet….
It was much more fun, filled with life, creative divine noises, and manic whacky Chaplinesque movements, sounds, color, laughter, laughter, laughter. Not fun that one.
Why not a hero’s tale; no solitary hero, but billions and billions of heroes. Showing the Universe the story of the impossibly death-defying grasping at life, even as being thrown over the cliff. The solidarity in flesh, as united as in divine state, grasping single-handedly a bit of root protruding from the very edge above the abyss. And with mighty, united, happy, joyous, then singing, mighty and strong, pulling up, scraping knees, chins, shins, no matter, such incredible unity of peoples around the Globe as hasn’t been seen since the time before that Tower, that time called Babel. That was a time when flesh decided to really stray from remembering and to really become solitary and alone, creating the darkness, which the light is so much sweeter by. Creating the horrible endless times of struggling, of violence, of ego over ego, with no one hearing, no one listening. But every one simply babbeling out THEIR world, their sounds, “The song must be like this!” “It is my song.” “I am divine, who the hell are you to sing while I’m composing my next chorus!?”
And so it began, with the blissful knowledge of Unity with All That Is turning psychotically into
I AM the Unity, I am all that is. I am hardly experiencing the flows of consciousness that you are. For I AM the only consciousness. How could you be? You don’t look like me; yet I am conscious and I am the Decider. So since I look like this and I act, and you look different, as different as I look compared to a pile of rubble, so you must not feel. You must be props for me to use.
And yet you jabber on, even as I am thinking, ever more, always thinking. I can’t stop this thinking; I don’t remember the world too well. That must be the price of being the only real living feeling existing thing here.
So it went. I don’t know why. But then there is that thing about it all being about greater wisdom.
And perhaps, I think this a better story than a one-second sounding of the Universe in Pain…. For nowhere in that Universe would there be a being saying,
Now that was one great species! Really so godlike. Incredible. They lasted for one nanosecond and then simply slammed their entire species — even taking with them every other of the millions of different kinds of beings that Consciousness was tripping around with, in checking out.
No. I don’t see our ending that way as being any more entertaining or enlightening than the shortest of all short stories about a man who walked across a busy freeway. Cleverly he avoided every car. He got increasingly adept and nimble. In his happiness he jumped to safety and stabbed himself to death with a knife. I told you, pretty dumb story.
I’d rather see people becoming the best humans that have ever lived on this planet at one time. And working together, not knowing even if they would make it, but knowing that the laughter of children depended on it. That laughter of children would be never again. And, in fact, who can say that it ever existed really?
There’s Hope in That Never Before Has There Been Such a Worldwide Jonesing for Authenticity
Why Not Create a Story Together That Would Thrill God Herself?
So, if you feel like I do. If you would rather write, together with seven billion others, a story that will thrill God Herself, won’t we be thrilled and never forget: How we took the best they had. They misinformed, spent untold huge amounts on those whose souls could be bought. And many there were, to deny, to repress, even when the rest of the world was waking up and looking to us for leadership.
America … Earth Criminal
And America did not merely back off and, inexplicably, turn to throw back at the world a big ol’ middle finger salute, grimacing, then turn and walk away. America, the wealthiest country in the world at that time…. Well at least its rich elite made it so, for its standard of living was getting lower by the year since the institution of the new slogan of democracy which was redefined in the early 1980s as, “of the people, by the people, to benefit the rich.” America left the rest of the world to suffer and meet and discuss.
And all the time the world knew that they were like employees having a meeting without the boss showing up…. Nope, more like they were like the citizens who lived in a beautiful lake area, which had once been a pristine lake. But now the lake was dead, there were no fish living, lots of gooey seaweed though.
And sure they all contributed something to polluting that lake they did. But what was going to be done having meetings that had no representatives of the lumber milling company that sat on a good stretch of lakeside frontage and mindlessly had been spewing the most god-awful chemicals in the lake? It was going to be sickening the citizens soon. But this lumber operation also confused any deliberations that might have been fruitful by its habit of tossing around such huge gobs of money at selected groups of citizens.
So that’s us, the fat bastards.
Apocalypse Is Real
I put whatever energy I can towards educating people about the dangers leading to apocalypse.
I am trying to help folks to understand they are not really believing apocalypse because it is too huge to comprehend. I try to get people to see that though they do not want to entertain the thought of apocalypse, it is real. Apocalypse is as real as your child suddenly lurching out of your hand to rush into the street just as a car is speeding there and getting killed.
Join with me or not as you will. I mention my efforts only to indicate the efforts of one person who has been awakened to this horrifying vision. Keep in mind there are others doing far more than me, for a longer time, and at greater risk.
Volunteers working with Greenpeace, Earth First, and similar organizations place their bodies directly in front of the attackers in a manner just like those prodemocracy activists living under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes who, Ghandi-style, stand in front of tanks and place their bodies before onslaughts of anti-aircraft weaponry (as happened not long ago in Libya).
There are others whose work also deserves more attention than mine, and in other places they are and will continue to be mentioned. But for purposes here, you get the point: No one can know how great are the forces of light arrayed against those of darkness on this issue, for the moneyed interests do not find it at all helpful to their side to allow the media to broadcast or highlight these efforts.
Rather, the media will exaggerate the activities and viewpoint of the opposition to these efforts, those that support the continued march toward Doomsday on whose road they collect heavy tolls from people to make up the obscenely exorbitant and evil profits they receive. They blow up the activities, viewpoints, and (mis)information in the exact same manner as in recent years they have, for example, amplified attention of, even promoted, Tea Party rallies attended by, mostly paid, hundreds while ignoring true grass roots action, as in Wisconsin, where a rally of two hundred thousand barely was mentioned. This is perhaps the meaning of the saying, “The revolution will not be televised.”
In this obscurity of our efforts and its results lies our hope. For we simply will not know until later, maybe not even until an “afterward,” assuming there is one, just how great are the efforts of the unheralded numbers involved in this undertaking.
Worldwide Craving for Authenticity
So, no, I am hardly the only one saying this. Quite to the contrary, there are lots of people now, more than ever before, who are fed up with being coddled from the truth and manipulated by lies and misinformation. Having been water boarded so many gallons of lies over Bush’s eight years, they are showing the starvation they’ve been feeling for truth. Folks are painfully jonesing for something authentic in a number of ways.
Most spectacularly, Americans showed their craving for authenticity in the overwhelming 2008 turnout for Obama. At the time, Obama, over everyone else, was someone radiating realism, accountability, and authenticity.
Tea Party Ducklings
More recently we see this desperation pushing people to the Tea Party. Though sadly lacking in facts, fed misinformation by moneyed groups, manipulated, and directed to action by forces arrayed against their interests, Tea Party folks are newly birthed into politics following a burning knowing that something is terribly wrong and that they are being lied to. Like newly hatched ducklings, they are bonded to their corporate Mommies, who they follow blindly, fighting against those who would help them. On the other side, we see this eruption of truth-valuing in that, despite Tea Party’s misguided actions, the polls show that Republicans, the party of organized deception in allegiance to interests of a global clique of “filthy rich,” are seen to be more like fools than as credible opponents.
What Would the Planetmates Say … and Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?
Still, facing the facts of the likely End of All Time, Doomsday, or Apocalypse — however you choose to phrase it — is not in anyone’s hardwired capacities to handle. We are like ants suddenly confronted by a huge lumberjack’s boot about to come smashing down on their meticulously created universe of AntHill. I doubt they, let alone we, have ever been programmed for such contingencies.
But humans are supposed to have the capacity to reason, to go beyond pure instinct, and to be able to prepare for the totally unprecedented. So far, our much-vaunted rationality is seeming like a pretty convenient rationalization to enable us to kill without conscience, for any reason we choose, the other species on this planet. How would our planetmates see it? Perhaps something like:
Humans Adopt Superiority Over All, Basing It On Their Inability to Keep Their Psychotic Minds from ever Stopping the Onslaught of Mental Verbiage. [Planetmate Views. Nowtime. Everyplace, Earth.]
Humans have created a bizarre separate and solitary view, which keeps them from seeing Reality, let alone God, who is directly before them. But they are committed to this psychosis of generating such a mental screen of words, which they mistake for actual reality.
Living in their self-imposed tortuous hell of verbal-mental realities, having nothing to do with reality, they neither see God, nor us planetmates, nor do they really hear each other. For humans pretend to listen but are really thinking of what they are going to say when it is their turn. So humans come away from conversations having only heard themselves. And now, their delusion is having them kill themselves all off; and they are not even all that concerned.
Unfortunately, they are taking ALL the rest of us, planetmates, indeed everything alive on this planet, down with them. Many of our fellow planetmates, in light of this, are questioning our compassion for their sorry half-born asses and our tolerance over the past twenty-five millennia.
You don’t believe our planetmates? Natch. Didn’t expect you to — sprung on you like that. But if what the planetmates say just for a moment pisses you off enough to say “NO, We are not stupid ape! We are rational!” Then you cannot be consistent without using some of that, ahem, ahem, so-called “reason.” For before you can say NO to Apocalypse you have to let yourself KNOW Apocalypse. Now, how many of you have the cajonies or ovaries for that?!
David Bowie sang, “We could be heroes … just for one day.” Wow, that just occurred to me. It also occurred to me that being heroes just for one day never made any sense to me until just about, oh, like two seconds ago.
Well, I’m no hero. I just fucking care. Sorry if caring offends people so much they have to put down feeling people by saying “kumbaya moment.” Sorry if caring offends so much they have to put down people who have hearts by saying “bleeding hearts.” Or even when we have a President who sheds a tear and says in all sincerity, “I feel your pain,” the cynical have to rake him over the coals for it and put it down in the history books as a calculated, planned, political move.
I’m sorry for people like that who have no felt connection with others. Such kitty-drowners and butterfly-mashers have no hearts and so do not understand those of us who do.
Before I took my personal journey inward and opened up to my feelings and eventually to the love that lie deep inside, I was more of a mental machine than a man.
Now, I am happy to be flesh and blood and feeling and organic — I cry, fart, burp, laugh uproariously sometimes, actually, rolling on the floor. I see, hear, and notice people and think they are just fascinating. I can’t imagine life back in the world of the machine-minded, bragging how they can multi-task, so they can fuck up more things at the same time. But never can such automatons focus on one thing at a time and completely take it in, in all its complexities.
But this isn’t about the ones who will never hear me. It is about those who are just as much flesh and blood as I. You are the ones who will understand that I do this because, I just, well, really love.
I’ve got a young goddaughter; she reminds me what being straight and honest is. She also reminds me what love is, and how tender is the simple appreciation of one being for another. In my mind, my goddaughter is beautiful inside and out and talented and sensitive. She is God’s work of art. I don’t think there is a parent alive who doesn’t know those kinds of feelings.
So, I don’t know about other people, but with her in mind, among many others that I love, I find it hard to simply ignore the things that the scientists are saying are happening on this planet. Perhaps the most horrible for me to comprehend is the predicted massive extinction that is underway and is expected to reach a fifty percent die-off (forever, folks) of species on this planet in twenty to fifty years. You thought the bees disappearing was news!? Only if you can understand it as the canary in the coal mine.
If We Must, Without the Support of the Media, Rise to the Biggest Challenge of All, Would We Not Be Better to Face It?
We Got Too Many Species Anyway … And Other Stupid Denial Tricks Against Ecocide
A fifty percent extinction of life-forms on this planet within a few decades, many of which have been around for millions, even billions of years. And, are you thinking, hell, we got way too many species anyway? I know, dumb! But someone actually said that to me during the Q & A after a presentation I gave on this. And many in the audience seemed to think she had a point!!
Well, the planet is an ecosystem; it is like one giant life form. And it was once really healthy, perfectly balanced, like I said, a wonderful creation of God. It was an exquisite creation, reminding us that God is well, really, I mean, really, really, good!
Nope, not being facetious; just making my point in response to the general idea out there about God. That is, this insane prevailing notion that God is Infinite Goodness and Mercy beyond all human understanding, yet this Good God would create a hell where all but a lucky few would live, without being able to die, in hideous unbearable agony forever. Christ! I just heard myself realize that and if I were a kid I would’ve pooped my pants!
Ok, finishing up here. If you care about what’s going on and think we should wake up, naturally you’re discouraged at how little consciousness there is about an environmental collapse that has already begun. But there is hope at least in certain things. I’ve mentioned the craving for the real and the true. This powerful urge has toppled Bush, birthed an awkward tea-party movement, and shown the light on right-wing idiocy in America.
Around the world this explosive force manifests along with its correlates, the needs to express and share this truth in free speech and to have human rights to not be punished for that, as well as to have power for one’s truth to effect one’s life and circumstances, so there is the need for democracy. So it has fueled freedom and independence movements in nearly every country on Earth. In the last year alone, we have seen massive outpourings for human rights and justice in Turkey, Brazil, Romania, and Egypt — where only months ago the largest demonstrations in history were going on. In the Mideast and North Africa we see dictators being confronted and overthrown, and in China and similar totalitarian systems we see people risking and sacrificing their lives rather than be living beneath a cover of lies, behind a matrix of the contrived. Perhaps the most powerful way of all, this force is flowering worldwide as an Occupy movement, encouraging everyone to Occupy Earth, among many other things.
As to where this effort will lead…. Well, the hopeful question is: Who knows how many others are also feeling like we don’t have a second to lose, and it might already be too late? Who knows what kind of actions might be needed to be done, and what kind of word might need to get out, or whatever?
If You Knew What I Knew, Would You Do Less?
Finally, looking over my efforts alone, one might even be thinking I am overdoing it. But consider that I believe what I’m saying: A trillion-alarm emergency, the lives of my loved ones at stake. Now, if you knew what I knew, would you do less?
But this isn’t about me, I am only mentioning my work alongside the fact that I felt finally like I could speak out in this country only when Obama was sworn in as President. Who knows how many efforts are going on, how many kinds of things people are doing to stave off this Unthinkable Nightmare? Now, with Bush no longer in power, when finally we have the world and its efforts, however difficult they still will be, at least not being actively undermined by a Republican administration, we have a time where we have more hope that our efforts will succeed based upon the good will of the participants, without worrying excessively that the mighty U.S. will at some point either secretly or overtly throw the grandest of all monkey wrenches in to shatter the work of the good people of the world working heartily on the side of Life.
So, if you care, we might as well start making that network now. And I know there are others. But there can never be too many connections bringing together all of us who care.
Don’t forget we’re going up against a bunch who DON’T care, but who are, as they termed them, not me! “Filthy Rich.” And great power they have indeed for you know how many there are who are for sale and how cheaply souls are going for these days. But we have, if we choose it, the power of solidarity, truth, and — if we can awaken enough people — the power of great, great, grand numbers on a scale that also has never been possible before.
So, I urge everyone to remember that they are in the midst of a trillion-alarm fire. The emergency is upon us; unfortunately it is not being broadcast. But some of that is because it is too dire for the media to want to touch. So it is up to us.
We must remember that it has always been the common people of the world uniting in great numbers that have accomplished the things of greatest value to the world. If we must once again, and without the support even of the media, rise to the biggest challenge of all, then why would we not be the better ones to face it? For the elite have already shown that they care little for anything but their profits.
Whereas it is the common people of the world, taking their pleasure in their pride of work, and especially their families, who have put themselves always on the line. We need only remember that it is not for us, or even for all the innocent creatures of the world — though that would be huge motivation for many — but if only so that our children and grandchildren will not suffer, will get to live, and hopefully will be awarded at least the chance that other generations got for a full life, we must give our all.
I cannot believe that the masses of people in the world, were they ever to come to understand the true consequences — the life and death ones — for their immediate family — would not do everything including risking one’s own life, for something so precious — the continuation of family … the laughter of children, the innocence of a babe, and above and beyond everything, the continuation of Love, sweet, sweet, ever growing and expanding Love, under the blessings and grace of The All that Is, whose substance is just that — Love.
For more information on Apocalypse Emergency, or any of my other works in print and e-book, go to Michael Adzema’s books at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
you want MORE, you say?
you can read a great deal of the text of several of my books, now, on-line, on FB. Over a period of many months prior to the release of my latest work, Funny God, it was uploaded sequentially as Notes on my wall…
dive into Planetmates …. as well as Funny God … right here
with my compliments….
https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel?sk=notes
you can listen to the latest interview of me. Published May 8th. I talk a lot about my latest book, “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation” as well as my soon to be released work, “Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Necessary Hero and and the Prenatal Matrix of Human Events”
https://youtu.be/QbLHY66LlXU
What was said about it:
Kristina Asinus: “Our new episode with our dear friend Michael Adzema!!
“We discussed the divine dual polarities, sacred energy manifestations, the comedy and humor of life and much much more!”
Michael Adzema: “I just finished listening to it and i am delighted with how it came out… You guys managed to get the best and realest me to come out in it…. Yours and Stefan’s responses, comments, and questions were spot on as well…. I truly believe folks will get a lot out of listening to it, their spirits will be lifted, and they might feel an easing of the fear they carry around…
“as you know, that is why i do what i do…. to comfort and lighten up where i can… thank you to both of you for doing what you do….”
Maxine Downs: “I planned to listen for a half hr and the rest tomorrow but was enjoying it too much to stop!
“Great interview, Michael. your laugh is so infectious … how great is that….
“I love how you tell it how it is with your authentic self. fucking amazing.”
listener on youtube: “The world needs to hear this!! His words are like music to my ears…”
https://youtu.be/QbLHY66LlXU
To purchase any of Michael Adzema’s books, available in print and e-book formats, go to Michael Adzema’s books at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
The Return to Grace series so far. A series of ten books, in order, with a comprehensive new-paradigm vision. Seven in print, to date, with one more (Wounded Deer and Centaurs) coming in the next month:
Return to Grace, Volume 1: Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Return to Grace, Volume 2: You Say You Want a Revolution? …. forthcoming
Return to Grace, Volume 3: Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call
Return to Grace, Volume 4: Apocalypse NO: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious
Return to Grace, Volume 5: Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Necessary Hero and the Prenatal Matrix of Human Events … forthcoming
Return to Grace, Volume 6: Planetmates: The Great Reveal
Return to Grace, Volume 7: Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation
Return to Grace, Volume 8: Experience Is Divinity: Matter as Metaphor
Return to Grace, Volume 9: Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness
Return to Grace, Volume 10: Prodigal Human: Return to the Garden … forthcoming
More at http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
#humanicide #tsu #apocalypse #follow #love #emergency #planetmates #books #ecocide #environment
The Tao of Funny God and What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us: Living Authentically in the Illusion of Life … Playing Cards with Your Dragons
Humanity Thrived at Gezi Park Prior to the Brutal Police Assault the night of Saturday, June 15th.
My only weapon is my Chapulcu heart.
We Are All Turks Today: A Pictorial, Event Log, and Perspective on the Meaning of the Turkish and Brazilian Protests
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you: pull your beard, flick your face to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” – John Lennon
If you want to gain a greater understanding of the funny god/ silly god concept I’ve been presenting, a great way is to see the movie of Andy Kaufman’s life, “Man on the Moon.” Andy Kaufman lived the idea; he embodied it. He was an enlightened spiritual master in this regard, along with being a comic genius. He left a grand legacy of how to live authentically in this illusion of life and transcend it.
This is the clip of the song played at the end of the movie, which starred Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. Apparently, in real life Andy did leave a video like this to be played at his funeral after his death. The clip gives a taste of what I’m talking about; the movie is one of the best ever made, imo.
The Most Important “Funny God” Chapters:
Breaking News — Hell Doesn’t Exist: Good—God! Hell—No! … the Comedy
Funny God, Part One: SillyMickel Melts for God’s Crops and Revelations
Funny God, Part Four: God Is Experience. Life is a Disneyland
Related:
Humanity Thrived at Gezi Park Prior to the Brutal Police Assault the night of Saturday, June 15th.
Welcome home, loving warrior, silly hero
Under “Humor as Weapon in Protests,” out of the BBC today, June 14th….
Will Istanbul’s protesters have the last laugh?
By Jody Sabral and Zeynep Erdim BBC News, Istanbul
Turkish art group performs in support of protesters at Taksim Square in Istanbul (5 June 2013)
Revolutions take commitment and determination. Revolutions are often messy and confusing. But in today’s digital age of iPhones, citizen journalism and self-made producers, revolutions can also be funny. ….
Istanbul’s anti-government protesters have inhaled tear gas and faced water cannon, but they are still laughing all the way to Gezi Park, the symbolic centre of the demonstrations, which have now spread to at least 60 cities across the country.
“We have witnessed incredible things that have left us psychologically traumatised, and although we are determined to win, we may actually lose this revolution because of laughter,” said Fatih, a graphic designer ….
Riffraff’ phenomenon
A slogan that has become synonymous with the protesters who describe themselves as “a civil resistance”, is the word “chapulling’, which literally translated means “bumming around”.
The word was coined in reaction to Mr Erdogan’s comments describing the protesters as “calpucu”, or “riffraff”, before he left on a trip to North Africa earlier this week.
The BBC’s James Reynolds looks at how the crisis has escalated
The remarks have spawned an entire chapulling phenomenon, one that even has a Wikipedia definition and a video explaining how to use the word.
Related Book: Culture War, Class War: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Related Book: Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call
Related Book: Apocalypse No: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious
Related Book: Wounded Deer and Centaurs
Turkish Protesters Dance in Gas Masks. “Day and night we are ‘chapulling’!”
Tao of Funny God: Why Not Bring Your Piano to the Protest?
Grandma at the Protests: “NOW, will you be good!”
another one from Brazil
Continue with Culture War, Class War: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”
or Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call
or Apocalypse No: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious
About this latest pic, Bernardo Antonacci Enlightened Love II says:
Meanwhile, the Divine Feminine in Action in Turkey- Goddess Rising!!
No one can tell me now that ascension is a myth. It is happening everywhere right in front of us. If this is not the divine feminine I don’t know what is.
There is imminent danger and final ‘illegal’ warning has been issued to the protesters by the PM (Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan). Police with live ammo have been observed around the protesters for the first time since the protests began and they are in thousands! Please add us to your prayers and send any healing, calming energy you can to us. Thank you!
All the mothers of all ages whose children are protesting in Gezi Park surrounded the park with a human chain.
Tonight there won’t be an attack. Mothers are there to protect their cubs. There is a wonderful piano concert within the park tonight. The police are also just hanging around and sitting on the floor, waiting and poor guys, what else can they do, except feel the love.
The above was written yesterday, June14th. The police in Istanbul brutally attacked the beautiful people in Gezi Park tonight, Saturday, June 15th. Many were injured, people were brutally clubbed.
In honor of the brave people of Turkey. What you do, you do for all of us. We are truly one humanity.
“someday we’ll make this world a little brighter…”
Latest report … from Istanbul, June 16th –
LIVE FROM ISTANBUL: Today, following Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s extremely sectarian, separatist, and fictious speech in Ankara, around 9 PM, the Turkish police began to attack thousands of people who were at the Gezi Park and Taksim square, having dinner. There are kids under 4-5 years old, mothers, and old people among those who were under gas and pressurised water attack. According to reports, police doesn’t allow journalists to report or to take pictures from Gezi Park. They are also attacking with pressurised water business such as famous Divan Hotel that opened its doors to protestors running away from brutality. People are saying there are thousands of wounded inside of the hotel. People formed a human chain in front of the hotel to prevent police to attack. Another report says that people cannot leave the hotel because police is arresting whoever leaves. There are also unconfirmed reports that police shut down the metro and boats between Asia and Europe to stop people coming and joining the rest. Another report says that there is a jammer in the area to prevent TV stations’ broadcast. There are hundreds of wounded. There are a lot of missing kids, or kids who are separated from their families. Protestors are fighting with police in Sıraselviler, Cihangir, Harbiye, and most likely around Dolmabahçe and Maçka. People call it a total brutality, a real savagery that is going on tonight. What we are seeing an ugly war where only one side have weapons.
in this photo you can see the chemical gas in water cannons
later update: now also the army is with the police against its own people
all around Turkey … people are resisting
Why Turkey?
If you want freedom, you better *flaunt* your rights to be … nothing extraordinary … just *free* … That is one reason I love the Turkish protesters.
If you want freedom, you have to act free. If you can only say and do certain ordinary and innocuous human things in certain places, at certain times, and even then have to be careful of straying over some arbitrary lines, you are not free … though you may avoid bloodshed. But history has shown that the more you hide from tyranny the bigger it grows. You allow it to grow unhindered. Then, you are the cause, because of cowardice in the present, for bigger atrocities in the future.
We have the same struggle for peace and freedom here in the states. and we have had it the entire time I’ve been adult, going back to the 60s. my generation got us out of a ghastly war. but we had to pay with some lives, and with being hounded, ridiculed, slighted, and short-changed forever after. But I for one would not have done anything differently. And i still refuse to submit to tyranny.
My struggle, your struggle, their struggle is no different from the struggle of all people to be free of their oppressors. We are all heirs to benefits wrought of the sweat and blood of our forebears. And if we shirk that duty on our watch, we will be guilty of shortchanging our progeny.
At Gezi Park, it was a festival in the park for weeks until the police attacked them. even afterward there was a rightful attempt by citizens to act like free people. their resistance to being stomped on for just being human strengthens all of us who are trod on … regardless of any outcomes. …. in the end, there is simply no alternative except, if you want to be free, you better act free…..
Politicians can nitpick about the details and the complexities of the situation and all the geopoltical intrigue and whodunits. ordinary folks, however, will never be privy to all that. so our course is simple and straight. We have an obligation to be free…. not just for ourselves and our children and in the foreseeable future or moment … but for all people everywhere and for generations unborn. there has never been a clearer line in the sand than has been drawn in these last few decades between the moneyed oppressors and the increasingly downtrodden everyone else. and with environmental collapse looming in the background, we are called to be heroes like never before. Literally everything depends on whether we succeed or not.
Many folks have been heroes in recent years, in Egypt, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Wisconsin, Zucotti Park, Oakland, and in freedom struggles and Occupy events all over the world, to name just a few. I love and salute all of you and am ever inspired by your actions in our worldwide struggle. I’m just saying now, let’s extend that same courtesy to the brave and heroic ordinary folks of Turkey right now, who are suffering. They deserve the same credit and support now that we all would like to get when we are on the frontlines in our struggles as well.
Solidarity, brothers and sisters. … simply that….
We are all Turks today. one humanity. one struggle.
#WeAreAllTurksToday #Gezi #Istanbul #Turkey #Occupy #occupygezi #breakingnews #Turkey #occupy #TurkishSpring #Taksim – #ErdoganOut – #301TurkishPenalCode – #Gezi – #ArmenianGenocide – #TurkishSpring – #PrimaveraTurca – #OqvcnaovenaTV – #OrhanPamuk – #HrantDink – #Turquia – #SalveJorge – #ForaErdogan – #erDOGan
From Istanbul, 16 of June, report –
Today they drive them out of Gezi Park and Taksim. But Resistance cries “Everywhere Taksim, Everywhere Resistance!”
Police attacked a parlamentarian.
He is a deputy, he wanted only to help injured people but police kicked him
Police detain doctors too…
Please call Red Cross to go Turkey
because they use dangerous chemical gas, injure people and arrest doctors who help injured peoples
chemical toxins in water cannons.
please report them to UN
We have to complain to the UN about their putting chemical weapons in water cannons, they put gas bombs directed at the hospitals,and they arrest doctors who aid in a humanitarian way to the injured and chemical burned people.
Please contact Red Cross and United Nations
#occupygezi #WeAreAllTurksToday
We are all Turks today. one humanity. one struggle.
[Istanbul] IMC Television made a declaration concerning the arrest of their editor Gökhan Biçici today. As following:
“This Sunday, the 16th of June around 6 p.m, while our editor Gökhan Biçici was intending to capture the demonstrations and give report about, had been pounded and beaten up for several minutes by police forces who had dragged him on the road. His eyebrow lift got injured, his gas mask was broken, his i-pad was seized and though he was injured, he had to wait bounded in handcuffs for 4 hours, without being told anything about where he will be taken and without getting any accurate treatment by the police. Our friend was kept to wait as of 23.30 in front of the AKM building in a police car from where he would have been brought to Istanbul Police Department. We abhore strongly the treatment that was exposed to Gökhan Biçici. We want our friend to be set free immediately and demand immediate identification and punishment for the responsible individuals. Their images are known from videos shared on social media. IMC TELEVİSİON”
Please contact Red Cross and United Nations
We are all Turks today. one humanity. one struggle.
From Wisconsin to the People of Gezi Park
Love from the Solidarity Sing Along! (Bella Ciao)
Bella Ciao – the Italian song of class struggle was sung at Gezi Park and Taksim Square
One morning I woke up
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
One morning I woke up
And I found the invader
Oh partisan, carry me away,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
Oh partisan, carry me away,
For I feel I’m dying
And if I die as a partisan
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
And if I die as a partisan
You have to bury me
But bury me up in the mountain
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
But bury me up in the mountain
Under the shadow of a beautiful flower
And the people who will pass by
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
And the people who will pass by
Will say to me: “what a beautiful flower”
This is the flower of the partisan
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for freedom
Some background on recent events –
May 30
At 5 a.m. this morning police moved in and tear gassed #OccupyGezi in Istanbul, where hundreds have gathered to try to stop the demolition of beloved Taksim Gezi Park. The police surrounded the demolition area. The participants returned to face the police. Some have been reading out loud to them: education as an act of creative resistance.
“Hear this out please! Help us! Spread the word to the media! We shout #occupygezi because we believe in trees. We believe in people.” ~ @Buzkadin
Photo by Deniz Atam @denizatam
June 2nd
Istanbul after the march across the bridge arrived, Taksim square was full, and the police retreated, letting everyone in. Reports are saying that 100,000’s of people there now. Here is a recent status update from our dear friend in Istanbul, Ezgi Kozmik: “Friends, we are safe, happy, blessed, proud, sad, tired, scared, angry, and traumatized .. Thank you for all those who supported us.. We heard there were around 25 people killed, thousands of people got hurt, hundreds of them seriously injured.. We will know more clearly soon… Government is still lying. This is ridiculous.. I will share more details soon.. But now, it has been 50 hours since I haven’t slept… I feel so much love that I can cry…. This is a civil revolution…. In solidarity… #occupylove “
June 2nd
A single tree, in a small park, in the crossroads of the world. It began.
ISTANBUL, June 2 – This is a story that spans the continents, and is spreading. The recent occupation of Gezi park in Istanbul and the ripples it has had throughout 48 cities in Turkey is filling a political space that exists between Occupy and the Arab Spring; linking them like the bridges of Istanbul that span the continents. This week we have seen the violent repression of expression that marks the fine line between democracy and dictatorship, the domination of private financial interests over the common good. We are learning each year that all of our grievances are connected.
A single tree, in a small park, in the crossroads of the world. It began.
Power is a rebel force, and here in Turkey the Prime Minister Erdogan is armed with the conviction of a religious man who has been elected. He has recently passed a series of deeply unpopular but tolerated laws. He pushed his people into a corner, and has kept pushing. Like many leaders, he is acting as if the national power is his, because the millions of people in this representational democracy had given their power to him. He has played their power like a violin – so loud he couldn’t hear there wasn’t any applause, and so long he didn’t notice the rest of the orchestra had dropped out. Maybe he is afraid of what could happen in that silence.
Saturday night the silence was filled. From any open window you heard the people playing their pots and pans as if these utensils were finally freed to be the joyful instruments they had always wanted to be – singing their metal hymns for a good life. This is that sound that comes to fill the silence. People who had nothing in their hands used their hands, and sat leaning clapping from car windows and in crowds. The people had retaken the park, and it was Saturday night, so there would be too many people tonight to do what they had been doing the past nights. Saturday night felt like a celebration; in some places.
In other places the violence was still building like friction in any unoiled machine. Violence was encouraged by Erdogan himself, who broken the media blackout and had gone on TV and asked his supporters to personally stop “the terrorists,” which he claimed was a marginal group of radicals. A friend had seen teenagers attack a group of students because they were carrying gas-masks. Erdogan is mixing strong forces, concocting dangerous politics in an earthquake zone.
These stories I share were told to me by a friend who noticed he was still trembling to speak of them. He arrived late, because he had been teargassed again, and so had to shower the chemicals from him. He told me these stories, recounting like legends in days of this same week. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Today.
Wednesday. It started with machines. The supreme court had ruled that Gezi, the last green space in the center of this sprawling megalopolis, would not be razed to make way for a new shopping center. The rogue prime minister sent the excavators anyway, but by the time they had ripped out the first of the trees, some 20 or 50 people had gathered. Some hugged the trees (perhaps the most pacifist of all possible acts), others tied themselves to the trees. They set up tents, read to the police and shared food. They called it Occupy Gezi
Thursday. At 4am the police came and filled the air with teargas. They didn’t fire the metal canisters at the ground, they fired it at the people, at their faces, smashing holes in skulls. They burned down their tents. They kicked people from the trees they held on to. The police expected to have the park cleared by morning, but by morning 5,000 people were there.
A line had been crossed – if people are not allowed to peacefully demonstrate what they believe in, and if their expression is met with such brutality – than this is not a democracy. And if one is obedient, silent or waits in hopes it will pass, than power is the only one who has freedom.
Friday. These days were battles of bravery and violence. The police surrounded the park, attacked, and refused to let anyone leave; later they wouldn’t let anyone enter. Water cannons threw people off their feet and onto their thin necks, batons cracked skulls of anyone within range, the teargas canisters littered the ground like confetti. Police fired gas into residential buildings that were helping the wounded and housing those hiding from the acid smoke. Police fired gas into a Starbucks full of people and into the Hilton Hotel. Every photograph from these days is wrapped in that tyrannical gas.
But opposites attract, and the people who lived in the area began to leave out baskets of lemons to help soothe teargas. Old ladies lowered baskets of food from their windows by rope to support the people below – doing what they could to support those doing what they could not. Restaurants left bags of food outside their windows. The state’s violence was countered by the people’s kindness. Lovers led their gas-blinded lover through the smoke-filled streets to safety; strangers did the same.
Turkish flags with their floating moon and star sprang up everywhere, and the bridge that you cannot walk across, was filled with 40.000 people walking in the space between two continents. What was 50 people in tents became 5,000, became the more than a hundred thousand that surrounded the park yesterday until they so outnumbered the police that they were let back into park, and the shade of the trees that were still standing.
Today. In this small park, a great many conflicts are colliding. There is the tree that started this, and the fight for the rights of nature against the cold machinery of progress. There is the fight to protect the commons: to save one of the few public spaces that still exist from its transformation into a private space dedicated to the production of personal capital. There is the issue of democracy: that the people have the right to speak out, and the necessity to be heard by those they have empowered. This is history, after all, and people know that if they cannot speak their mind then it is not their story.
This is no longer a story about a tree, a park, a politics or a cause. It is a story of a people, all over, knowing that they are standing on the global frontline of history. It is not a struggle to change the story, its the struggle to be allowed to write it.
Tomorrow. No one knows what will happen in the coming days, but some of that will be determined by us. We need to make sure the world is watching the trees and people of Gezi square, and that Erdogan knows we are watching. Where do you draw the line?”
from Kevin Buckland of 350.org: “A Tree Grows in Gezi
Posted on June 2, 2013
background, June 5th
“The occupied Gezi Park is transforming into an amazing community space! There is already a library at the park. People have been planting trees, herbs and flowers. They created a vegetable garden too. There are conversations and performances being organized. Apparently a space for children will be created as well. People faithfully go and socialize at the park. This is ‘owning’ a public space. Designing it, loving it, using it, protecting it. This park now means so much more than a park. I am utterly inspired!” ~ from Filiz Telek, our dear friend and Occupy Love community screening host, in Istanbul.
background, June 6th
The uprising in Istanbul has spread around the country. Here is a message from Ankara: “Dear friends, currently the mainstream global media is keeping an eye on Taksim, Istanbul. Thus, the police forces have backed off and they have remarkably scaled down the number of attacks against the protesters. However, in the meantime the police terror in Ankara as it is now is on a much larger scale compared to the very beginning of Istanbul attacks. Tear gas is relentlessly being thrown inside apartments, people are suppressed by plastic bullets, illegal custody and physical assault. Things have escalated quickly and the scale of these attacks are rapidly increasing. We need to make benefit of social media once again to show the world what’s going on in Ankara right now. This resistance is clearly not limited to Istanbul, it has taken over all of the country. “
from Brazil, Saturday –
“Tension is definitely in the air all over. I believe many have just had enough – as with the trees at Gezi Parki in Istanbul, the 20 cents raise in the bus fare is but just the last drop onto of a series of abuses and disrespected population’s rights….
… we are waking up now. It’s not only the additional 20 cents, which add up to a significant amount of money specially for those who earn less – it’s about our rights.
I guess Brazilians share also this similarity with Turks: we have had enough! We are tired of being disrespected. Tired of living in fear. Tired of the daily violence and impunity. Tired of the mess Brazil has always been.”
We are all Brazilians today. one humanity. one struggle.
#occupylove #Brazil #WeAreAllTurksToday #WeAreAllBraziliansToday #Gezi #Istanbul #Turkey #Occupy #occupygezi
What? You couldn’t just say, “wrong answer”? *dark sarcasm*
Saturday at Gezi Park
#OccupyGezi has been raided with brutal force. Please let the world know. #occupylove
Urgent update from the Istanbul:
Help!
”DEAR FOREIGN FRIENDS: Please pass this along. The Turkish government has attacked Gezi Park directly with water cannons and pepper gas aiming the said elements at men, women, children… They are now attacking the nearby hotels that have opened their doors to the wounded. it has been reported that they are entering the park with work machines. THEY HAVE ATTACKED CHILDREN! PLEASE PLEASE Pass this along as much as you can. it has been reported by local news channels that the government will be bringing in jammers to stop the broadcasts! pLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS. I am shaking as I write these words. What the prime minister is doing is inhuman and amoral!”
From a friend in Turkey, yesterday :
This is not about Taksim anymore…This is not even about Turkey…My friends all over the world;this is the power of politics trying to come over the power of love …We, the mothers, the students, the teachers, the workers,the doctors, the housewives of the land…cannot sleep for days…and that is ok…even our hospitals filled with patients are being attacked now… teargas is being thrown in the houses … thousands of people are in the streets, helping and holding each other and the attack only comes form the police… we, all the people living in Turkey, are together now regardless of our age, political view,and everything, and walking hand in hand.. and now it is time for us all, all the people from all around the world, come together, and stand still in peace… as one… cause that is what it is… lets remember who we are, where we come from, where our hearts are still beating as one, lets remember that we were the ones who created the system, the government, the borders, lets remember that we are all brothers and sisters, coming from the same roots, lets remember, re- member …. and lets recreate what is needed now… we can do it, together as one…
A moving status update from yesterday in Istanbul…. from Avital Livny:
“i cried quietly on the boat over to taksim tonight. having spent a few hours earlier today in gezi park, strolling around and chatting with the folks gathered there, i was struggling to understand the inhumanity of the police attack on such a peaceful demonstration.
by the time we had docked in kabataş, my sadness and confusion had turned to anger, and i was eager to climb the hill and stand shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers against this brutality. an avowed pacifist, i knew i would throw no stones, i would go on no offensive. my only intention was to demonstrate my human right to stand in solidarity, to chant slogans, to clap my hands in the air, to peacefully protest.
we gathered on sıraselviler blvd in cihangir. quite a few yards ahead was one of the police’s water cannons, but we reasoned that we were in a safe place, along the route the ambulances take in and out of taksim square. (indeed, we stopped our chanting every few minutes to cheer on the brave EMTs as they shuttled the injured out of harm’s way and to the hospitals. sadly, there were so many ambulances – going back and forth, empty and then full – that i easily lost count.) there were rumors of clashes in harbiye and that the police were coming up from both sides of istiklal. but things felt relatively calm where we stood, like we had found the one safe public space in the entire area in which we could peacefully protest.
but we were wrong. before long, and without provocation, the tear gas came, raining down on us. the crowd responded as usual: calling out ‘slowly’ and ‘don’t run’ and walking calmly but relatively quickly to try to get clear of the police attack without causing a stampede ahead. but the police didn’t want us to react calmly. before we knew it, the water cannons were on our backs and noise bombs flashing to our sides. but remarkably – incomprehensibly – no matter how fast we ran, we couldn’t seem to get clear of them. they were literally chasing us – a group of peaceful protesters trying our very best to show (by running away) that we meant no harm. but they meant harm. they intended not only to scare us but also to injure us, whether by hitting us with pressurized water or tear gas canisters, or by causing the exact stampede we were trying so hard to avoid.
i cried quietly on the boat home from taksim tonight. something in me felt broken. call me naive if you’d like, but i’m not sure i believed something like this existed before tonight, before i saw it for myself. violence in the face of non-violence. the absence of a public space to express our collective yet peaceful discontent. the disrespect one human can show another when they refuse to recognize that they are, in essence, equals.
i am struggling tonight to hold onto the beauty and signs of collective strength i have witnessed during these past weeks – the solidarities formed in gezi park, on the streets of istanbul, and all across social media platforms. i still want to believe in the basic goodness of humanity. but something in me broke tonight. and so i know this night will be a dark one in my personal history; and i worry that it will be a dark night in turkey’s history as well.
non-turkish and non-turkish-speaking friends: if you haven’t already done so, please take the time to educate yourselves about the situation here. take the time to contact your local consulates and elected representatives to demand that somebody be held accountable for this unwarranted violence. demand that there be public spaces in which people can come together to peacefully protest. demand that human rights – nay, human decency – be respected. we need your help.”
Update from Turkey, today, June 17
14.23: [Izmir] In Izmir thousands of labours came together at the Konak Square. Labours are shouting: “Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance!”. Labours in Izmir are walking from Basmane to Konak Square….
Continual updates and More at – http://turkishspring.nadir.org/index_eng.html
Tuesday, 18th of June
Update: Turkey
07.29: [Eskişehir] Again the police started an early-morning removal In Eskişehir. 1 TOMA, 2 digger, 4 trucks, 2 police vans and 100 policeman gathered in front of the park. They attacked the park without a warning. The People, who tried to remove to a safe place in apartments or the clinging sidestreets, were haunted even in to the aparments. The arrested were lined up, thrashed with sticks and there faces were filmed one by one. At the begining there were 7 people arrested. The current number is not clear now. It’s said that the police tried to arrest all demonstrants.
Tuesday, 18th of June
Four protesters and one police officer have been killed during the protests … More than 7,800 people have been injured; six remain in critical condition and 11 people have lost their eyesight after being hit by flying objects.
Addressing legislators of his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, Erdogan said riot police deployed to disperse protesters had acted with restraint and said their powers would be increased, allowing them more leeway in dealing with future protests….
Police on Tuesday carried out raids at homes and offices, detaining at least 87 people suspected of involvement in violence. Overnight, police broke up a silent protest at Taksim Square by hundreds mimicking a lone man who stood silently for hours in a passive anti-government protest.
The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday asked Turkish authorities to investigate reports that tear gas canisters and pepper spray were fired directly at demonstrators and into closed spaces.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch late Monday said police use of tear gas in confined spaces “showed dangerous disregard for the well-being – and indeed the lives – of protesters and bystanders.”
“The repeated police violence against people who are dissatisfied with the government policies has deeply polarized Turkey,” Human Rights Watch said. “The government urgently needs to change police tactics and issue a clear signal for restraint.”
Riot police on Tuesday were again deployed in Turkey’s two main cities, keeping an unyielding stance against the street demonstrations. Thousands have flooded the streets nightly, many honking car horns and waving Turkish flags.
Erdogan’s opponents have grown increasingly suspicious about what they call a gradual erosion of freedoms and secular values under his Islamic-rooted ruling party…..
We Are All Turks Today. one humanity. one struggle.
Tuesday, 18th of June
”Standing man ” protests are increasing in Turkey….
This interview was conducted by Zeynep Bilgehan on 18th June for the Turkish paper Hürriyet.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/18/flames-of-resistance-and-hope-in-turkey/
Excerpts:
The mixture of a sharp intelligence, fearlessness and the rebirth of hope that I witnessed was very inspiring. It reminded me to a certain extent of Europe (Paris and Prague) in 1968, much more than the Arab spring. What is happening in Turkey is very clear. An elected authoritarian government, committed to neo-liberalisam and war, imagined that it could do anything it wanted because of its democratic status. This was a foolish mistake….
When I was in Istanbul a few months ago, it was difficult not to detect a pall of depression that had enveloped activists and oppositionists. The closure of one of the city’s oldest cinema on Istiklal had led to mild protestsd. So mild that the government imagined it could accelerate its select and destroy mission. They miscalculated badly. The Prime Minister, in particular, a veritable Sultan of the building industry refused to retreat and embarked on repression. This was the breaking point. People unconcerned with the proposed destruction of Gezi now came out to protest and in huge numbers. The more the repression, the more the protests grew, spreading to virtually the entire country apart from four Kurdish-dominated towns. A campaign to save a park had become a national uprising against an obstinate and thuggish regime….
The courageous Turkish citizens opened up a new front at an important time. And their example might well spread ro France and, who knows, perhaps even Britain and Germany in the months ahead….
What is crucial as I said in my solidarity message is that the government has discredited itself with the help of a tame and servile Turkish media which ignored, underplayed and slandered the occupiers in Taksim during the first weeks….
if a new democratically structured political movement is formed (like, for instance, Syriza in Greece) it could give a permanent voice to the people from below. A monthly public assembly in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bodrum, Antakiyya and other cities to discuss the situation at home and abroad and report on te building of a new movement would create something permanent and make the clearing and re-clearing of the squares a bit meaningless. This is my hope….
Neo-liberal capitalism is hollowing out democracy. Those who fight the capitalist onslaught are also strengthening democracy….
19th of June
This is a better idea of what the “standing man” protest really looked like in Turkey.
And a “standing ovation” for all the Standing People of Turkey.#standingman #Duranadam #occupygezi
19th of June
Update-today! Incredible eyewitness account from one of the protesters in Turkey and plea for help. Please read and help… We are all Turks Today!
“After negotiations with the Prime Minister, the protest groups relaxed a little seeing some small hope of peace and they were actually preparing to scale down the protest in Gezi Park. So everyone in a celebratory mood and this being the weekend, the Gezi Park and Taksim square was packed with all kinds of people including elderly, children and tourists. At around 8PM while there was a concert in the park, people were warned to empty it and within minutes the attack started. Now I can tell you about the following 36-40 hours of torture this nation went through in detail and I contemplated long about posting one of the hundreds of footages of unarmed, peaceful people being beaten by groups of policemen, gassed grandparents, children losing their parents in mayhem, residents being gassed in their own homes, hotels, restaurants, chemists, hospitals and first aid centres being attacked and all sorts of violence you wouldn’t dream of. And I decided not to ruin your day just like it has been ruining our lives for the last 4 days. Please just know that we became a battered, bruised nation over the weekend both physically and psychologically….
“Since then the people are standing silent in many towns and cities, especially at places that have significant meaning for them, for example where one of the protesters was shot dead in Ankara, or in front of the TV stations who don’t report what is going on in the country. And yes, some of them get arrested for just standing, they found a cover for it – standing in silence is ‘being psychologically violent’ towards the police!…
“So while everyone in the country ‘stands-up’ one way or another, I will again ask your support….
“there are some 3D things you can do to help us. Such as contacting your members of the parliament, congress people, NGOs such as Amnesty International, European Union Representatives, Media, alternative media and anyone you can think of to inform them of the atrocities, ask them to act accordingly and put the pressure on Turkish government.
Nothing the protesters do or say is against the constitution so there is no basis of the police violence towards them. Again, it is completely against all the international treaties Turkey signed to use chemical weapons against anyone let alone your own people, but this is what happened over the weekend, we have many people with 2nd and 3rd degree acid burns. The social media arrests are continuing and they are putting together an urgent law to regulate the internet and social media the way they want. Please share these truths with anyone you see fit….”
More at – http://soundofheart.org/galacticfreepress/content/update-istanbul-june-19-2013-one-lightworkers
19th of June. support from the states
I’m feeling sick about what happened in Turkey. An entire world away, and my heart aches with theirs. The brutal crushing of such beauty and innocence as their people have shown is like the mashing of a butterfly, the drowning of a kitten. I think the whole world cries a little each time the forces of hate snuff another candle.
But each time a flower blooms as did in Gezi Park, it fortifies the spirit of the world and rekindles its yearning to be free. And for those of us whose hearts are able to bleed with another’s suffering, it also binds us together in love and our common humanity … as hardships and tragedy will.
19th of June: Report from Istanbul – Good news!
RESISTANCE CONTINUES WITH FORUMS
Every Park Become Gezi Park in Turkey
Gezi Parkers are now discussing the transformation of their movement, saying that “PM did not kick us out of the park, he made everywhere a Gezi Park”.
3 weeks into the protests, brutally forced out of Gezi Park, Istanbulites made a better plan: Occupy every park!
Right now at least 35 parks are home to people assemblies, some are livestreamed, some are still small. And many cities followed… We are reclaiming public spaces one by one
3 weeks into the protests, even us Turks are amazed at our own power and sense of humor
Now we have people assemblies in parks all over Istanbul and many other cities. We are re-designing the society and the way we communicate. It is all happening, here, now. And also happening in Brazil, and hopefully soon, everywhere
The piano was transferred to the Abbasaga Park in the Beşiktaş district, the Beşiktaş sport club fans picked it because it was a place they can protect easily. But then the assembly idea spread, and now its everywhere!
Gezi park is still not open to the public, and Taksim square is open but , after all the violence this weekend no one really prefers to do anything there, except the “standing man”. Instead people are looking for creative ways…
http://bianet.org/english/youth/147740-every-park-become-gezi-park-in-turkey
After an assembly, the piano is back!
We are all Turks today. one humanity. one struggle.
#occupylove #WeAreAllTurksToday #Gezi #Istanbul #Turkey #Occupy #occupygezi #WeAreTheMedia #breakingnews #TurkishSpring #Taksin #occupywallstreet #ows #WeAreAllBraziliansToday #changebrazil #WeAreAll
The Tao of Funny God .. Brazil. Such transcendence of mind was hardly lacking in Brazil recently
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Gezi
Continue with Culture War, Class War: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”
or Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call
or Apocalypse No: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious
or Breaking News — Hell Doesn’t Exist: Good—God! Hell—No! … the Comedy
Return to Wounded Deer and Centaurs — Book 5
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Cool Hand Gipper (The Great Hustle) and What the 1% Would Still Have of Us: The Great American About Face – Context of The American Awakening
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Thirteen:
The Great American About Face
Once Upon a Time, Kindness Was a Noble Thing
Why Insist on the Same Mistakes That Led to the Great Depression?
You don’t know what I’m getting at. But this is the indicator of the gradual change in our country that would be missed by those younger than myself. I only see this glaring discrepancy because of having lived many years in an America whose values were different, and who thought differently, more compassionately than today. I know of an America where even that last big word that I used, compassionately, wasn’t the dirty word that it is today…or the certain game loser, deal breaker if uttered.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
No. See, what’s happened today is that it’s not even society at large that is supposed to benefit. Compassion is not a goal, or even a value, when negotiating. The scornful repetition of those words, “bleeding heart liberal,” has had its intended effect. No, no, it’s not the function of government to care about anybody anymore.
It may be hard for you to realize what a huge change this is from, like, Roosevelt days. The Great Depression went on for a long time, crushing hopes and aspirations, shortening lives, increasing suffering. People lived beneath this yoke for a time that must often have felt interminable. They came out of this darkness only slowly, and with great effort.
There Was a Time When Kindness Was a Noble Thing.
So, yes, in those days, the easing of suffering was a value, compassion was a noble thing, not indicative of weakness like today. This is the way it was then and for most of the decades afterward, not much changing. Even Eisenhower, a Republican… he wasn’t, y’know, at war with the common good in the Fifties; he didn’t think government was not supposed to be compassionate, that it wasn’t their job or anything, that they couldn’t give anybody a helping hand or anything like that. But starting with Reagan and slowly since then it has become that.
People Suffering, People Dying…And This Guy Thinks It’s a Card Game!
Perhaps you’ve heard it too. At the time of it, you would see it discussed all over. There was Rick Santelli on CNBC. This was at the time when it first got out that Obama might just–with millions of foreclosures, people living in tent-cities and everything–might just present as part of his overall policy to deal with the problem something to help…ok, there’s one of those words (help), a certain game-loser; so you know what’s coming next…something that might “help” people who are heading into foreclosure, people losing their homes. The idea was to renegotiate deals with the bank, to recalculate the terms of their mortgage to make it workable to both sides again.
Don’t forget the banks had before that been given huge amounts of money by the American people. So in this plan, instead of proceeding with a foreclosure the banks were asked to be willing to accept slightly less money on the loan than the original terms called for.
It was thought, what would that hurt? After all the banks aren’t going to lose. At the expense of the American people they’ve made out like bandits…in fact, they’ve been bandits…they used extortion to get that money out. With this policy they would get some money out of the loan instead of none in the case of the foreclosure; they would even still make a profit. The only thing they wouldn’t be able to do is to add that note to the pile of losses they would be claiming as part of the government bailout. 
An aside, that last part — making less money than if they could claim it a loss—is the key to understanding the uproar about Obama’s plan to help financially strapped home owners.
So we saw Rick Santelli, a highly visible financial commentator for CNBC, someone I saw everyday for years. He stood in front of the camera on the floor of the stock exchange; CNBC broadcast it to the world. He was against Obama’s plan to “help” mortgage-holders…they should probably have used a different word than help. As he put it “In America, a card laid is a card played.” He said, “This does away with contract law!”
Yes, We’ve Made This Mistake Before.
Well, yea, yea, they used to say those things back in Hoover’s day too, alright? And then when everybody was hurting, and there was thirty to forty percent unemployment and nobody was making any money including the rich fat cats and they were losing their shirts in investments and no longer making money in the stock market, then…then…all of a sudden, ok, then it was ok to help out people who were starving.
But Why Do We Insist on Making It Again?
Well, why did it have to get to that? And why has it gotten to that again, even to where it’s back to where it was…again…at the beginning of the Great Depression: No compassion allowed.
What is that? It’s like “Oh, these people are all deadbeats here.” Oh, yea, all those millions of people? Doesn’t have anything to do with all that money that went to the rich people? Nothing to do with the fact that over the course of all these years we’ve seen the tax rates for the very wealthy go from eighty-some percent in the Fifties to where it is down below thirty-five percent now?
To offset those huge cuts in revenue, did we get any more prosperous in that time? Did those increasing cuts in taxes for the wealthy increasingly stimulate the economy? I repeat, did we get any more prosperous in that time? Did the tax cuts work the way the fat cats said they would?
Compassion = “Hippie.” Mean-Spirited = The “Real” Reality of The Game
Kumbaya—You Value People Over Rules? You’re No Doubt a “Hippie”
Well, No.
Well, I was there. No, they didn’t…and we didn’t…didn’t get more prosperous. We’re a lot worse off. Y’know, when I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties my father was poor. But only he had to work! He might bring home fifty dollars a week, with six kids. But my mother didn’t have to work. Believe me, fifty dollars in that day, it wasn’t like it was worth a thousand dollars or something; there wasn’t that much difference.
Kumbaya. My Lord!
So there used to be this idea of benefiting society-at-large. There was this thing put out–even though it was a sham on the part of Republicans–that if you could somehow convince the Democrats that what you wanted was going to benefit the “society at large” they might come over to your side. Republicans still found it useful to promote the idea that they were representing the people.
What “Extra” Kitchen?
But no, no, no. If you say now that something is going to benefit somebody…. Like Rick Santelli said, “Well, a card laid…contract law’s all important…blah, blah, blah…. Does any of you people out there…” He was talking to the stock exchange people; he said, “Does any of you want to pay your hard-earned money so that the guy next door can have that extra kitchen that he put in?”
Now, where the hell did that come from? I hardly think that many of the people losing their homes were out there spending all their money on “extra” kitchens. So what’s the implication? The implication is that we’ve got a bunch of losers, spendthrifts, who are throwing their money away and they don’t deserve a break.
More Likely It Was Your “Extra” Kitchen, Rick. And, Thank You Very Much but We’ve Already Paid, and Dearly, for It.
Duh! Doesn’t that sound like the banks? “Extra kitchen”…Doesn’t that sound like the stock broker people, doesn’t that sound like the people who are talking about the other people this way? Wow.
Anyway, it was played over and over again. There were even people, even some pundits and governmental folks in public who were saying, 
“Yes, he was expressing what lot of people are thinking.” What the hell is that? That nobody can catch a break unless you’re rich? 
See, that’s what happens when something is repeated over and over and over again… Self-benefiting mean-spiritedness like this can be spoken of as being, somehow, reasonable.
A Broken Person Is Preferable to a Broken Rule in This Game.
And what is it that was repeated over and over and over again? Well, let me just put it this way…because I was there. You know the real issue here…when you say that it’ll benefit “society at large” or you say it’s going to help or benefit real people, or you indicate in some way that it’s gonna ease the suffering of a lot of people… 
The real thing insinuated has to do with that thoroughly maligned idea—”bleeding heart liberal”—and things like that.
Worse than that, these days, is that when that human touch somehow gets in, it’s no more considered a game! “It’s supposed to be a game,” that’s what they’re thinking, now. And it’s like, “Aw come on you’re trying to benefit people instead of playing a game.” That’s where that contract law comes in, it’s like, “No, that’s breaking the rules.” Well we’re supposed to be running a government for the people not for the rules, aren’t we?
You Value People Over Rules? You’re No Doubt a “Hippie.”
So you don’t even hear goodness coming in anymore. Or if you do hear the word compassionate it’s at most the naive utterance of someone that’s wet behind the years…some newbie or hippie…some “soft-headed” person who might have used it in a question in a town meeting, or the like.
And that’s another thing. A hippie? What the hell’s a hippie? Well this hippie can tell you. That is a definition I’ve watched change over the years.
The definition in these strange days and among these current cold-hearted people is way different than originally.
In looking at this change in the meaning of hippie we bring into view another aspect of the overall argument I am making. I can tell you now that at the end you will see it all comes together neatly.
It all makes sense because of some basic human feelings, which are even present in large groups. Unfortunately those widely shared feelings are completely at odds with another set of commonly held basic human feelings that can be present and shared in another large group. That might sound complicated.
Compassion = “Hippie.”
Mean-Spirited = The “Real” Reality of The Game
What I’m trying to say is, who might that hippie be? Basically, these days, if you are one of those that uses words like compassionate…you‘re a hippie!
And on the other side of this, the side that is presented to all, promulgated to everyone, and the only one considered “real,” we’ve got these mean-spirited feelings. They are at war with the idea that we have government that’s there to at all benefit, be on the side of, or even be for its citizens.
Like earlier I brought up the example of the Food and Drug Administration as something that benefits everyone, actual people, though it puts constraints on businesses. 
Government seen this way exists to protect American people in situations where they would otherwise be powerless. And that is based on this old-fashioned notion that it is a good thing to save people from dying or from suffering in situations where a single individual is helpless against a cultural or societal wrong.
Government could be seen this way because one preeminent value was that life was precious and good, that people dying was not good, that it was important to prevent that to the extent one could…more important than money or profits or the comfort and 
pleasure of people with riches. Those turn-of-the-century “hippies” valued life over arbitrary rules, people over profits, the common good over the capitalist game.
But I guess nowadays they’d say, “No, no, no…those people paid for that food!” And, you know, let the buyer beware. A dollar laid is a dollar played, after all.
Cool Hand Gipper (The Great Hustle) and What the 1% Would Still Have of Us: Context of The American Awakening
American Awakening and Cool Hand Gipper—“Obvious Truths,” an Overview
“Obvious Truths” Parts One and Two Reprise
This is the third and final part in this series delineating the history of the American Republican’ incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive … seemingly coordinated … nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “Filthy Rich” through totally concocted untruths.
All in the Family
We are seeing here revealed the fifty-year invisible family and community that surrounded all Americans and affected every aspect of their lives, including, and intentionally, the basic components of one’s personality, and the erosion of reason, Soul, and independent thought or action.
American Awakening
I am showing how only because of increasingly cocky and greedy acts and extreme over-reaching “in broad daylight,” before the entire world, did this malevolent surround become visible. These brutish and 
thievish over-reaches displayed an incredible disregard for, disrespect of, indeed, an actual literal inability of the “Filthy Rich”—the 1%—and their Republican puppets to 
SEE American People, who were the recipients of these attacks. Together these reveals, displayed unintentionally however blatantly and 
unknowingly by the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich”…
and before the entire world…disclosed to the masses of Americans some “cracks,” “stains,” or textures in the “dome” of unreality they’d existed in, which had made them blind to Reality itself, and had kept them in a near zombie-like dream reality.
“They’re so cute when they jump for their treat.”
As this Awakening continued, some began remembering events, the memories of which had been “bleached” out of awareness until just then, and then with remembering they realized how they’d been trained like animals their entire lives for the uses, whatever they’d be, of the “Filthy Rich,” and been trained then to forget that.
“From here, they look just like ants.”
It is clear that the “filthy rich” had an absolute certainty of their success because of their unmitigated power. 
What is also evident is the absolute inability of the “Filthy Rich”…which was the shocking thing they’d carelessly let out and therefore displayed to the World…absolute inability of the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich” to actually notice, let alone view or act towards, Americans as any thing even living or having sentient ability, let alone as humans, people, or individuals.
All We Have to Do Is Dream.
And as for the term “fellow Americans” often employed by Rich-publican politicos, if that thought even crossed your mind for a second as being anything but a device, you are not fully appreciating just how literally I mean for my words to be taken. 
You may very well, in fact, be deeply dreaming and have missed the crack in the dream state that had shone the light in the eyes of a sufficiently large segment of the world population as to cause them to come out of trance and begin to untie their formerly invisible bonds, so that they could try looking around, which led to the realization of
the reality that had 
been blocked from view, and the beginnings of investigations into the real truths of their existence, and to this series of expositions, which delineates the actual, formerly invisible profile of the actual actors in American’s lives, and the processes of control, and the things in their lives that were determined for them by the “Filthies,” though ordinary folks thought they had been making decisions for themselves.
What The 1% Want to Do With Us
And the last aspects of this series delineates the real factors in your life and the outlines of the real intentions for our lives these puppet masters have had, and have even now in mind.
Processing the Populace
In Part One, I talked about the fifty-year Republican campaign to convince the media and the American people of certain truisms that had nothing to do with the truth, in fact were almost one-hundred percent of the time, the 
opposite of the truth. It is a pretty amazing story of a campaign involving such things as getting people poorer and poorer, requiring them to work longer hours and so on so that they would have less time to think about things. It included other elements such as the way in which people’s minds were either stressed or made busy, and also the way they wore down the American people’s resolve to fight back against injustice.
Part Two elaborated on these parts of the campaign, which together resulted in an erosion of reason among Americans. I discussed how this erosion of reason resulted in an erosion of action as well and why this would be desirable by the societal puppet-masters. Next, I discussed the means of the manipulation—the media, the puppet strings employed by the masters.
The Great Hustle (Cool Hand Gipper)
After that I talked about the way our lives were focused away from human concerns and reduced to the level of a game, contrived by the elite and which was geared toward their ends, suited to their abilities, and in which they dominated. This game was most of the time camouflaged in positive, civic sounding phrases and terminology that made it seem that it was an endeavor for the betterment of all, but I explained how it actually was played and what the motives and ends really were.
$$$ 666 The Great Religion
Last, I bring out how even this ruse of societal welfare was ever more let go of, as the puppet-kings gained in strength and in success in converting mass minds to a belief in the dogma of the game that they controlled.
Dogma Keeping Out Pesky Saviors
They channeled people’s inclinations away from their own priorities and from human concerns to be in alignment with the overseer’s non-humanistic, alien ones. Human concerns such as life, easing of suffering and the like were seen as silly and laughable.
And Then The Awakening
As they gathered power, they became more blatant and reckless in their machinations. The game was successfully installed as the focus and preeminent value of life itself; but in this headiness of accomplishment they became complacent about their subterfuge. Reckless in their maneuvers and ever more careless in concealing it, they risked being exposed.
Nightmare Apparent
Aspects of their self-benefiting game play and the cockiness with which they pursued them are further disclosed here in Part Three. We see how this creates a condition of such extreme suffering in the populace that stimulates them into awakening from the dream. 
The matrix is glimpsed. How the masses awaken and behold in horror the shackles and blinders upon them is described beginning here and in subsequent parts of Culture War, Class War.
Parts One and Two are intended to be read before this one, but if you haven’t done so this review will gave you a platform from which to view what follows.
“Brother, I Do Not Know Thee.”
Part Three continues from the end of Part Two where I was describing how the brouhaha around Rich Santelli’s callous comment revealed a wholesale and disturbing change in American’s sensitivities toward each other and in particular a callousness about each other’s suffering. Part Three continues from here:
Foolin’ the People About History: Reagan’s Great Ruse and The Face of the Enemy, Ours
Foolin’ the People About History…Reagan’s Great Ruse and The Face of the Enemy, Ours
Foolin’ the People About History
Obvious “Truths”:
- Reagan “saved” America.
- Reagan saved Americans from an oppressive tax burden.
- Reagan brought down the Iron Curtain, the Soviets, Berlin Wall.
- In America we were far better off than the Soviets were because… We are the richest country in the world. In America we only get better.
- wealthier.
- don’t have to work as hard.
- can take better care of our children.
So these days you have the attitude, “A dollar laid is a dollar played”; people’s suffering is irrelevant to the game.
Reagan’s Great Ruse
We have seen a lot of change over the last five decades. And many new thoughts have become truisms that are actually not true. In the real world they’re nonsensical.
The Eighties Changed Everything…The Great Swindle.
Unfortunately they abound because of the cultural change initiated by Ronald Reagan that lowered the standard of living for everyone except for the rich who were the beneficiaries of that switch. It was the greatest shift of money upward, to the higher classes, in history, at that time. Bush in the last decade outdid him though.
The Republicans pulled off this transfer of wealth under the banner of capitalism. The huge tax cuts for the seriously rich, which was how this relocation of money was accomplished, began with Reagan. When it was proposed during the 1980 presidential race Bush the Elder called it “voodoo economics.” This was before he was invited on the ticket with Reagan.
Voodoo economics gradually brought the highest marginal rate of taxes down below thirty percent from the seventy percent it had been when Reagan took office. This should be compared with the ninety-some percent it was under Democratic and Republican presidents—Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy—in the 1940s through 1963. Reaganomics took corporate tax rates down to forty percent from the fifty percent that it had been previous to that beginning in the Forties.
Keep in mind that these were times—Forties through Sixties—when America’s economy boomed, turning the US into the wealthiest country in the world. Remember also that the last time, previous to Reagan, that marginal tax rates were below forty percent was in the Twenties, prior to the Great Depression. Not coincidentally at that same time, preceding the Depression, corporate tax rates were also at their lowest and were down in the teens. History records how well those low corporate and private marginal rates worked out. This did not stop the Reaganites from opting to repeat the previous debacle.
The Face of the Enemy, Ours
Overall, this bonanza for the rich–along with union-busting and other anti-worker practices by Reagan–had the effect of gradually lowering the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans. The result could not have been more ironic. These pro-capitalist, fervid anti-communist Republicans like Reagan and his supporters began the process that would make us mirror images of Soviet Russia in several hugely important ways.
At One Time, “Women Don’t Have to Work”; At Another, “Women Are Free to Work.”
Reaganomics brought in the two-salary family. This had been one of those major propaganda points for the anti-communists in the Fifties: We were horrified finding out that behind the Iron Curtain both parents had to have jobs to support their family. It was thrown out as one of the ways we were superior in our capitalist way of life—American wives and mothers did not have to work and were able to spend their time instead raising the children.
The anti-communist Reaganites also brought in institutional child care, for now this was needed because both parents were working. Someone had to take care of the children, and they would begin that at earlier and earlier ages.
At One Time, “Strangers Take Care of Their Kids”; At Another, “Child Care Teaches Social Skills and Enhances Multicultural Awareness.”
Again, extramural child care was one of those elements of Soviet life that in the Fifties was pointed out to us disdainfully and which we were grateful not to be subject to.
It would be thought inhuman, if not barbaric, for children to be cared for by strangers, while the mother was working. There was something dangerous, if not lascivious, insinuated to us by propagandists, about pre-school children not being with their mothers, not receiving her protection and love during that vulnerable and needy time, but being instead “in the hands of strangers”…(god forbid!)
But after Reagan this dreaded feature of Soviet culture became the norm in American culture as well.
So Reagan’s economic policies pushed Americans into a lower standard of living—fooling them in all kinds of ways that this was not the case—which was evident in major changes in American culture which mirrored that of the Soviets such as the virtual requirement of two-salary families and along with that the necessity of child care outside the family at earlier and earlier years. But these Soviet-like changes did not also bring with them Communist benefits of job security, free child and medical care, guaranteed lifelong support, and so on.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen:
Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve: Only The Game Remains
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two – 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 Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three – 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 Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=gjhxqmkbdn
“The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’ Part 3”
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen:
Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve: Only The Game Remains
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Reason and Action Eroded, Only The Game Remains: How the Game Works – People’s Lives Not Even a Chip in the Negotiations Anymore
How the Game Works and The Religion of Capitalism: The Game Is the One True Faith with Winning All Important, Integrity Laughable, and Kindness a Sign of Weakness
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twelve:
Only The Game Remains
The REALLY Special Interests. People’s Lives Are Not Even a Chip in the Negotiations Anymore
The Really Special Interests…What They Want Is At Our Expense
Reason and Action Eroded, The Game Is All That Remains
Note to Ordinary Folks: Ordinary Folks Are Out to Get You.
Well since they believe a loving God would condemn them to endless suffering, don’t see why we can’t convince them their own biggest enemy is to be found in a mirror.
But the Republicans were at one point cornered by justifiable attacks about being backed by special interests, so they concocted this idea that the Democrats were too.
Everybody’s Doing It.
They couldn’t deny it was true about them, so they just made it like, well, it was everybody. That way they avoided being revealed as bad people. For what they did wouldn’t make them bad. It would just make them politicians.
An added benefit for them in “democratizing” the guilt this way is that folks thinking all 
politicians are the same, that they’re all taking money, means they would be unlikely to vote. They would say, “Ah, they’re all crooks.” Is not that what we’re hearing? Isn’t what we’re hearing that there is no such thing as an honest politician? And keeping the masses, who are helped by Democrats, away from the polls can only help Republicans engaged in swindling them.
The Really Special Interests: What They Want Is at Our Expense.
But once the term special interest meant something very specific, and it was hardly confusing. We need to go back to the time before the whole subject became so muddled and full of misinformation that even the pundits didn’t know what they were talking about anymore. Back when the term was coined, the special interests were thought of as the interests of the very small numbers of wealthy people and their financial arms, big businesses, who sought favors from government that were at odds with the welfare of the masses of less moneyed Americans.
For example there might be a group from, say, the coal industry, whose interests would be higher profits for being allowed to spew extra amounts of toxic fumes into the atmosphere. That would be the kinds of 
things they would want: something that benefited them at the expense of the majority of folks. Consider: If what was sought would benefit most other people as well, it would not need to be lobbied for solely by this small group, this business concern. Such a change would be advanced on behalf of the greater number of people and would succeed that way.
So a really special interest would push for something 
that would bring them greater profits in spite of the fact that it would hurt the majority of Americans. In this example of air pollution, it would be felt negatively by all Americans,
eventually the whole planet, including people of other countries, and even the plant and animal life, in which species in existence thousands of times longer than us would be gone forever. This is why an interest might be “special.” It would be special in that its benefits would be singular, not shared.
To the contrary, the common good would be reduced for the temporary financial benefit of a relatively small group of individuals, in this case, coal barons. Keep in mind also it would only be the rich capitalist owners in these industries who would see the benefits. That is the real meaning of special.
Religion of Capitalism – The Game Is the One Truth Faith
And Then the Great Threat
In a clear-headed sense, a boon to a special interest would involve some sort of legislative help to the profits of, basically, these special rich capitalist owners; and it would be given, very often, at great cost to all those others I have been mentioning who were not in the Congressional bargaining room. So how could such a thing be justified? Well, here is how it works, beginning with another great lie, delivered as a threat.
The threat would amount to this: That unless these favors are granted, say, as in the example,
if you didn’t let us put that stuff in the air, we’re gonna have to have layoffs. The threat of workers losing their jobs is always, always, the gauntlet thrown 
down to jimmy profits into the hands of a few.
And saving worker’s jobs is always, always thrown out to the public as the justification for granting these singular boons. So the American worker is indirectly threatened with the loss of a job and a paycheck.
The part that will rarely be spoke is the cost of this legislative largess to the general population.
In our example, what will not be mentioned is that some people’s lives will actually be ended—there is always some of this, though this is the biggest unspoken—for the granting of this wish. What is recklessly ignored is that when this regulation easing, as in our example, goes into effect, 
it will actually kill some people; it will diminish people’s lives; it will increase diseases, cancer and emphysema for example; and overall it will result in more suffering for thousands or millions of times more people than the few that will benefit. Do you begin to see how really special a real special interest is?
But as for these costs to us ordinary, non-special, people, they will not be mentioned by either side of the bargaining. This will hardly even be a chip in the negotiations. What will be put on the table is worker’s jobs. That threat is that unless these favors are granted, well, we’re gonna have to have layoffs. And then they would say, “Well, American workers will suffer.”
And that’s the magical meaningless mantram—”American workers will suffer” which is another one of those lies again added to create fog, to create confusion, in this case a smog of misinformation, stifling the reasoned understanding of what is actually at stake.
Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted
Their Kind of “Sharing the Pain” – My Problems Will Be Your Problems, They Say.
And Then Outright Extortion
In fact we had a conspicuous example of this, the way…let’s call it what it is…extortion was employed by the banks not many years ago. The filthy rich, in the guise of investors, pulled off one of the biggest extortions in American history and got away scot free. Even the Democrats could not see through it (still don’t).
Well, in any other instance of such a tactic, in any other instance by anybody in America doing what was done, it would have been criminally prosecuted. 
But not so in the case of these special rich people, represented by these bank executives.
How spectacular this oversight in singling out the guilty is rarely brought out. But truly massive is this miscarriage of justice. 
Consider that there are vastly more ordinary Americans than there are in the tiny group of filthy rich. So there will of course be far more instances in the general population of any crime you would think of. In this case we are looking at extortion, and virtually every instance of such a crime committed among the general population would attract the intense attention and the full wrath of justice there. Naturally, the harm to the victim or even victims would be constrained to the tiny number of people affected, and the limited amounts of money involved, in any particular case.
On the other hand here we had a much tinier group of people—the filthy rich and the heads of the banks that represent them. 
And the percentage of that group involved in such an extortion is far greater than the incidence of that crime in the greater population, i.e., they represent a high crime zone for such malfeasance and a much bigger danger when their crimes go unpunished and can continue unfettered. Such small groups with higher rates of crime, when there is smaller mounds of money to protect them, are labeled as “criminal gangs,” “hoodlums,” “organized crime,” “gang-bangers” and the like. But not so when the perpetrators dress in such fine suits and stink with money.
Further the scale on which these crimes are perpetrated are that of the entire population of the United States and expands itself to include harm to those in other nations and even among the unborn—future generations. So the the magnitude of the crime is infinitely larger than could ever be pulled off by an average American. 
Still, the smaller scale, less harmful instances of this crime are ruthlessly sought out and punished. Whereas the immeasurably larger crime of the super wealthy is let go…and this in spite of the fact mentioned that the future threat is larger and considerably more likely if the current wrong is not addressed.
With these things known, how mind-boggling is it to notice this blatant extortion not pointed out, not labeled as such, hardly addressed?
Their Kind of “Sharing the Pain” – My Problems Will Be Your Problems, They Say.
Well here we have, in this case, the banks, the preeminent fronts for the organized filthy rich, demanding extortion money, which if not received…here we go again…eventually would result in their inability to do business and would affect people. This threat is one of their ploys.
Just like the coal barons in the example above who would ask for concessions saying if they did not get them they would be forced to lay off American workers, the banks would have their way of trying to convince that they should be helped or it will affect great numbers of people. In their case, they would say it would affect their ability to do business and to serve the American people.
One way or another the idea is to obscure the reality that help to the banks will help primarily this small group, in this case, 
of bankers, and to make it that their problem is seen as our problem, the public’s problem. This increases the pressure on politicians to grant the favor. For it is spun that it is not the wealthy investors whose welfare is at stake but the public at large.
So there is the extortion, you see. Unlike coal barons threatening to fire workers, essentially bankers threatened to stop providing loans. They would hold them back if not paid. 
The degree to which this was untrue is shown by the fact that after they did get the bailout, they used it to feather their nests and to expand their bank’s market share. Chase Bank, for example, sat on the bailout cash they received, with the intention of using it to buy out other banks that would fail, which is exactly what they did with the money. Banks also gave out those high bonuses like I’ve discussed.
Meanwhile the public was not served. Money remained tight. There arose a big hue and cry over the fact that the money was covering bankers’ losses (i.e., going into their pockets) but the public was not getting the loans they needed. 
So in retrospect that money would have been much more wisely spent going somehow directly into the people’s hands who needed it, not by funneling it through the hands of gluttonous banking institutions.
And what about their threat of it affecting society at large if they were not placated? Well, society did pay dearly, did suffer, even though the banks were paid their extortion money, handsomely too. And since so much of that loot went to the folks who didn’t need it, overall the economy ended up worse off.
Short term the problem was swept under the rug, but in borrowing from the future to help rich people today it guaranteed the problem would get a permanent installation in America’s economy. Seriously, this problem can not be calculated or even imagined away, so Americans will suffer its results forever as far as we know.
So this is the extortion and the lie that sits in the middle of the threat that it is the American workers who will suffer if the wealthy don’t receive their payola.
For it is never the workers or, in this case, those needing loans who would suffer if the extortion is not given in to, it is the fat cats, coal barons, filthy rich, 1% who would suffer, and for that matter, not even all that much compared to the suffering inflicted on the public by their greedy practices, whether or not the extortion money or concession is provided.
To Win at All Costs – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours
To Win at Any Cost – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours
Anyway, the game is to claim that the pain of those with wealth is really the American people’s pain, so as to make it seem a large number of people would be helped. 
That’s one of their lies that gets by; this is how they seek to “share the pain”…”spread their burden.” It is a banking problem, in this instance, 
something that has had disastrous effects on the economy and on people’s lives, but it would be better handled by society if the problem of the people involved would be addressed, 
not the problems—money lost, investments gone under—of the filthy rich.
The upshot is that over and over we hear these big lies of how “the American people”…one of those huge buzz words… “the American people are going to be hurt.” Or, it became, “the working people of this country,” or in the example of the coal barons, above, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs. In light of what has been said, I hope it is clear what b.s. that is.
How They Try to Convince That Their Problems Are Ours
We see the threat; we see the extortion; we see the crime and its magnitude, and we see the lie that gives life to it all. Let us look more closely at the manner of the making of this spectacular ruse.
First…some of this has been said, but watch how it unfolds…you’re starting out with a group that is a minute segment of the population as a whole. But they maintain they are identical with or equivalent to society as a whole, making it that it is not the magnitude of their money but of their numbers which raises their voice above all, which is not true of course.
I was talking earlier about how they would do that in making up the tax codes. Recall, they would say, “Well, society as a whole will suffer if you don’t…”
So they would always package any benefit to them as being not for them, really, at all but for a great number of people. And if they could pull that off, if they could make that magical equivalency then it was like they had a home run. They would say the working people of this country would be affected, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs, for example.
Then here is how they make that number bigger: These people, in this example the coal barons, not to be underestimated, would assert that because of their layoffs naturally there would be more of these layoffs by other coal companies. And then, they’d say, these layoffs would affect all the shopkeepers, retail merchants and so on who service the impacted regions; 
which in turn…gotta keep making it bigger and bigger, more and more and more people…which in turn would affect all the industries making the products that won’t be sold because of the layoffs; 
and of course a pull back in demand for products means fewer workers needed to make what is needed, thus an increase of unemployment in all other sectors would ensue; which unemployed workers on a grander scale would have them unable to buy from their local merchants; which equals the losses to the manufacturers in an ever more expanding array of products and industries; 
requiring they let people go; thus even more, ever accelerating rates of layoffs and widening unemployment; well , those laid off would not be buying the products in their local shops; which leads to…well armageddon the way they would have it.
So it just gets bigger and bigger; it goes around and around and around.
To Win at All Costs
But They Will Say Anything to Win
Just a hint though, this is one of those seemingly rational analyses that although seeming to make sense is not grounded in the real world; it is speculative and made up. It’s roots are solely in the dark hearts and motivations of those attempting to push through their argument, to give it added weight, to basically win at any cost.
That’s a lot of what the difference is. It is that some people will wager with any amount of harm to others; they will say anything, will make up anything. 
They don’t have to have any facts; they don’t have to know if that’s the way it works. As McCain said, “I don’t know much about economics.” 
This is the guy who was popular among the corporate crowd of the country, the same group making that simplistic argument above.
What’s Truth Got to Do With It?
So basically their game involves winning at any cost to others, being willing to assert anything, with no thought that truth should even come into a bargaining situation. I mean, really, the attitude is that, what the hell does truth have to do with it? It’s like, we can make a good argument; we can convince people; we can persuade people; we can fool enough people into thinking it’s true…and that’s all that matters. [Footnote 1]
So you see they’re getting kind of cocky; they don’t even think they have to have truth…any actual facts or evidence backing up their arguments. Then you have your whole attitude of, “What the hell, why is anybody bothering to bring any truth to this?”
So they don’t bother even to come with any evidence to be laid out on the table; it becomes the most elegant spectacle in sophistry imaginable.
Compassion’s Downright Laughable in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
Kindness Means Weakness in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real
What it becomes then for these special interests and their Republican representatives is something with about as much gravity as a board game. They’re seeing these matters, which are of dire importance to most of society, about the way we do when playing a game of Monopoly, in which we compete without consequences and try to win without remorse.
Though the differences should be noted. There’s nothing at stake in a game of Monopoly among friends; it is just simple play with light-hearted risks. There are no real families having to move out if one player buys up all the land and houses of another; there’s nobody even paying rent of $40 if they land on Boardwalk, nobody suffering when you’re told to pay a doctor bill…or to go to jail.
Going Directly to Jail, Not Passing Go – The Only Part That’s Really Like Monopoly, for the 99%
This point, however, keep in mind as increased perspective on the real world actions of these wealthy folk. In Monopoly you try to win. And you would consider deception. You might hide how much money or property you have…if you’re asked, for example, you might not tell the truth. And this dissembling would be considered a good ploy and harmless. Even the other players might admire such a deception .
But is this the way it is in the bargaining of the special interests through their lackey paid-for Republican representatives? No. The consequences of their cavalier play are being felt somewhere. But they cover up their unconcern through the pretense of acting on interests not of their own, but of that reliable home base of the society at large.
We’re Not Supposed To Be Monopoly … Or the Wild West.
So, there’s Monopoly, then there’s the real world, where things like deception or whatever for the purpose of winning have real world effects on people. But we’re supposedly living in an era or time that is not like the old Wild West. 
We purportedly have a democracy with the aim of benefiting the majority of people, or at least as many people as possible. And we claim our intention is to do this without unduly punishing any particular group or having any persons inflicted with unnecessary grief. It’s supposed to be fair; government is supposed to serve people.
This Game’s Not For You
So that’s why I was saying, in the early days when there was bargaining in Congress by the special interests they maintained a pretense of caring about people. After all, we maintain that government is supposed to be representing the American people.
Getting to Home Base, in Their Baseball Game
So moneyed interests would garner these special breaks, in the tax codes or wherever, because basically they would get to the point where they would convince enough deciders, even if it wasn’t true, that such a change, in the tax code or policy, or whatever, would benefit society at large. As I said, that is kind of like reaching home base for them. You got it then; you’re home free if you can make that link. 
For that is the touted purpose of our elected deciders, it is to benefit the society at large.
Now, nobody can benefit all the people all the time, so that’s as close as you can get…society at large…it’s as near to a home base as you can get.
Anyway, that was the thought involved on both sides of this whole game for a long time. And I stress—if you haven’t gotten the point already…I’ve been leading up to it—that this was the thinking on both sides of this game. It’s like a game for the Republicans, just like Monopoly for us.
And, how was it played? Well the thoughts were, if you were able to get to home base—which is equal to proving a benefit for average Americans, society at large or as a whole, or the electorate—then you score.
But Supported by “Obvious Truths”—Those Untrue Truisms—It Is Now Easier for Them to “Score.”
But that thinking has changed over time. This difference in particular shows the effectiveness of the brainwashing resulting from the repetition of Republican lies over time…the enshrinement of “obvious truths.”
I noticed that over time…and this is a development folks younger than me don’t know about…that the terms formerly used in the game were no longer used. No longer were phrases like “society-at-large,” the common good, government of and by the people, the welfare of the majority, government “caring” for people, anyone’s suffering being eased, and such even brought in.
“It’ll Benefit Society-at-Large? What Are You, a Wuss?”
Words like suffering, compassion, ease, good, benefit, the people, were not uttered anymore. In fact they were felt to be counterproductive. They were considered deal breakers if let into the conversation on matters that were deemed, well…”real.”
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Thirteen:
The Great American About Face
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eleven: Reality Transplant, The Media
Footnotes
1.For a humorous aside on this attitude of the truth not mattering when it comes to the game, check out this “Auto Salesman Tells All on Sillymickel” below.
This is another takeoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness” — a much longer audio clip (http://bit.ly/autoclass).
Auto Salesman has the clips from “Anatomy” titled “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como does The Doors” (http://bit.ly/ComoDoors) and “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” (http://bit.ly/snorter).
There is a spinoff, as well, at http://bit.ly/ComoDoors2, titled “AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig.”
This one, just below, is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego:
“Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel” – comedy monologue, video by SillyMickel Adzema
Category: comedy, environment, politics, psychology, Tea Party, satire
What follows is the full text of the video.
About SillyMickel (me), Auto Salesman (my “evil twin”) says:
“Ok. Enough about that. I’m gonna get back to being this erudite mother-fucker, wherever he is. I guess I got to bring him out.
“I try to keep him in that jar, but he keeps going on about
‘It’s just a laundry room.’
“Aaah, shut up.
“I try to keep him in there. I cover it with grass. Which I give him breathing holes; I don’t know what he’s complaining….
“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like,
‘Why, George W. Bush, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was like a government job, and it was all for the purpose of doing this and that, and that it killed thousands of people….
‘And not only that, but the scientists are saying that we’ve only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.’
“And I say, “You call them reasons? ….
“You call THEM reasons?” I mean…..
“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocketbook one bit! Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…
“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care? I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to affect them!
“Now, as far as, you know, the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: 
THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care? See?
“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, you know, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop BOTHERIN’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because, you know, it’s like, NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it MAT-ter!?….”
“Besides, everybody’s so fucking stupid, they think God’s gonna come down and save them anyway, because, you know, they all think they’re so special and everything. And so do I, you know. But not him, he says… He’s kinda wierd because he kinda thinks… that…you know… He’s moved by God, but he doesn’t expect God to come down and save him! I don’t understand it.
“He expects…. He wants God to save everybody. And he wants to help. Well, we don’t think like that around here! Do we?
“Naaa. That’s just…we ain’t…that’s just a little bit too goddamn complex for our thinking processes. I mean, it’s like, ‘Am I gonna die?’… you know… ‘Am I gonna be able to eat?’
“And if it’s anything beyond that, what does it matter?
“I think I understand. Yeah. I understand… I don’t know why that erudite puke doesn’t understand it. You know? Maybe I’ll go and tell. Maybe I will, behind his back, you know. This recording here…maybe I’ll send it to them. Just so that they know…that I understand.
“That he’s got a part of himself that’s sane, you know. Keeps him on track, you know? He’s got a part…
“But then maybe they’d like to hear some of my other stuff, too, you know? Like ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’ and my class consciousness stuff, you know…Mr. Boehner and all that. Maybe they would like that because maybe they would understand that I’m like them, you know? It’s just that, you know, that erudite guy, you know…is the one that they don’t like. Think I should? Yea, I know that.
“Because, you know? They should at least know that there’s part of him that’s like that….
“Oh, he’s…. He wants to come out now. He wants to come out.
“What, you don’t like me? Ain’t I better lookin? Ain’t I better lookin than him?
“No!?
“Well, you’re an insultin’ little prick, aren’t you? Well, you’re snortin’ and you’re insultin’…snortin’…insultin’
“Man! Ok, alright, alright, alright!
“What’s your name? Katie? Anyway?
“It would be Katie, I figured it. Boy, man, that Katie, she’s a bad aaaassss! I seen her on TV, she’s a BAD ASS!
“Anyway. I see, underneath all that sweetness….
“Ok! Alright, I’ll go, I’ll go!
“Ya don’t have to PUSH!
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two
– 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 Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.
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The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Thirteen:
The Great American About Face
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eleven: Reality Transplant, The Media
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Love’s Wake-Up Call and Why We Must Give Our All: Apocalypse Emergency – Your Child Will Die … How Can You Turn Away?
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two: Love’s Wake-Up Call – Apocalypse Emergency
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Your Child Will Die … How Can You Turn Away?
There are topics you will rarely if ever ear in the mainstream media. It is not that they’re not true; it is that these true things are…well, is there such a thing as too true? Truth that the vast majority of people will either not hear, or will distort, will deny, will conveniently find hard to understand—that is, they will retreat into confusion—and so many other things. Obviously, by the title, you already know the kinds of truths I’m referring to.
Your Child Will Die, How Can You Turn Away?
Our species has never been confronted with such truths—facts about the inevitable demise of our entire species in short order, unless something on a massive scale is done. And it seems our systems have no capacity for it. 
For indeed such an event has never occurred on our planet in its entire multibillion year history. [Footnotes 1 and 2]
So the fact you are even listening, fully aware of the title, proves you are one of the few who 
are opting to know the truth—however disturbing—rather than turn your head, as an unbelievable number of people are currently doing, to the likelihood of apocalypse….sorry, that’s not something people want to know. But ecocide, planet death, apocalypse will be a certainty unless people get the courage to do something, which necessarily of course starts with LOOKING at the problem! 
OK, I’ll try again, this isn’t easy for me either. The cumulative scientific evidence relating to the fate of this planet has been accelerating in the direction of there being little to no hope that there will be much, if any, life on this planet, at some point only twenty to fifty years from now. So as I was trying to say above, many people are currently turning their head to the likelihood that we will all be dead in what will probably seem the fastest decades ever.
What makes this likelihood so disturbing is that many people know this and yet don’t care. Some even get a charged up thrill, or sense of power at the prospect. And many others just can’t wait! 
Sadly they have certain misguided religious beliefs—for example, “the rapture”—that have rationalized and made desirable this most abominable thing—wiping out the efforts and strivings and occurrences of billions of years and almost eight billion human souls alone in current time, and negating the passionate struggles of billions of humans prior to us who wanted more than anything else to leave the world a better place. But take a cynical—maddened—generation or two, and they may as well never have lived.
Why am I saying this? If you have children, or grandchildren, even if you might not see it, what kinds of parents exist now that blithely turn away from 
the trillion-alarm fire that is already waging, which will consume their beloveds in ways too horrible to contemplate? I do not understand it; for in any other situation where they would be threatened, 
wouldn’t many even risk their own lives?
I need to say this because, despite the madness surrounding us in the minds of people stressed with problems of all kinds that are now at unprecedented levels, I have faith in God and in the nobility of humans at their base. I believe that more and more will not only face this horrible darker-than-night cloud looming and rushing us from the horizon, but will deem it to be the one worthy thing left to do, whichever way it goes. I am using my God-given skills of communication and intellect, along with a lifetime of study into the human mind and its healing, to try to reverse our current plunge. [Footnote 3]
I know there are others like myself right now attempting to wake up the noble spirited, the heroic among us, who once convinced will add whatever unique qualities God has blessed them to this once in a multibillions chance to be good, kind, brave, hard working, sympathetic, heartful, strong, God-loving, life embracing, laughter-, song-, and children-loving humans again.
To be humans again, not greedy beasts of prey with green in their eyes and their blood, who have been taking over this planet for several decades now, for idiotically selfish ends. So maddened are they, we have already seen the first incredible detonation of their unconcern for this planet—all God’s creatures on it, and even their own offspring—in this collapse of an entire global economic system in what seemed practically to be overnight in 2007. So insane they, we have seen the consequences of their greedy craving in the increasing radiation of the planet, through accidents like Fukushima, and the dying of the oceans—our oxygen source—with the Gulf Oil Spill.
So when I think the media is soft peddling this dire and vital truth of the approaching death of all as if providing the opium of pleasant reverie to a sick person, instead of providing the truth and giving the person the less pleasant and more strenuous options of fighting for one’s health; when I think of them as deciding for us, as if we are dying children, who they think they are being compassionate to when saying what amounts to “you’re going to be just fine,” and such, even as we, the children, take our last breath, I think of that syrupy mealy-mouthedness, that “comforting,” as enabling us in an addiction and even covering up the suffering that might get us well. Taking a look at the media in this light, I am offended and feel disrespected. For I am not one who appreciates being pampered and protected from upset when it means that it will guarantee my death, do you?
For if a great many people do not quickly and radically reverse their lives—and no I’m not talking boy scout recycling efforts. I am talking about the gearing up and urgency that would need to be far greater than that of the last world war—how can it not be seen that the Nazi holocaust will seem a tea party alongside what’s coming?
Love’s Wake-Up Call: We Take Our Prodigal Souls Ever Home
Unity Is Our Food Our Destination Our Bliss Our Home…
But it is not warriors we need. That is part of the problem. We do need people as disciplined and caring, not just of their buddies but of all life, human and 
nonhuman, of all creation that God in his/her great love for us and all life masterfully crafted, slowly, carefully, meticulously, over a near eternity this incredible planet, as finely balanced and perfect and precise, and wondrous and beautiful in infinite ways, precisely moving in perfect harmonious exquisite synchronicity of infinite living elements through the seasons, over the years, languorous and slow and allowing for a plenitude of experience, of possibilities for joyous play, exuberant and bountiful youthful sense of power, pride, belonging—for ALL creatures, and an infinite number of them—each of them single individuals sharing with us this possibility of joy, wonder, happiness, laughter, pain, grief, wisdom….this divine adventure taken by so 
many humans even, each doing their best between the poles of the monstrous and the angelic, creating in the end, whatever the outcome, lives as different, as unique, as incomparable as any snowflake to another.
And all the while, surrounded from birth, breathing the divine. God always so close you can’t see. But in every little thing pushing you to the exquisite slow, painful then wonderful unfolding into greater and greater wisdom, goodness, love, truthfulness and loving of truth—no matter how long it takes, or even lifetimes—slowly, slowly, turning, turning, expanding, flowing ever outward in wider and wider encompassing surrounds of wisdom and love—no matter how long it takes.
And on the way the dawnings of blissful openings of being, leaving the darkness of pain and ignorance more and more at our roots. 
Just as the lotus 
grows out of the muck of the dirty swamp, feeding on that muck for sustenance. Just as our hardships, mistakes, even our cruelties lead us in time that much more beautifully and committedly loving of love, of life, of goodness, of God. And our eyes ever more aware of the beauty always there but more and more radiant as the darkness slowly dissipates, and the lotus reaches its tender shoot higher and higher into the murky water. It too in time becoming increasingly aware of light that is above and that the darkness is more and more in behind it.
Until, just as we, there is that moment of arriving on the water surface and feeling and breathing, being free and so joyous, blissful, and understanding of the marvelous divine perfection of the experience, even when it seemed hopeless, just as we.
And in gratitude and glory it unfolds its perfect, delicate pleasure in the expressions of joy that are the splendid beauteous aromatic creations that we call its many petals, but for the lotus is its song of gratitude. As much as our unfolding may open our hearts so deliciously loving and alive that we must sing to God, to Love, to the Consciousness that is the only Existing thing and equally coursing its 
wondrous way throughout all creation—lotus, Human, in the loving ministrations of all God’s creatures toward each other as we feel the attraction of like to like, of divine to divine…..
And would this wonderful incredibly sweet sound of God’s Life in us and around us, harmonizing over billions of years and to the ends of the Universe, the chorus of the divine, the harmony of the spheres, this grand, often dramatic and percussive symphony, the only reality, the only one really desired, the home of all whose sound is even telling you it is Om, where one belongs, 
where one loves and is loved and dualism-nondualism are irrelevant for equally delightful are the movements of this endless ever changing symphony, which must be separate and forgetful and also awake and one for the sheer beauty of it, for the sheer pleasure of remembering again the most wonderful truth of oneself, and then maybe again.
Of such possibilities and perceptions are the expanses outside, outside one’s skin. As one’s identity is not merely that within the gushing palpitation below the skin but expands to include spouse, family, children, others, all creatures, all beings known and unknown, with malice toward no one. As such unity is our food our destination our bliss our home…
Oh so sad and yet tender and beautiful and juicy we take our prodigal souls ever home. And more and more recognizing our brothers and sisters on the way, delighting in the exquisite separation that we will continue to enjoy until ready to release, to let go. Like a swimmer letting go of the side of the pool to sink deep into the crystal water, where it is then all the Universe that one experiences and then one becomes aware that one is just as much of it as in it.
And slowly delightfully then just not conceiving of any boundaries and the swimmer disappears to those still holding on to the delightful game of 
pretending that there is any such thing as a thing, as boundaries, as nations, as bodies… Fun, that game of thingness… for a while…
For it is just a game, a made up concocted set of parameters, boundaries, and rules. That we sit down on a pleasant Sunday afternoon to play, to enjoy the amazingly creative plays, humorous remarks, and outright belly-whomping creative utterances that 
our playmates entertain with and we enjoy also performing as things we do and say come so perfectly from, well, … it’s just there.
We just are, we can’t help be, and whether irritated or laughing uproariously or snickering secretively as we plan our next play…in sweet anticipation of the reactions, surprise! befuddlement! or knowing smiles from another…it is all unknown and to be discovered.
So who would spoil such fun by ever letting on, even, or especially, to oneself that it is all known, there is no separation. Why we even might enjoy it more if we allow ourselves to suppose 
that the stakes are real—at which point we know we have taken the wondrous forgetfulness game of humanness. One only does that to enjoy the sweetest waking of all, that from the soundest and most undisturbed of all possible dreamings.
However you conceive it, though. You needn’t buy my reverie. In fact how could you? Though you and I could be mirrors to each other it is the absolute knowing that we cannot be the same snowflake. No. You have your world, and your unique way of enjoying sweet existence.
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Who Would Want Such an Ending? Why Not a Hero’s Tale Instead?
Who Would Want Such an Ending to the Human Story? I’d Rather See People Becoming the Best Humans That Have Ever Lived on This Planet….
But is it God’s, yours, mine, anyone’s plan that this multi-billion year sweet symphony of consciousness expressing itself as beauteous Nature is suddenly, in eternal time, within the last second or two, to be stomped, crackled, and crashed by the Caterpillar boots of newbie humans? The skin-bound ones. I mean, reaaalyy skin bound.
As for me such horrible catastrophic cacophony of destruction is about as creative and delight inducing as a slow wonderfully silent drive through a countryside in late spring. 
Fragrant, aromatic…feelings of gratitude to the All That Is. And hearts overflowing in appreciation of the company of such remarkable, loving, and brilliant of friends. So slowly meandering in fragrant meadows and moisty tart forests, one just regrets that the vehicle will have to stop to be charged in a little bit.
That’s pleasant to me, maybe it is or isn’t to you. 
But who among us would wish for the ride, the symphony, the song, the journey, the adventure, the whatever’s finale to be a split second of angry irritation and then an all too easy wander off of the freeway home? Such that before one is even aware, oneself and one’s friends and God’s delightful chorus is composed…. the ending, sixty miles per hour, six friends, the unmovable concrete of an overpass’s supports kissing all six’s bloody bags of waters, water-balloon style erased on the slab.
And the percussive sounding to mark the end, over before you even realize it’s begun. 
But when you in your awestruck wonder slow it to single frames, that sound…that sound so hideous, containing so many others within its one-second elapse. But you hear there are billions. You hear, trillions, more, infinite. Crashing, metal, but within it mixed…why, that is that hell that some speak about. 
All those voices crying out in loss, in anger:
“How have you the right? Why have you robbed….?” And all creatures that have ever lived here crying out in pain at the same time.
Such things well… not fun… not, well… anything.
It seems we were even given the warning so that we could come up with a much better drama, more fun for all for every place in consciousness throughout the Universe. For the Universe has already experienced such a bummer of a symphony, which is now just a red planet…. 
It was much more fun, filled with life, creative divine noises, and manic whacky Chaplinesque movements, sounds, color, laughter, laughter, laughter. Not fun that one. [Footnote 4]
Why not a hero’s tale; no solitary hero, but billions and billions of heroes. Showing the Universe the story of the impossibly death-defying grasping at life, even as being thrown over the cliff. 
The solidarity in flesh, as united as in divine state, grasping single-handedly a bit of root protruding from the very edge above the abyss. And with mighty, united, happy, joyous, then singing, mighty and strong, pulling up, scraping knees, chins, shins, no matter, such incredible unity of peoples around the Globe as hasn’t been seen since the time before that Tower, that time called Babel. 
That was a time when flesh decided to really stray from remembering and to really become solitary and alone, creating the darkness, which the light is so 
much sweeter by. Creating the horrible endless times of struggling, of violence, of ego over ego, with no one hearing, no one listening. But every one simply babbeling out THEIR world, their sounds, “The song must be like this!” “It is my song.” “I am divine, who the hell are you to sing while I’m composing my next chorus!?”
And so it began, with the blissful knowledge of Unity with All That Is turning psychotically into
I AM the Unity, I am all that is. I am hardly experiencing the flows of consciousness that you are. For I AM the only consciousness. How could you be? You don’t look like me; yet I am conscious and I am the Decider. So since I look like this and I act, and you look different, as different as I
look compared to a pile of rubble, so you must not feel. You must be props for me to use.
And yet you jabber on, even as I am thinking, ever more, always thinking. I can’t stop this thinking; I don’t remember the world too well. That must be the price of being the only real living feeling existing thing here.
So it went. I don’t know why. But then there is that thing about it all being about greater wisdom.
And perhaps, I think this a better story than a one-second sounding of the Universe in Pain…. For nowhere in that Universe would there be a being saying,
Now that was one great species! Really so godlike. Incredible. They lasted for one nanosecond and then simply slammed their entire species—even taking with them every other of the millions of different kinds of beings that Consciousness was tripping around with, in checking out.
No. I don’t see our ending that way as being any more entertaining or enlightening than the shortest of all short stories about a man who walked across a busy freeway. Cleverly he avoided every car. He got increasingly adept and nimble. In his happiness he jumped to safety and stabbed himself to death with a knife. I told you, pretty dumb story.
I’d rather see people becoming the best humans that have ever lived on this planet at one time. 
And working together, not knowing even if they would make it, but knowing that the laughter of children depended on it. That laughter of children would be never again. And, in fact, who can say that it ever existed really?
Love’s Wake-Up Call: America Earth Criminal and an Auspicious Worldwide Craving for Truth
There’s Hope in That Never Before Has There Been Such a Worldwide Jonesing for Authenticity
Why Not Create a Story Together That Would Thrill God Herself?
So, if you feel like I do. If you would rather write, together with eight billion others, a story that will thrill God Herself, won’t we be thrilled and never forget: How we took the best they had. They misinformed, spent untold huge amounts on those whose souls could be bought. And many there were, to deny, to repress, even when the rest of the world was waking up and looking to us for leadership.
America… Earth Criminal
And America did not merely back off and, inexplicably, turn to throw back at the world a big ol’ middle finger salute, grimacing, then turn and walk away. America, the wealthiest country in the world at that time…. Well at least its rich elite made it so, for its standard of living was getting lower by the year since the institution of the new slogan of democracy which was redefined in the early 1980s as, “of the people, by the people, to benefit the rich.” America left the rest of the world to suffer and meet and discuss.
And all the time the world knew that they were like employees having a meeting without the boss showing up…. Nope, more like they were like the citizens who lived in a beautiful lake area, which had once been a pristine lake. But now the lake was dead, there were no fish living, lots of gooey seaweed though.
And sure they all contributed something to polluting that lake they did. But what was going to be done having meetings that had no representatives of the 
lumber milling company that sat on a good stretch of lakeside frontage and mindlessly had been spewing the most god-awful chemicals in the lake? It was going to be sickening the citizens soon. But this lumber operation also confused any deliberations that might have been fruitful by its habit of tossing around such huge gobs of money at selected groups of citizens.
So that’s us, the fat bastards.
Apocalypse Is Real
I put whatever energy I can towards educating people about the dangers leading to apocalypse. [Footnote 5]
I am trying to help folks to understand they are not really believing apocalypse because it is too huge to comprehend. I try to get people to see that though they do not want to entertain the thought of apocalypse, it is real. Apocalypse is as real as your child suddenly lurching out of your hand to rush into the street just as a car is speeding there and getting killed.
Worldwide Craving for Authenticity
I am hardly the only one saying this. For, there are lots of people now, more than ever before, who are fed up of being coddled from the truth and manipulated by lies and misinformation. Having been water boarded so many gallons of lies over Bush’s eight years, they are showing the starvation they’ve been feeling for truth. Folks are painfully jonesing for something authentic in a number of ways.
Most spectacularly, Americans showed their craving for authenticity in the overwhelming 2008 turnout for Obama. At the time, Obama, over everyone else, was someone radiating realism, accountability, and authenticity.
Tea Party Ducklings
More recently we see this desperation pushing people to the Tea Party. Though sadly lacking in facts, fed misinformation by moneyed groups, manipulated, and directed to action by forces arrayed against their interests, Tea Party folks are newly birthed into politics following a burning knowing that something is terribly wrong and that they are being lied to. Like newly hatched ducklings, they are bonded to their corporate Mommies,
who they follow blindly, fighting against those who would help them. On the other side, we see this eruption of truth-valuing in that, despite Tea Party’s misguided actions, the polls show that Republicans, the party of organized deception in allegiance to interests of a global clique of “filthy rich,” are seen to be more like fools than as credible opponents. [Footnote 6]
Love’s Wake-Up Call: What Planetmates Say … Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?
What Would the Planetmates Say…and Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?
Still, facing the facts of the likely End of All Time, Doomsday, or Apocalypse—however you choose to phrase it—is not in anyone’s hardwired capacities to handle. 
We are like ants suddenly confronted by a huge lumberjack’s boot about to come smashing down on their meticulously created universe of AntHill. I doubt they, let alone we, have ever been programmed for such contingencies. [Footnote 1]
But humans are supposed to have the capacity to reason, to go beyond pure instinct, and to be able to prepare for the totally unprecedented. So far, our much-vaunted rationality is seeming like a pretty convenient rationalization to enable us to kill without conscience, for any reason we choose, the other species on this planet. How would our planetmates see it? Perhaps something like:
Humans Adopt Superiority Over All, Basing It On Their Inability to Keep Their Psychotic Minds from ever Stopping the Onslaught of Mental Verbiage. [Planetmate Views. Nowtime. Everyplace, Earth.]
Humans have created a bizarre separate and solitary view, which keeps them from seeing Reality, let alone God, who is directly before them. But they are committed to this psychosis of generating such a mental screen of words, which they mistake for actual reality.
Living in their self-imposed tortuous hell of verbal-mental realities, having nothing to do with reality, they neither see God, nor us planetmates, nor do they really hear each other. For humans pretend to listen but are really thinking of what they are going to say when it is their turn. So humans come away from conversations having only heard themselves. And now, their delusion is having them kill themselves all off; and they are not even all that concerned.
Unfortunately, they are taking ALL the rest of us, planetmates, indeed everything alive on this planet, down with them. Many of our fellow planetmates, in light of this, are questioning our compassion for their sorry half-born asses and our tolerance over the past twenty-five millennia.
You don’t believe our planetmates? Natch. Didn’t expect you to—sprung on you like that. But if what the planetmates say just for a moment pisses you off enough 
to say “NO, We are not stupid ape.! We are rational!” Then you cannot be consistent without using some of that, ahem, ahem, so-called “reason.” For before you can say NO to Apocalypse you have to let yourself KNOW Apocalypse. Now, how many of you have the cajonies or ovaries for that?!
Sting sang, “We could be heroes…just for one day.” Wow, that just occurred to me. It also occurred to me that being heroes just for one day never made any sense to me until just about, oh, like two seconds ago.
Well, I’m no hero. I just fucking care. Sorry if caring offends people so much they have to put down feeling people by saying “kumbaya moment.” 
Sorry if caring offends so much they have to put down people who have hearts by saying “bleeding hearts.” Or even when we have a President who sheds a tear and says in all sincerity, “I feel your pain,” the cynical have to rake him over the coals for it and put it down in the history books as a calculated, planned, political move.
I’m 
sorry for people like that who have no felt connection with others. Such kitty-drowners and butterfly-mashers have no hearts and so do not understand those of us who do.
Before I took my personal journey inward and opened up to my feelings and eventually to the love that lie deep inside, I was more of a mental machine than a man. 
Now, I am happy to be flesh and blood and feeling and organic—I cry, fart, burp, laugh uproariously sometimes, actually, rolling on the floor. I see, hear, and notice people and think they are just fascinating. I can’t imagine life back in the world of the machine-minded, bragging how they can multi-task, so they can fuck up more things at the same time. But never can such automatons focus on one thing at a time and completely take it in, in all its complexities.
But this isn’t about the ones who will never hear me. It is about those who are just as much flesh and blood as I. 
You are the ones who will understand that I do this because, 
I just, well, really love.
I’ve got a young god-daughter; she reminds me what being straight and honest is. She also reminds me what love is, and how tender is the simple appreciation of one being for another. In my mind, my god-daughter is beautiful inside and out and talented and sensitive. She is God’s work of art. I don’t think there is a parent alive who doesn’t know those kinds of feelings.
So, I don’t know about other people, but with her in mind, among many others that I 
love, 
I find it hard to simply ignore the things that the scientists are saying are happening on this planet. Perhaps the most horrible for me to comprehend is the predicted massive extinction that is underway and is expected to reach a fifty percent die-off (forever, folks) of species on this planet in twenty to fifty years. You thought the bees disappearing was news!? Only if you can understand it as the canary in the coal mine.
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Love Demands We Give Our All…Where We Find Hope in All This
If we must, without the support of the media, rise to the biggest challenge of all, would we not be better to face it?
We Got Too Many Species Anyway…And Other Stupid Denial Tricks Against Ecocide
A fifty percent extinction of life-forms on this planet within a few decades, many of which have been around for millions of years. 
And, are you thinking, hell, we got way too many species anyway? I know, dumb! But someone actually said that to me during the Q & A after a presentation I gave on this. And many in the audience seemed to think she had a point!! [Footnote 7]
Well, the planet is an ecosystem; it is like one giant life form. And it was once really healthy, perfectly balanced, like I said, a wonderful creation of God. It was an exquisite creation, reminding us that God is well, really, I mean, really, really, good!
Nope, not being facetious; just making my point in response to the general idea out there about God.
That is, this insane prevailing notion that God is Infinite Goodness and Mercy beyond all human understanding, yet this Good God would create a hell where all but a lucky few would live, without being able to die, in hideous unbearable agony forever. Christ! I just heard myself realize that and if I were a kid I would’ve pooped my pants!
Ok, finishing up here. If you care about what’s going on and think we should wake up, naturally you’re discouraged at how little consciousness there is 
about an environmental collapse that has already begun. But there is hope at least in certain things. I’ve mentioned the craving for the real and the true. This powerful urge has toppled Bush, birthed an awkward tea-party movement, and shown the light on right-wing idiocy, in this country.
Around the world this explosive force manifests along with its correlates, the needs to express and share this truth in free speech and to have human rights to not be punished for that, as well as to have power for 
one’s truth to effect one’s life and circumstances, so there is the need for democracy. So in the Mideast and North Africa we see dictators being confronted and overthrown, and in China and similar totalitarian systems we see people risking and sacrificing their lives rather than be living beneath a cover of lies, behind a matrix of the contrived. Perhaps the most powerful way of all, this force is flowering worldwide as an occupy movement, encouraging everyone to Occupy Earth, among many other things. [Footnote 5]
As to where this effort will lead…. Well, the hopeful question is: Who knows how many others are also feeling like we don’t have a second to lose, and it might already be too late? Who knows what kind of actions might be needed to be done, and what kind of word might need to get out, or whatever?
So, if you care, we might as well start making that network now. And I know there are others. But there can never be too many connections bringing together all of us who care.
Don’t forget we’re going up against a bunch who DON’T care, but who are, as they termed them, not me! “Filthy Rich.” And great power they have indeed for you know how many there are who are for sale and how cheaply souls are going for these days. But we have, if we choose it, the power of solidarity, truth, and—if we can awaken enough people—the power of great, great, grand numbers on a scale that also has never been possible before.
So, I urge everyone to remember that they are in the midst of a trillion-alarm fire. The emergency is upon us; unfortunately it is not being broadcast. 
But some of that is because it is too dire for the media to want to touch. So it is up to us.
We must remember that it has always been the common people of the world uniting in great numbers that have accomplished the things of greatest value to the world. 
If we must once again, and without the support even of the media, rise to the biggest challenge of all, then why would we not be the better ones to face it? For the elite have already shown that they care little for anything but their profits. 
Whereas it is the common people of the world, taking their pleasure in their pride of work, and especially their families, who have put themselves always on the line. 
We need only remember that it is not for us, or even for all the innocent creatures of the world—though that would be huge motivation for many—but if only so that our children and grandchildren will not suffer, will get to live, and hopefully will be awarded at least the chance that other generations got for a full life, we must give our all. 
I cannot believe that the masses of people in the world, were they ever to come to understand the true consequences—the life and death ones—for their immediate family—would not do everything including risking one’s own life, for something so precious—the continuation of family…the laughter of children, the innocence of a babe, and above and beyond everything, the continuation of Love, sweet, sweet, ever growing and expanding Love, under the blessings and grace of The All that Is, whose substance is just that—Love.
Future Earth Rebirth—the Primal Landscape
Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Three:
A Conversation on the Eve of Apocalypse
Return to Apocalypse – No! Chapter One: Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign
Footnotes
1. On the subject of not being able to handle such a huge concept as mass extinction, a correspondent of mine phrased it this way:
The psychology of tragedy—Extinction? I’m afraid haven’t got time for it. Mar 20, 2010 2:18pm by Open Intelligence.
“The economy works by making people selfish. Mass extinction is merely collateral damage.” The link shared—to an article by Simon Barnes writing for The Sunday Times, of London, on March 20, 2010—reads:
Species are going extinct because humans can’t see it happening, and therefore we can’t believe it is happening. It is as simple as that.
Believing that the elephant will no longer be around is like believing that one day the sun will rise in the west and the stars will fall as rain. We can only really get a handle on the short-term. A generation at most. Long-term planning means the next year or two. Our minds can’t cope with anything longer.
That’s why we choose to govern ourselves by means of a comfortable timescale. Four years, five years: that’s Politician’s Time. Extinction is a happening thing, as I have pointed out more than once before. But it is happening in slow motion: you don’t see a monkey turn into a man, and you don’t see an animal go extinct. It’s just that one day you notice that they haven’t been about for a few years.
The current rate of extinction is one species an hour, Which brings us to the disaster of Cites…. [return to text]
2. The idea that there was no other time where any human lived knowing of the very real possibility of ending our species in its lifetime was criticized as follows:
No other time has been like this, but there have been plenty of times in the history of the human species where we have been met with the ability to and possibility of our ending—from when we were a few dozen leaving the mythological savanna of Eden to the discovery of the forging of Bronze to the hypothetical Event that led to the Dark Ages, the Apocalypse has been Nigh. It ain’t happened yet.
I responded: I have no idea of what time in our evolution that, other than modern times, our species even knew that it was a limited species on a limited globe and had any idea that its actions could wipe out what it thought of as itself as a species when we did not conceive of ourselves as a limited species in any of those time you speak of. We, with our science and technology are able to know of those times and ourselves. But hell, only in the last five hundred years did we find out we lived on a globe or lived in a solar system! Before that how could anyone in any culture know where either their ability to roam ended or their species no longer existed!
So you miss the point, which is, “no other time” did humans live “KNOWING” that THEY could bring, not only themselves, their families, or their cultures to an end but THEIR ENTIRE “SPECIES,” to an end “in”…their “lifetime” (not to mention the other estimated five-hundred million species).
3. I wrote a considerable amount on this in the Nineties, including at least one online book directly taking up the topic titled Apocalypse, Or New Age? . Another book, available online, Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return is extremely important to this topic, and Falls From Grace (a published thesis as well as online book) is also relevant. It is no coincidence that at that time, the Nineties, we had a Democrat in the White House.
But since Obama has come in to office alone I have put up a number of sites to help raise awareness on this and related issues. I have been setting up and working on websites for purposes of education and support (Apocalypse Emergency , Apocalypse-NO at apocalypseknow.wordpress.com , The Great Reveal by SillyMickel & the PlanetMates at angelsinnature.wordpress.com, Apocalypse Know, SillyMickel’s Calling the Noble in Spirit: Wake Up Sounds). And I’ve been expressing these ideas in blogs (SillyMickel’s Blog of the Obvious Unspoken Things at sillymickelsapocalypticwakeupcall.wordpress.com, SillyMickel’s Blog: Things That Want to Be Said , Truth Will Out , and Sillymickel’s Journal—The Things Nobody Seems Willing to Say). But I had been writing about these things on SillyMickel MySpace Blog and Facebook .
I’m quite active, especially lately, tweeting about this and related topics on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sillymickel. And since the 90s I’ve been discussing these issues on my oldest website Primal Spirit, where I have been trying to raise awareness.
I have a youtube channel where I place videos to educate on this–SillyMickel & The Planetmates http://www.youtube.com/user/sillymickel. I have got seventy-plus online audio casts in several Hark collections where I take up this subject: the aforementioned SillyMickel’s Calling the Noble in Spirit: Wake Up Sounds, as well as SillyMickel’s Mystic Crystal Revelations; The Once and Future News; History Unspun—the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations; “Look at Us! God’s ROFLHAO!”; and Michael Jackson and the Authentic Life.
In addition to places mentioned, I’m discussing the spiritual aspects of the changes we need to make on the sites, Primal Spirituality and Falls From Grace; and the philosophical paradigm shifts needed are scattered in the various places as well as, specifically, at Matter Matters – It Just Ain’t Material.
The political perspectives on these changes are found on a number of sites mentioned, as well as on Culture War, Class War; Smoke, Lies, and Revelations; and Culture War . Eventually the websites Primal Return, and Natural Self will contain the resources that we have in mind for them as well.
Join with me or not as you will. I mention my efforts only to indicate the efforts of one person who has been awakened to this horrifying vision. Keep in mind there are others doing far more than me, for a longer time, and at greater risk.
Volunteers working with Greenpeace, Earth First, and similar organizations place their bodies directly in front of the attackers in a manner just like those prodemocracy activists living under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes who, Ghandi-style, stand in front of tanks and place their bodies before onslaughts of anti-aircraft weaponry (as happened not long ago in Libya and is ongoing in Syria).
There are others whose work also deserves more attention than mine, and in other places they are and will continue to be mentioned. But for purposes here, you get the point: No one can know how great are the forces of light arrayed against those of darkness on this issue, for the moneyed interests do not find it at all helpful to their side to allow the media to broadcast or highlight these efforts.
Rather, the media will exaggerate the activities and viewpoint of the opposition to these efforts, those that support the continued march toward Doomsday whose road they collect heavy tolls from people on which make up the obscenely exorbitant and evil profits they receive. They blow up the activities, viewpoints, and (mis)information in the exact same manner as in recent years they have, for example, amplified attention of, even promoted, Tea Party rallies attended by, mostly paid, hundreds while ignoring true grass roots action, as in Wisconsin, where a rally of two hundred thousand barely was mentioned. This is perhaps the meaning of the saying, “The revolution will not be telecast.”
In this obscurity of our efforts and its results lies our hope. For we simply will not know until later, maybe not even until an “afterward,” assuming there is one, just how great are the efforts of the unheralded numbers involved in this undertaking.
Finally, looking over my efforts alone, one might even be thinking I am overdoing it. But consider that I believe what I’m saying: A trillion-alarm emergency, the lives of my loved ones at stake. Now, if you knew what I knew, would you do less?
But this isn’t about me, I am only mentioning my work alongside the fact that I felt finally like I could speak out in this country only when Obama was sworn in as President. Who knows how many efforts are going on, how many kinds of things people are doing to stave off this Unthinkable Nightmare? Now, not with Bush in power, when finally we have the world and its efforts, however difficult they still will be, at least not being actively undermined by a Bush administration, we have a time where we have more hope that our efforts will succeed based upon the good will of the participants, without worrying excessively that the mighty U.S. will at some point either secretly or overtly throw the grandest of all monkey wrenches in to shatter the work of the good people of the world working heartily on the side of Life. [return to text]
4. To glimpse the unimaginable future past the time that we kill off ourselves and all life on this planet and become like Mars, I offer this fantasy around a musical scrap: “About our extinction. We’re gonna eliminate 50% of 500 million earth species in 50 yrs & we’ll be alive. Ha!“
This is an original song-chant—written and composed by SillyMickel Adzema.
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1993 by Michael Derzak Adzema:
It is a Requiem for Earth, a metaphysical view, an eerie emotional raw sound. It is sung by two of the last survivors of Earth—from all appearances it would have been the composer SM Adzema and his beloved wife, Mary Lynn Adzema—obviously not professional singers—but heartfelt nonetheless, giving us a glimpse into the profound sadness that must have hung over those last survivors after it became clear that Earth’s ecological balance so shattered, there would be no life at all to survive the strange behaviors of what Earthologists have begun calling “the suicidal ape”—referring to the species that alone brought down the entire planet.
Indeed this song, as an electronic scrap mixed in with an island of Earth debris discovered by spacepreuners hurtling swiftly through the Verse not far from the star system’s outer reach—the one that had once contained the 
fabled Earth—is one of the few very rare looks into the hearts and minds of those people as they watched, helplessly, as their planet’s delicate life sheath imploded with a gathering rapidity. Some who have heard this musical scrap claim that it supports the more radical theory of this event of a planet murder-suicide—the theory that the suicidal ape was divided on this global murder-suicide, with a goodly number of this species working furiously to save the planet even as stronger, more powerful forces, for reasons still not understood, continued their secretive sabotage of the other side’s efforts, ensuring the downfall of all, including the saboteurs themselves.
At first hearing, this song seems to be expressing an awareness of the sadness that would accompany such a horrific event, at odds with the stories of “suicide ape’s” gleeful festive behavior in the midst of the massive killing and suicide.
“Requiem for Earth / We Are Stones.” A Song-Chant Relic by SillyMickel Adzema.
Sung by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema Click link above for the audio site, or click the audio player below to listen to it here.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wrbjcmgycy
5. Consider the timing: Only three years ago we had a change in administration in Washington away from a deranged Republican administration that was staunchly anti-environmental. While I’ve worked on these issues for thirty years and I was one of those who brought nuclear power plant construction in the US to a halt in the early 80s (http://bit.ly/BL-an , http://bit.ly/OB-an , http://bit.ly/AN-an , http://bit.ly/PT-an ), I did not feel hopeful about working on these issues again until the Democrats gained the US presidency and there was hope for progress again.
6. An example of this came out in the wake of the Fukushima reactor blow-ups. Republicans said a number of stupid and insensitive things, which were widely shared and roundly ridiculed. Among those tidbits of foolery was Ann Coulter’s public statement that “Radiation is good for you.” Ann Coulter: “Radiation Is Good For You” at http://front.moveon.org/ann-coulter-radiation-is-good-for-you/?rc=fb.fan
7. Earlier versions of this piece have been posted on these sites, Apocalypse Emergency, Primal Spirit, Apocalypse No!, Truth Will Out, and Things That Want to Be Said. The unrevised version of Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? (titled Apocalypse, or New Age?) is at http://www.primalspirit.com/emerging_perinatal_book.htm .
Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Three:
A Conversation on the Eve of Apocalypse
Return to Apocalypse – No! Chapter One: Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign
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Creating an American Mind: The Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth and Advantage Through Totally Concocted Untruths … Why Americans Are Confused, Passionless, Dumb
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight:
Creating an American Mind
Creating an American Mind – The Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth and Advantage Through Totally Concocted Untruths
“Obvious Truths” — The History of the Republican’s Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth for Their Benefactors Through Totally Concocted Untruths
“Obvious Truths”
This series—“Obvious Truths”—delineates the history of the American Republican’s incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive–seemingly coordinated–nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “Filthy Rich,” through totally concocted untruths. These falsehoods were introduced carefully, slowly, and therefore invisibly, over time, one-by-one with persistent, relentless repetition replacing reason or rational persuasion; along with a coordinated campaign whose goal was the creation of an American Mind eroded of rationality and confused and made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications seamlessly portrayed as truths.
These “obvious truths” were employed together with an exact and strategic use of misinformation precisely targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends. These were combined with their campaign to physically and financially weaken the American public 
through the simultaneous, and equally slow, meticulous, and perfectly coordinated introduction of policies, which though not invisible were cleverly packaged and perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step and year-by-year connections of these policies with their cumulative, increasingly successful results.
The intended goal was the castration of the power of all Americans except for the “filthy rich” and the Republican leadership, their lackeyed public faces. 
Coincident with this goal what was sought were the lessening of Americans’ power to act constructively to alleviate even their clearly felt and increasing suffering; the slow but comprehensive elimination of rational thought and ability to reason in the American Mind; and the creation of an American consciousness clouded and afog in confusion and thus forgetful of its past as a point of comparison.
What was desired was an American personality splintered and disintegrated and desperate for something however irrational to cling to. Along with such a fractured and weakened psyche, the campaign sought the dismantling of any solidarity of Americans on any large scale. They reasoned this disunity of purpose would be the natural consequence of the average person’s confused state and its inability to discern obvious aspects of reality which, otherwise and in times prior to the campaign, would have been obvious organizing principles giving rise to passionate resistance.
In the past, passionate engagement in action to change one’s circumstances could occur because of the former unconfused clarity in witnessing big events and pervasive, blatant, and universal patterns of change and making the obvious and easy correct interpretations. This clarity created conviction in one’s beliefs, rooted in first-hand observation. And in the past these convictions were reinforced virtually universally by the great majority of Americans, who also witnessed the obvious same things and made the apparent and doubtless interpretations that cried out from them.
In contrast to the former American personality, this campaign by an American, and increasingly global, elite worked to create an apathetic, neutered American easily manipulated to the ends of wealthy overseers.
Our Fifty-Year Invisible “Family” and Cracks in the Dome of Unreality – Creating an American Mind
Creating an American Mind – Our Invisible “Family” and, Finally, the Cracks in the Dome of Unreality
Our Invisible “Family”
This reveals the fifty-year invisible family and community that surrounded all Americans and affected every aspect of their lives, including, and intentionally, the basic components of one’s personality, and the erosion of reason, Soul, and independent thought or action.
I explain how only because of increasingly cocky and greedy acts and extreme over-reaching “in broad daylight,” before the entire world, did this malevolent surround become visible. 
These brutish and thievish over-reaches displayed an incredible disregard for, disrespect of, indeed, an actual literal inability of the “Filthy Rich” and their Republican puppets to SEE American People, who were the recipients of these attacks.
Together these reveals—displayed unintentionally however blatantly and unknowingly by the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich”… and before the entire world—disclosed to the masses of Americans some “cracks,” “stains,” or textures in the “dome” of unreality they’d existed in, which had made them blind to Reality itself, and had kept them in a near zombie-like dream reality.
As this awakening continued, some began remembering events, the memories of which had been “bleached” out of awareness until just then, and then with remembering they realized how they’d been trained like animals their entire lives for the uses, whatever they’d be, of the “Filthy Rich,” and been trained then to forget that.
It is clear that the “filthy rich” had an absolute certainty of their success because of their unmitigated power. What is also evident is the absolute inability of the “Filthy Rich”…which was the shocking thing they’d carelessly let out and therefore displayed to the World…the absolute inability of the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich” to actually notice—let alone view or act towards—Americans as any thing even living or having sentient ability, let alone as humans, people, or individuals.
And as for the term “fellow Americans” often employed by Rich-publican politicos in addressing the masses, if that thought even crossed
your mind for a second as being anything but a device, you are not fully appreciating just how literally I mean for my words to be taken. You may very well, in fact, be deeply dreaming and have missed the crack in the dream state that had shone the light in the eyes of a sufficiently large segment of the world population as to cause them to come out of trance and begin to untie their formerly invisible bonds, so that they could try looking around, which led to the realization of the reality that had been blocked from view, and the beginnings of investigations into the real truths of their existence, and to this series of expositions, among others, delineating the actual, formerly invisible profile of the actual actors in Americans’ lives and their processes of control, as well as the things in their lives that were determined for them by the “Filthies,” though ordinary folks thought they had been making decisions for themselves.
And the last aspects of this series delineates the real factors in our lives and the outlines of the real intentions for us these puppet masters have had, and have even now in mind.
The Power of Money to Persuade…When You Happen to Be Poor – Creating an American Mind and Personality
We Were More Likely to Question Authority When We Lived in Prosperous Times – Creating an American Mind and Personality
“The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’” discusses the history of the American Republicans’ incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive, seemingly coordinated nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “filthy rich” through totally concocted untruths.
Changing the World?
This started when I was reading over another post I had made. The title was relevant, and it triggered this whole thing. The title was “On Cultural Change, Consciousness, and Music.” And I described it as so: “The perfect confluence of context, moment, and person makes history…Obama’s astonishing rise to the Presidency, for example. But the perfect alignment of a nation’s or world’s deep mood, the moment, and a musician or artist can change the world forever. For example, The Beatles.”
Times Weren’t Always Like This
After reading that, I imagined someone else viewing it, and I considered how chances are it would be someone younger than me-—for I am old enough. That is part of what this is about. I am old enough to have seen some things and I remember some things that people growing up in this day and age would have no conception of. Those more recently coming of age are used to a particular American setting somewhat different than the one I knew. Growing up in a particular context, naturally they would think that is the way things are and how they have to be; they could not know any differently.
“Obvious Truths” Is About How I Saw Things Change
I was born in 1950, so I am aware of other ways that America has been. This part of the book, on “Obvious Truths,” is a lot about how I saw things change. Specifically, I look at the changes in the way we view ourselves, our lives, and authority; I have yet to hear anyone else mention these kinds of changes.
But, Really, Change the World We Did
Getting back to that younger person reading that description, I imagined this other person seeing what I wrote about the Beatles and all that, about changing the world…changing the world! In the harsh light of their cold-hearted reality and the comfortable assuredness of their beliefs, I figured they would consider me naive, if not more. How could that person understand? But, really, change the world we did.
Music’s Power to Persuade
Addressing that younger person, I started writing, “If the title’s claim sounds silly or trite to you then you are operating out of a social prejudice we carry from childhood, particularly around status. And you haven’t stopped to evaluate and compare.” Now, I know that sounds kind of harsh, but it comes together you’ll see.
For one thing, leaders and politicians, even great ones, can only alter the course of events slowly and meticulously. Sweeping changes cannot happen by fiat as they depend on the people’s passionate involvement, which you cannot create. In the case of a dictatorship-—for example, Hitler’s Germany, or Kim “Big Little Man’s” North Korea of the present-—that passion might be faked, probably it would need to be faked. Still, even in a free society, politicians can only use words; and no matter how stirring those words, they can reach only so deep inside. It is with great difficulty that political leaders try to move the soul of a nation; most of that mood is untouchable to them.
Sergeant Pepper
Meanwhile music, in particular, more potently than any other art form, has the capacity to alter consciousness. I will explain that later; it is an area I have done a lot of study in. It is a part of my profession.
Anyway, music affects your feelings and so it affects your consciousness. So its effects will really stay with you more than words will. Music is a more powerful thing, and it has been used consciously to try to sway the spirits of humans ever since the times of shamans.
But music is a much more powerful thing when the perfect combination of mood, context, and music come together. If you think music is not so powerful then explain why music is required at virtually any social gathering…particularly, when there is involved any attempt to persuade the feelings of the attendees. Have you ever noticed that? What is truly shocking is how music can even be more powerful than vast piles of money put against it.
I said, can be. In talking about music’s power to persuade I am reminded of political rallies and such.
The Persuasive Power of Money … When You Happen to Be Poor
On the other side from the power of leaders’ words of inspiration, which is limited, of music’s more effective persuasions, and the potency of passion and heartfelt feeling naturally arising in people, consider the power of money. Money in the hands of the “filthy rich” is used in a variety of ways and obviously has tremendous persuasive powers of its own.
And here is what I am getting at: Money, as arrayed against music, passion, and social movements is especially more powerful in a situation where the people have been put in financial jeopardy because of the prosperity of the rich. As an aside, I remember a time in America’s past when people were more prosperous and confident about their abilities to manage their lives. I do not believe it is a coincidence that in those days money wielded by the wealthy had less power to persuade and people were less easily bought than today. It was said that people then were wont to question authority more than they were likely to bow down to it. I will get back to this later.
Anyway, these are the things I was thinking about when this started.
Related Post: Awakening Millennial Generation Occupy Global Revolution Awakening Millennial Generation Occupy…
“Obvious Truths” – The True Sounding Untruths – in the Creation of the American Mind
The True Sounding Untruths: Precise and Strategic Use of “Obvious Truths” in the Creation of the American Mind
The True Sounding Untruths. (Hell! It’s Obvious the Earth is Flat!)
Then I started thinking about that: the “filthy rich,” specifically, the power of the “filthy rich” and their money. I began to consider it more deeply. Remember this is called the rise and fall of “obvious truths.” I was drawn to looking into those commonly accepted truisms-—truth-sounding but not true; let us call them “obvious truths.” Not true but sounding true: Think of how correct it must have sounded at one time to hear that the Earth is flat. So, an “obvious truth” is something unthinkingly accepted as true but is not actually true when thought about or looked into. I considered some of these errant habits of thinking and looked at where and why they arose and why they would take hold and have power despite having no foundation in reality.
Doing so, I came up with this description of “obvious truths” and the context birthing them:
These untruthy truisms arise out of the American Republicans’ disciplined, relentless, persistent, cohesive fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “filthy rich” through totally concocted untruths, which are introduced carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly, over time….
Just accept my word for it for now; I will explain….
These untruths are introduced carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly, over time, one by one, with persistent, relentless repetition replacing reason or rational persuasion, as part of a coordinated comprehensive campaign whose goal is the creation of an American mind eroded of rationality and confused and made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications of the Republicans seamlessly portrayed as truths.
Precise and Strategic Use of “Obvious Truths” in the Creation of the American Mind
I know this is sounding pretty wild. But, you’ll see. Hang in there and see if I can support it. As I was explaining,
Their Goal
The Republicans’ goal, to be precisely and inexorably attained, is the creation of an American mind eroded of rationality and confused. And this mind is to be shepherded by the exact and strategic use of misinformation specifically targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends. This seeding of minds is to work dialectically with their campaign to physically and financially weaken the American public with the simultaneous and equally slow and meticulous and precisely timed introduction of policies….
I said, I can support this….
Their Means
This introduction of policies, which though not invisible are cleverly packaged, is to be perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step, year-by-year connections of these policies and their cumulative increasingly successful results.
Now, again, bear with me….
Their Intended Results
These results are the castration of the American…of Americans in general–except for the “filthy rich” and the Republican leadership which are their lackey public faces. So, the intent of this long campaign, employing “obvious truths” as munitions, is the crippling of Americans’ power in particular to resist even the inexorable increase in the clearly felt suffering heaped upon them as these years went by.
I’ll give you a hint, alright? I remember living in a time that was not so economically depressed. I watched it slowly get worse, and worse, and worse; and I saw people suffering more, and more, and more, ok? But I did not hear people complaining more, and more, and more. That’s a hint.
Their Vision
Ok, so what we have is Americans’ power monkey wrenched through policies directed at them and sustained by “obvious truths” pushed by Republicans whose purpose is to diminish people, to reduce their power, and ultimately to bring them down financially while raising the wealthies higher.
Recipe for The Matrix: Misinformation, Repetition, Impoverishment
Recipe for The Matrix: Reduce Financial Resources, Add Copious Amounts Misinformation, Repeat (Endlessly)
Weaving the Matrix
Getting back to the truisms themselves, remember, as I said, these totally concocted untruths are designed to be surreptitiously introduced-—carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly over time-—one-by-one. They are to be planted through persistent relentless repetition, not by rational persuasion, and are intended to replace reason and independent thought.
They are meant to do their work within an invisible matrix as part of a coordinated campaign whose purpose is the construction of an American mind lacking in its ability to reason and confused. Lastly, this mind is to be made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications seamlessly portrayed as truths through the exact and strategic use of misinformation precisely targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends.
Alright? I said bear with me, I’ll be able to give you some examples of this…or I’ll make a fool out of myself, that’ll be your choice…
These specific objectives are also to be brought to fruition through a massively funded, all inclusive, and strategically targeted campaign to financially weaken the American public through incremental changes in national fiscal policy as well as-—note this-—in national culture. National policy changes are to be achieved through the simultaneous and equally slow meticulous and precisely timed introduction of policy initiatives. Though these national initiatives could not be invisible, they are to be cleverly packaged as well as sneakily introduced and are to be perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step, year-by-year connections of these policies and their cumulative, increasingly successful results.
Ok? I’ll get into the policies, soon. But I am starting with a conclusive statement, and it might seem over the top. You may think it too bold, but I think I can back it up.
Again, those sought for results include the emasculation of the average American through sabotage of her or his powers to act in an effective way in any and all aspects of their lives. 
To be achieved at the same time is the fortification of the power and wealth of the filthy rich puppeteers and their lackey public faces in the Republican Party.
Instrumental in strengthening the wealthy class of insidious directors is the weakening of the remainder of the population’s abilities. And in particular and ultimately the intention is to cobble the ordinary person’s power to get out from under or to alleviate for very long the inexorable increase in their clearly felt suffering as the years go by. For this suffering and the helplessness about it is crucial to the directors’ success.
Bear with me…
The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion: Making America’s Matrix
Making the Matrix in America: The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion
The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion
Now, the key to all this being brought about is the creation of an American consciousness clouded in fog and confusion and thus forgetful of its past as a point of comparison. In this way splintered…we’re talking about the American mind…splintered, and disintegrated it is desperate for something however irrational to cling to.
Along with or coincident with the orchestration of the American mind was the dismantling of any solidarity of Americans on any large scale. 
This follows, because of the confused state that the average American would normally have and its inability—the person’s inability or the American mind’s inability—to discern obvious aspects of reality and distortions of it (lies) which in times prior would have provided obvious organizing standards around which would be passionate resistance. This is what could and would happen in times previous to the Republicans’ campaign.
For example, I went through a time where people would go into the streets and there were people who complained. Recently we’ve talked about Bush…there’s a book out about how Bush actually created a dictatorship during his eight years.
It’s amazing to me that we all knew that, the corruption was so rampant it was like on a daily basis we were hearing things that in a former time—the Sixties, the Fifties, anytime—would have caused Bush to be tossed out on his ear. This time, somehow, it’s like there was nobody in the streets. People went about their lives as if ignoring what was going on … Ok, so there I’m giving you a taste, alright? anyway…
So, I said that in a previous time there would have been passionate, a passionate response. Now I say it’s passionate because of the former unconfused minds’ clarity in witnessing big events and pervasive, blatant universal patterns of change and making the obvious and easy correct interpretations. 
So what I’m saying is clarity of thought creates sureness of action and sureness of one’s feelings, whereas confused minds lends itself to apathy or misguided self-destructive acts. In just a bit I’ll get into how these minds get confused and I think you’ll begin to see some of those things inside of yourself because I think we’re all feeling some of it.
Anyway, so this clarity, of seeing these things happening, created conviction in one’s belief which was rooted in first-hand observation.
I have in other parts shared some of my first-hand observations of events, especially those happening in my formative years. The conviction of my thinking is rooted in such events.
At the time, I also experienced much confirmation and affirmation of my views on these events. So, in general, in times previous to the one we’re in, this clarity and conviction born of first-hand observation was reinforced virtually universally by the great majority of Americans around them who also witnessed the obvious same things and made the apparent and doubtless interpretations that cried out from them. 
An example, ok. America once had a president who was much despised, though he was actually not as bad as Bush.
But the American people were unfettered in their feelings about this president’s actions, and their refusal to put up with his despicable acts caused Nixon to resign.
So, first off, we have former American minds capable of seeing obvious wrongness, injustice, illegality, untruth, deception, or worse. In our example, this might be the the suffering and/or death of innocent young men or the unspeakable horror being inflicted on the bystanding innocents in the conflict they are engaged in.
Once with clarity seeing, then about it gathering with great conviction—undoubting and unconfused conviction—and passion in large numbers and in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right these obvious wrongs, or their like.
It all starts with clearly identifiable rallying points in obvious view of the great masses of Americans, however.
Too many people are unaware or forget that there was a great union movement in America, there was a great antiwar movement in the country… ok? You don’t see much of that action these days. So, this is what I’m getting to, there’s been a change.
So when these great masses of American were clearly in solidarity about things they saw were obviously wrong they effected change. Think about it. Go back to the Depression. People knew they were poor and they put Roosevelt in power. Ok? They did something about it.
Anyway, so in times past you might have this clarity of what’s wrong and of your own suffering around it. You are not confused about blatant happenings in the reality around you. And the people around you, they see it as well. And they confirm it in you. Then you’re pretty sure what the heck’s going on. I mean it’s hard to deny your own reality. But it’s even harder to deny it when other people see it too, and they’re experiencing the same thing. [Footnote 1]
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny…Any Wonder Why Americans Are So Confused, or Dumb?
Wonder why Americans Are So Confused, or Dumb?
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny…
We have former American minds capable of seeing obvious wrongness, injustice, illegality, untruth, deception, or worse:
Once with clarity seeing, then about it gathering with great conviction—undoubting and unconfused conviction—and passion in large numbers and in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right these obvious wrongs, or their like. The examples I gave were the union, antiwar, suffragette, and civil rights movements; we could add the Revolutionary War itself and the abolitionist movement. And I mentioned how people rose up for a New Deal and elected Roosevelt during the Great Depression and how Nixon was hounded out of office, yet Bush the Dubya’s crimes—far worse, including “dictatorship”—were not enough even to bring people out into the streets.
It all starts with clearly identifiable rallying points in obvious view of the great masses of Americans, however. In times past you might have this clarity of what’s wrong and of your own suffering around it. You are not confused about blatant happenings in the reality around you. And the people around you, they see it as well. And they confirm it in you. Then you’re pretty sure what the heck’s going on. I mean it’s hard to deny your own reality. But it’s even harder to deny it when other people see it too, and they’re experiencing the same thing.
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny
But what if the media is saying that it ain’t happening? Does that said familiar? At all? It ain’t happening? How about an economic collapse that began years before anybody publicly mentioned it. I remember at the time it was being called a “goldilocks” economy. Yep, not happening. Right now I’m not going to say a lot about this as it will appear in a big way beginning with Chapter Seventeen.
So anyway, in former times, though, people came together in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right obvious wrongs, or the like. They had clearly identifiable rallying points visible to the great masses of Americans. These things were talked about in the newspapers, on TV, there was no denying what was obvious.
Now, with solidarity of purpose… and this is the important part…solidarity of purpose, with Americans united, feeling the same way, wanting change, their feelings were powerful and so significantly altered major events.
You even see that recently. We have a Democrat, Obama, elected to the presidency of the United States. But, look what it took: eight long years of Bush! Wow.
So anyway, solidarity of purpose gives ordinary people combined strength equal or greater to that of the “filthy rich.” The “filthy rich” are the would-be puppet-masters, the deciders and initiators of the events that have been witnessed so widely, including by the masses. These egregious acts, happenings, or developments brought the masses together in singleness of purpose to decry the source of the wrongs. Crucially, they needed to know the perpetrators of unhappy happenings; it needed to be clearly pointed out who were those responsible for the wrongs universally observed and condemned.
These things known, the result could be the massive gathering of intentions, a movement, perhaps a great social movement, united in purpose, against the observed wrong, seeking justice on the perpetrators and some sort of social or cultural change that might possibly or would definitely prevent future events of the same or similar sort of wrongness.
Now, these things did happen in America, folks. Not long ago in historical time but before our day in America food used to come out from corporations and got people sick or dead. So Americans created a Food and Drug Administration to remedy that. People created a government entity to represent them as a counterweight against the power of the corporations.
Why did this happen? It was because people were pissed, and it was because it was obvious what was going on.
But when things aren’t obvious and you have massive lies being told and you have comprehensive, pervasive media exposure to those lies—those untruths in direct conflict with people’s own observations—people can get confused. Confused, people’s power gets dissipated.
So I’ve kind of told you part of it, haven’t I? I just felt I was giving you too much and without any grounding.
Now let’s take a look at how the minute daily elements of our American way of life were orchestrated for ends not our own.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life
Return to Culture War, Class War Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
Footnote
1. On how people are made confused, intentionally, so they can be used for the profits of others, at EXTREME, dire cost to themselves.
This is a fantastic video. I encourage everyone to wait for it to get past the cigarette stuff at the beginning. That is only used to make a much bigger, more profound point a little further in..
This is actually about climate change…and what they are doing to confuse people about it, which will end up killing billions at least, if not all life on this planet, imo. (is that important enough for ya?)
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 the link below for and audio audio player.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835355
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life
Return to Culture War, Class War Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
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The King Won’t Die – An Aborted Changing of the Guard: What the Current Cultural-Political Regression Has to Do With the Struggles of Generations
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Five: The King Who Won’t Die and the Abortion of Cultural Rebirth … What the Current Cultural-Political Regression Has to Do With the Struggles of Generations
Generation Gap (60s-70s), Culture War (80s-90s), Class War (00s-10s) … The Song Remains the Same
Since the Nineties: America Getting Free and America in Chains
America Getting Free, Breaking Out
What do these events have in common? The popularity of Democrats since the Nineties, with Obama’s favorability ratings high despite US entanglement in several wars; the astounding progress in race relations exemplified by ever increasing numbers of African-Americans elected and appointed to the highest posts in US government since the Nineties, highlighted by the election of the first ever black President in the most lopsided victory in decades;
…the wild success of the Occupy Wall Street and Wisconsin union movements; massive demonstrations around the U.S., attended by hundreds of thousands at times, in favor of liberal Democratic causes and opposing Republicans and showing people carrying signs displaying the peace symbol; outpourings of peaceful pro-freedom and democracy protesters throughout the Middle East and North Africa; 
the reborn popularity of the “peace sign”–two fingers extended in a V-like shape, for those who don’t know—including saying “peace” while extending it as a greeting (most often these days, when leaving);
…renewed interest in the book, Catcher in the Rye; the nostalgia for Sixties and Seventies cultural accouterments as exemplified by the TV show, That 70s Show ; the resurgence of fashion items like bell-bottoms and, on women, clunky high-heel shoes; the movies “Pleasantville” and “The Truman Show”; the popularity in the Nineties of shows like Ally McBeal and The X Files;
…one-time Sixties activist Bill Clinton’s sixty-some percent approval rating throughout almost the entirety of the White House Sex Scandal 
alongside the pundits’ complete and total befuddlement as to the causes for it; the strong presidential run by a woman, also with roots solidly in Sixties activism, Hillary Clinton, in the 2008 Presidential race…significantly only beat out, and barely, by an African-American;
…the passage of medical use of marijuana laws in a number of states and poised for passage legalization of marijuana initiatives (I may be wrong, but I believe that the voters ruled that marijuana’s medical use would be allowed, or would continue, in every instance where this issue was on the ballot!); the return to ballad-style, Dylan-esque music embracing and expressing social, philosophical, and extremely intimate personal views and experiences….
We’ve also seen, in California, the passage of Proposition 10—the ballot measure that imposes a fifty-cents tax on cigarettes to fund programs for young children…which ballot measure, significantly enough, was begun by Sixties-Generation representative Rob Reiner—formerly Meathead from All in the Family! The passage of single payer health insurance in Vermont… I could go on.
America in Chains, Breaking Down
On the other side of this we have seen, in the last two decades, several “Republican revolutions” taking the opposite side on women’s issues, union and worker’s rights, environmental policy, health care and education, budget and economic issues benefiting the poor and middle class, and all other “liberal” causes;
…the rise of a media-supported Tea Party movement, heavily funded by wealthy and corporate interests, espousing wildly reactionary and regressive measures like eliminating Social Security and Medicare, gutting environmental policies to give corporations a free hand in despoiling the environment, anti-union measures, deep budget cuts in social programs, and the showing in this movement of demonstrators hoisting signs with racist images and slogans and gleefully applauding the acting out of a slave auction depicting an African-American president, Obama, and his supporters in Congress and his administration as bloodied slaves in chains;
…the popularity of a news network promoting, in blatant and mostly dishonest form, reactionary issues and figures; the resurgence in the careers of Pat Buchanan, right wing propagandist out of the Nixon administration turned talk show pundit, and Newt Gingrich, reactionary culture warrior during the early Nineties; extreme pro-gun positions and actions, including openly carrying weapons to political rallies and events and proposing the allowance of children to bring guns to schools; thuggish attacks on left-leaning activists and demonstrators; the murder of physicians on the pro-choice side of the abortion/ women’s rights issue; and attacks and threats against progressive politicians and legislators, including the nearly successful assassination attempt on Democratic Congresswoman, Gabriel Giffords…. I could go on.
Most folks would see nothing connecting these issues on either side. What I believe we are seeing is a resurgence of the underground “culture war” that has been going on in the US since the 1960s between the Sixties Generation—those whose adolescent and young adulthood, formative years were influenced by the events of the Sixties—and the World War Two Generation—those whose equivalent times of life were forged in the Forties, during and around the time of World War Two.
Generation Gap and Counterculture
The huge ravine separating the views of these two generations was most apparent when those of the Sixties Generation were in their youth, engaged in the process of discovering and exploring their values and therefore expressing them blatantly and with all the indiscretion, lack of subtlety, confrontation, and rebelliousness that characterizes the inexperienced. Thus, terms like generation gap and counterculture were bandied about, analyzed, and fervently discussed. The differences were “on the table,” in full view; and because the views and values of the youth were so “counter” or opposite to those of the WWII Generation, much debate and analysis was spawned in the media to try to explain–for the most part to the WWII Generation–how this could be so.
But these terms of generation gap and counterculture, which highlighted the great disparity of views, would fade mostly into disuse. This was because, later, the Sixties Generation would learn to keep their private views and values more hidden, for practical reasons having to do with making a living, advancing in their careers, being able to raise their children, and so on; but this did not mean their values had changed. They were biding their time, waiting—sometimes hopeless that it would ever arrive–for a reversing of the pendulum and a return in society to the ideals and visions of a better world that had so inspired them in their earlier years.
For the most part, these Sixties adherents did not know about the psychohistorical tendencies I will be describing here—as for example in the evolution of child-caring and the triumphant phase of generations. For most it was just an awareness that something so strong and so right could not simply have completely vanished from the Earth, that with time comes change, and therefore there had to be a time, again, when the mood of the country would swing in the direction they felt to be healthiest and more ideal. For some of these people their hopes were based on the simple rules of gambling: Eventually, at some time or other, with the passage of time, the dice just had to roll their number, if just out of pure chance or randomness.
Others had a slightly more reasoned view buttressing their hope for a return to idealism. These folks were those of the Sixties Generation who had applied themselves to implementing the values they learned in the Sixties in the jobs and careers they held, in whatever small or not-so-small way that they were allowed by their older generation superiors, bosses, managers, or supervisors. Never knowing that they had allies among their generation that were doing the same kind of thing in their separate fields, they followed through, the best they could, on simple conviction, born of experience, of the rightness of the more idealistic ways.
Lastly, there were those of the Sixties Generation who identified themselves completely with their youthful idealism. In putting themselves “out front” this way in their values and beliefs they found others who were doing the same. They would together become the “New Age” movement, actively engaged in bringing about the better world their generation had envisioned in the Sixties and early Seventies. They would wonder, as decades passed, why it took so long for the rest of society to catch on to what they felt was an inviting and appealing evolution—one both necessary and therefore inevitable as well.
But these last, the New Agers, would be marginalized and scapegoated by the mainstream of society—a mainstream whose outlines, of course, were determined and inscribed by the mainstream media, which was, in turn, controlled by the wealthy elite of the World War Two Generation (more about this to come). Examples included Jerry Brown labeled “Captain Moonbeam,” the family dynamics in the TV show Family Ties, the burnt-out hippie depiction of cabdriver, Jim, in the Taxi television series, and thousands of other instances where those holding New Age views were labeled “flakes.”
Attack of the Body-Snatchers: The WWII Generation created an 80s generation of “Mini-me’s”
An Aborted Changing of the Guard – Attack of the Body-Snatchers
Another reason these terms depicting cultural division, viz., generation gap and counterculture, went into disuse was due to the mobilization of the World War Two Generation—after their initial phase of somnolent confusion over the events that were emerging in the Sixties which left them paralyzed and watching, growing in irritation and anger—into a comprehensive counterattack against the Sixties Generation, using all the Nixonian-like tactics in their arsenal…understandably, since Nixon was of that generation and his tactics were typical of the defensive style of his contemporaries.
Lassoing the Universities
In the early Seventies, the World War Two Generation used their power and wealth, being themselves in the Triumphant Phase of their lives, to put pressure on colleges and universities, nationwide, to discontinue the programs, courses, and the professors that they felt were responsible for the youth’s rebellion. Their targets for destruction included such noteworthy “dangers” as liberal arts programs in general, and especially “highly revolutionary” philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, and humanistic psychology courses. A transformation of colleges and universities into “career mills”—whose primary function was to prepare the young for practical and skill-oriented jobs and professions—was called for…or else! Or else these World War Two alumni would discontinue their contributions to these educational institutions. The “bottom line” being threatened in this way, no university administration, to my knowledge, withstood their demands for very long, if at all.
Cloning Themselves … WWII Generation Creating an 80s Generation of “Mini-me’s”
The youth produced by these institutions would hereafter be dissuaded from thinking for themselves and from “questioning authority”—as the previous generation had been encouraged to do—so part of the lapse in the terms of division between the generations—counterculture and generation gap—had to do with the fact that the wave of youth that followed the Sixties Generation would be molded, in their college years, into distant replicas of World War Two Generation members. 
They would be termed the “Me Generation,” since selfishness, greed, money-as-god, and upward mobility were characteristics of the WWII Generation that they were able to instill in their youthful clones.
Thus, we saw the rise of Young Republicans on campus in the late Seventies, the return of ROTC to campuses, and the seeding of fertile young minds with the values that would later be verbalized—in the movie “Wall Street”—in the mantram “Greed is good!” At the height of this phase, periodicals were declaring how similar the “youth of today”—meaning those of the late Seventies and Eighties—were to their parents, how close they were to their parents in the beliefs and values they held, and how the generation gap had inexplicably closed. Such was the success of the WWII Generation in cloning themselves in producing Eighties youth.
In sum, beginning in the early Seventies institutions of higher learning turned away from their idealistic goals of “bringing out” from the students their inner truths and wisdom (the original meaning of the term educate), which is the avowed role of liberal arts programs, and instead turned hard, to the right, onto a path of churning out engineers, MBAs, hard scientists (even in the field of psychology, where humanistic psychology was shunned), medical professionals, lawyers, and the like. My liberal arts, semi–ivy-league college—founded, by half, by Benjamin Franklin—turned from the idealistic studies that typified Franklin and those of his time and swung from being a bastion of energetic inquiry into all controversial realms—political and spiritual and societal—a virtual “Plato’s Academy” of inquiry, into being a career mill centered around a “pre-med” program.
Harnessing the Media
Similarly, these frightened and wealthy WWII “conspirators” (however unconscious their alliance) would use their leverage to ensure that books and the media—TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers—would expound their views predominantly, would present events through the particular psychological lenses and filters with which they were familiar, and would eschew viewpoints, and even coverage of events, that would in any way strengthen the stance of the, by this time, scapegoated Sixties Generation. The media declared, with much fanfare, in the early Seventies that a “conservative backlash” was occurring; and they published books documenting this event. Meanwhile they ignored the polls and the events—specifically the ongoing and growing antiwar and other counterculture “demonstrations”—that would show the lie to this idea, and they rejected and refused publication of the kind of books and articles, still being effusively churned out—that would support the counterculture movement. Controlling the media in this way and saying it long and loud enough, the “big lie” of the “conservative backlash” began to be accepted as truth. And even many in the counterculture and among the youth began to believe it. 
Interestingly, those on the extreme right did not forget that the great divide in views was still with us. In the Nineties, Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich said a “culture war” was going on.
More recently we see WWII and Fifties style Tea Partiers going up against huge rallies of Sixties style pro-union demonstrators and massive recall efforts.
So those on the right decry such massive outpourings against them, but they are correct that it is a “culture war.” Obviously they can see that the world has changed from the Fifties-style “Pleasantville” that they had imagined and wanted it to be.
The King Wouldn’t Die: World War Two Generation Clung to Power, Abomination and Stagnation Filled the Land
The King Won’t Die, An Abomination Grew in the Land
An Aborted Changing of the Guard
Culture War — The King Must Die
But the World War Two Generation could not maintain control forever. For one thing, people die. And being older than the Sixties Generation, eventually their numbers had to dwindle. Their numbers dwindling, they had to be replaced by those younger–some of whom were of the Sixties Generation and were now in what psychohistorians call the triumphant phase of life–that is, the time of life when a generation is in its “prime,” when it is most influential, when it takes over the reins of society, when it gets behind the wheel of the cultural bus. 
From this perspective, we can view a remarkable film, “Pleasantville,” released in the late Nineties at the peak of the Sixties Generation’s triumphant phase, and see that it is a metaphorical review of history from the early Fifties up to that time–one which shows the Sixties Generation, in the end, finally realizing their vision of a more colorful, alive, open-to-new-experience and to change, growthful, changeful, passionate, unregimented, truthful, sensual, feeling and emotionful, and less determined, ritualized, and preordained existence. More about this later.
The Generational Changing of the Guard
First let me point out that this change in power, evident by this movie and the other recent cultural items I’ve mentioned, is a change as old as our species. Every generation, at some point, leaves or is removed from their seats of power when they are at or near the end of their arc of effectiveness and prowess by a younger generation that is coming into or—as in the unusual case of the Sixties Generation for the reasons unique to this time to be mentioned below—is fully in the prime of its life.
Myths, fairy tales, stories, historical tales, and legends the world over depict this change of power. The myth that is most transparent in its depiction of this change is the one in which a monarch, despot, or ogre controls and rules the land, keeping the people miserable with oppressive and selfish decrees and policies. A young prince emerges and, after a period of trial (in the case of the Sixties Generation, an unusually long period of trial) in which the prince proves himself worthy, he takes up the cause of the people and overthrows the old king and takes his place. Thus the saying “The king is dead. Long live the (new) king.”
The triumphant phase of the Sixties Generation had been delayed, however, longer than any other generation in history because of the advances in modern medical science, which has served to keep the World War Two Generation alive and kicking longer than any previous generation. The average life expectancy in the last sixty years (since the time when the World War Two Generation were in their youth or young adulthood) has increased remarkably. Hence the Sixties Generation has had to wait longer than the World War Two Generation to get a chance behind the wheel of society. It is strange and ironic that at a time when the speed of cultural change is greatest because of an ever increasing speed of technological change, at a time when the elder generation’s worldview becomes obsolete sooner and faster than ever before, at such a time when it would seem the younger generation’s view would attain relevancy and effectiveness faster and sooner than at any previous time, at such a time we have the reverse occurring, that is, the younger generation’s ascendancy is delayed and the older one’s stranglehold on power is extended.
But this rapid change and increasing rate of obsolescence may just have something to do with the WWII Generation’s desire to hang on and their vehement struggle against change. 
For, as mentioned before, there is a gap—greater than ever before—between the views of the younger and those of the older. This gap is wrought of the different technological worlds and the corresponding sociocultural worlds that each experienced. It is widened by different, more advanced on the one side, child-caring of children as well as by different drugs used and the contrasting world views they would elicit—as explained previously, in Chapter Three.
So the WWII Generation might be said to be more threatened than any previous one by the generation to succeed them, because the ascendancy of the next generation would appear to overturn and oftentimes reverse so much of what they believe, value, worked and sacrificed for. 
Because of the unprecedented technological change and corresponding change in material culture, catalyzing in ways too numerous to mention a myriad of sociocultural and psychological changes in their successors, 
there is less overlap than ever before between the worldviews of the generation handing over power and the generation coming into power. It follows that it would seem to the generation in power, even as they approach the end of their mortality, that less of what they are and were will live on after them than has ever been the case in the history of generational succession.
This being so, this generational succession represents a previously unheard of personal invalidation and undermining of the self-esteem of those of the World War Two Generation and a corresponding unprecedented attack on the usual delusions of immortality (themselves living on in some fashion in their successors) that older generations are allowed in exchange for their relinquishing power.
Generational Changing of the Guard, Aborted
At any rate and whatever may be the reason, the fact remains that the World War Two Generation has used their longevity for all their worth to block the ascendancy of their successors. They used their longevity to amass wealth and power–wealth greater than any previous generation before and, because of their actions, likely to come.
For example, their actions have led to a situation, currently, wherein they were taken care of in their old age by a Social Security and Medicare system funded by the work of the Baby-Boomers, aka Sixties Generation,
at the same time that predictions abound that that same Social Security and Medicare system will be depleted when it is the Baby-Boomers time to belly-up to the bar. One might also note the WWII Generation’s environmental and ecological decisions making it that no generation after them will enjoy anywhere near the benefits—health and quality of life among them—of clean environment, abundance of natural resources, and ecological balance that they enjoyed. Finally, their decisions regarding arms buildup and proliferation may deny life itself to the generations following them.
Other unprecedented ogre-like—greedy, selfish, and uncaring-of-succeeding-generations—actions can be numbered against this generation.
So the World War Two Generation used their unprecedented wealth and power to wage a war against the generation who would be taking over from them, keeping them and their values under attack and away from the centers of power and influence in society as long as they possibly could.
Examples. This is meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive. See also “Balance the Budget on the Back of Billionaires” at the bottom of Chapter 27: Life Vs. Matrix
World War Two Generation
Stephen J Bechtel, Jr., born 1925
Richard Vos, born 1926
Fred Koch, born 1900, died 1967, co-founder of John Birch Society, living on through Fifties Generation sons, David H and Charles C., below
Stanley Hubbard, born 1933
Pawlenty donor goes to Bachmann: Billionaire media mogul Stanley Hubbard, a longtime friend and donor of the Minnesota governor, told POLITICO on Tuesday that he’s now backing the Minnesota congresswoman.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61504.html.
Conservative Fifties Generation Followers, Fawning Fallow Fascist Generation
David H. Koch, born 1940
Charles G. Koch, born 1935
Yuppie Freak WWII Gen Clones. Examples:
Eric Cantor, born 1963
Desperate Last Stands in the Generation Wars: Clinton, Abortion, War, Voting, Wealthifying, Health Care, Tea Party, OWS
King Won’t Die – Generational Changing of the Guard, Aborted
Last Stands in the Generation Wars: Sex, Abortion, Neo-Con 9-11, Election Stealing, Corporate Personhood, Tea Party, OWS
So the World War Two Generation used their unprecedented wealth and power to wage a war against the generation who would be taking over from them, keeping them and their values under attack and away from the centers of power and influence in society as long as they possibly could.
Desperate Stand: The Battle of the Bill (Clinton)
It is enlightening to consider in the Nineties the persistent attacks on Bill Clinton (similarly, on Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, continuing)—the first Sixties Generation U.S. president—ever since he took office. The Monica Lewinsky scandal is a typical example of the extent to which the World War Two Generation so effectively controlled the views and values expressed and subtly expounded in the media ever since it took conscious control of the society’s “collective consciousness” in this way in the early Seventies. By this I mean that in the entire time of the scandal, it was assumed that sex is bad, or at least that sex outside of marriage is bad. It was assumed that Hillary must be horribly pained and angered by the revelation of her husband’s affair(s).
Make Love, Not War
It is as if the slogan “Make Love, Not War” was never a generational outcry. I don’t believe you will ever find in the history books paid for/ published by World War Two Generation owned publishing houses mention of the fact that slogan was ever used. Indeed, with all the talk by pundits, analysts, and commentators on literally hundreds of TV shows during the entire time of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment drama, that slogan, “Make Love, Not War,” was practically never mentioned. I am aware of only one time–when I heard it slipped in unnoticed by a participant in the middle of a talkin’-all-at-once brouhaha on the TV show “Politically Incorrect,” whereupon it was totally ignored. Even more astonishing, those same pundits discussed, ad nauseum, this scandal and all the myriad ramifications of it yet never, to my knowledge, made note of Clinton’s generational status and the views, exemplified by “Make Love, Not War,” which our generation espoused. It has simply been assumed that all of the Sixties Generation “grew out” of that kind of “nonsense” and had adopted the views of the WWII Generation..again, polls on values and viewpoints be damned.
Rewriting History
Most telling of all in the attacks on Clinton’s behavior is the assumption that such a stance on open marriage and uninhibited sexuality is a product of uncontrolled lewdness and the sexual license exhibited primarily by the young, which naturally everyone grows out of in order to adopt the constrained and secretive sexual views of the old. The sexual revolution’s parallel growth in the Sixties with expanding civil rights, women’s rights, and individual liberty is completely ignored. 
Its roots in an idealism about final and complete gender equality is totally vanquished as if it were never so.
In fact, I doubt you, the reader, know of this. Yet hordes of Sixties youth shared with each other, conspiratorial like, the Sixties novel, The Harrad Experiment by Robert H. Rimmer, that portrayed—in poetic and highly intelligent fashion—an evolution to a radical equality between the genders, to an elimination of neurotic suffering around sexuality as, for example, in painful jealousy, to an ending of sexual violence as in spouse abuse, and a final and complete solution to a gender war existing for all time with incalculable casualties and near infinity of suffering on both sides. It was a story about non-monogamy and open relationships…”free love.”
Neither did the pundits point out that Bill Clinton is of a generation who made a book on “open marriage” a bestseller. The clinch on the media by that older generation has been so complete as to have, apparently, completely dismissed or erased from the minds of the pundits the facts that those ideas and books ever existed. Another thing erased from history since the Seventies: the “sexual revolution.” Remember that? When was the last time you heard that talked about? All of the energy that had surrounded these controversial ideas has, because of media manipulation and repression of these views, been
Foolin’ the People … About Money, About “Us” (The 1%), About Taxes, About Job Creation, About Democrats, About Republicans, About Generations, About Your Life, About You: Choose the Red Pill
Aug 22
Posted by sillymickel
Money Madness and the Rise of “Obvious Truths” … Around Taxes, the Wealthy, Job Creation, Democrats, Republicans, Generations, Your Life, and You: When ALL You Hear Are Lies, You Think It HAS to Be Truth
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fifteen: Money Madness
Tax the Wealthy, You’re Taxing Me … Foolin’ the People About Money
Obvious “Truths”—Fiscally Responsible Republicans and Tax and Spend Democrats
Obvious “Truths”:
Obvious “Truth” – Tax the Wealthy, You’re Taxing Me
That’s a Small Business?
We’re All Rich. Somehow I Missed That Memo.
Obvious “Truth”: The Democrats’ Want to Take Your Money.
Well how did it get to that conclusion when actually it’s going to lower taxes. And they were saying it over and over again, “No, we don’t even need to know what the plan is; we just know he’s a Democrat and that he’s going to raise taxes,” they would say of Obama…or for that matter of any Democrat at any time in recent history.
Now, how did that become true? Well because…he’s a Democrat and well haven’t you ever heard the term tax and spend Democrats? And there we go again.
Obvious “Truth” – Fiscally Responsible Republicans
Pointing Some Fingers Already
Alright, let’s go back. Pre-Roosevelt turn of the century initiatives so common and familiar now, such as the Food and Drug Administration, are the kinds of things Democrats brought in that added to government. Yet, Republicans spout misinformation; they get people angry about “evils” of such “big government.”
Misplaced Credit
The Democrats are the ones who brought in the FDA, worker’s rights, workman’s compensation. They’re the ones who put in Medicare. They’re the ones who put in Social Security.
Misplaced Blame
And we remember the Republicans are the ones who created the Great Depression, created poverty for everybody at that time. They’re the ones who did it again with Bush, who tripled and nearly quadrupled the National Debt under the twelve years of Reagan-Bush, then more than doubled it under George W. That’s a lot of goddamn money.
That’s a Lot of Money.
And even afterward, all Congressmen were agreeing that’s a huge amount of money, which at the time
was the biggest amount of money being spent at one time, in such a short period of time on anything. 
And how could we forget that they just took the money and did whatever they wanted with it? They paid off debts to other rich friends; they went overseas and invested in other countries.
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Chase Didn’t Use the Money for What It Was Intended.
Obvious “Truths” – Tax and Spend Democrats
Social Security, Medicare, and Surpluses, Oh My!
It has nothing to do with the truth. Certainly Roosevelt benefited all Americans with Social Security and so on; certainly Medicare, brought in under Lyndon Johnson benefited the vast majority of Americans. All these things the Democrats did.
And Clinton raised taxes on the very rich a few percentage points and balanced the budget. Clinton created jobs and prosperity, balanced the budget, reduced the National Debt, and created a surplus that could have gone into creating a better America for all Americans. But, no, that was considered bad, because they said it hurt all Americans when the extremely wealthy had to give a little more in taxes.
The Fun Times Anticipating the Surplus
Never mind the facts, never mind that fact that we had a surplus that we were talking gleefully about how we were going to spend it. If you can remember, we were discussing investing in better roads and infrastructure that would have benefited even the businesses.
Stealing Home
The Wealthy Are the Creative Sector All Right … Creative in Stealing Our Money
Obvious “Truth”—The Wealthy Are the Job Creators
Obvious “Truths”:
Obvious “Truth” – Rich People Create the Jobs
Obvious “Truth”—The Wealthy Are Society’s Creative Sector.
They’re Creative All Right.
They’re the creative people, huh? Yea, they’re creative in stealing from us. They’re creative in fattening their wallets at our expense. They’re creative in getting people elected who are liars and things like that.
That’s not the kind of creativity I’d like to have. As far as creating jobs. Who creates jobs?
Excess Wealth Given to the Rich Created High Art Prices, Not High Employment.
Real Truth—The Rich Will Squander or Sit on Extra Money.
Obvious “Truth”: Non-Wealthy Folks Don’t Create Jobs, Don’t Invest Their Money
Real Truth: People With Less Money Will Sweat Over and Multiply Money, What They Can.
I saw my father do it. He is the same person making the meager fifty dollars a week at one point. And he wasn’t making much more, but he eventually got a truck driving contract with the U.S. postal service.
He was able to own several trucks and to hire several workers.
So, why did he do that? Because he didn’t have a lot of money.
And by taking those chances and becoming a businessperson, taking that little bit of money he had, he created jobs for a few other people. Because he was motivated, he was desperate. And for him it was all about a chance to raise himself out of being poor. He spent his life scanning for such opportunities till he finally came across one.
Billionaires Are Not Highly Motivated to Become Millionaires.
But Nobody Will Point This Out!
..
Makin’ People Foolish – Foolin’ the People About “Us” (The Rich)
Makin’ Foolish People – Foolin’ the People About “Us” (The Rich)
Obvious “Truths”:
Confused People Take Comfort in Stupidity
When ALL You Hear Are Lies, You Begin to Think It Has to Be the Truth.
Democrats Feel Like They’re Talking to a Wall; They’re Talking to the Weary.
And pundits wouldn’t delve into their argument, tease out its elements so as to enlighten.
So after a while a lot of these folks are going to say…I’m sure you’ve heard them, they’re Republicans and the ones who vote for Republicans…they would say, “Aw geez , that’s just a bunch of words, it don’t mean anything.”
But what the hell does that mean?
Confused People Retreat Into the Stupid.
..
..
And Burdened People Become Confused People—That’s Their Plan
We’ll Insure You, Up to the Time You Need It
It’s gotten to the point where you have insurance but you dare not ever make a claim. You live with the risk of unexpected loss to your home at any time that you can not cover, because if you make a claim you may not get it next time. You risk losing home insurance and threatening your home. What the hell kind of insurance is that? You are insured but they can deny you? They can deny your claim, or as it happens all the time, you have one or two claims, and you no longer have an insurance company.
Rational Thought Replaced With Slogans … How Can Anyone Know the Truth?
How Can Folks Unite Against Injustices Hidden From Them
That is the result of factoids, “obvious truths,” replacing reason in burdened and confused minds. So how could these people possibly, without being able to see clearly, how could folks like this ever be united against the REAL injustices against them…which they don’t even realize are happening…their minds filled with the fake stuff?
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How Can Folks Protect Themselves From “Wizards” Hiding “Behind the Curtain”?
With all this, how can anybody know what the truth is?
A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts … The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Workers Are Getting Humiliated
Increasing Humiliation of Working People, the Rich Get Richer at Our Expense
Obvious “Truth”:
Real Truth – The Rich Get Richer at Our Expense.
Life Has Gotten Harder – Real Truth
Real Truth – Our Suffering Has Paid for Even Greater Obscenities by the Wealthy.
Humiliation…Increasing Humiliation of Working People
We have these huge corporations taking over and it’s humiliating to people. I mean in times past we had the small retailer, perhaps this person had a small coin shop, bakery, drugstore and pharmacy, shoe shop, maybe a corner grocery store. Now, there aren’t any small stores like that. And where does that person end up making a living?
Well, he worked in retail so maybe he even ends up working for the same department store hat pushed him out of business. So what does that do to your self-esteem?
I can say I feel fortunate to have lived many years in an America quite different from what most people in America being younger than me have been growing up with.
Hippies, Yippies, Yuppies … How the 1% Diluted the Progressive Movement by Slandering Boomers to Foster Culture War Between Them and Gen Xers and to Distract from Their Own Looting
The Yuppies Were Hardly Boomers … But This Idea Supports a Right-Wing Agenda by Pitting Progressives Against Each Other … Try the Red Pill Instead
Obvious “Truths”:
Real Truth – All the Above Are Lies … Propaganda to Further the Motives of the 1%, the Filthy Rich
I can say I feel fortunate to have lived many years in an America quite different from what most people in America being younger than me have been growing up with.
I watched in the early Eighties the lies about a “Me Generation” coming out. Republicans brought that out to beat people down with. The idea was planted that people who wanted anything for themselves were selfish, for after all only the wealthy should ever benefit.
The 1% of the WWII Generation’s response to Sixties activism on campus, as I showed earlier, led to their taking over the universities in the early Seventies and turning them away from the humanities and social sciences and into career mills; I was there and observed it first hand. The success of this is what created the Yuppies in the Eighties–young upwardly mobile professionals–who were the first batch of Generation X—who are those born 1961 to 1981, who therefore left high school beginning in 1978. [Footnote 1]
So these Gen X Yuppies were coming onto the scene in the early Eighties, when the first of them were leaving the universities. The turnaround in education, away from free thinking and towards conservative careerist values, was in full swing by the time they reached college in 1978 on. And its effect on them was patent when they began coming of age. They were what the WWII Generation wanted: money-oriented and compliant…greed had been made “good” again. Standouts of this generation today are Sarah Palin (born 1964), Eric Cantor (born 1963), Rand Paul (born 1963), and Paul Ryan (born 1970).
So then the WWII Generation, fully in charge of society, could point to these yuppie spawn as examples of the obscenity of greed, thus deflecting attention away from their own, WWII Generation, me-spiritedness. To further their ends, they also claimed the origins of this unseemly greed lie in the failed, unrealistic values of the Sixties generation and their idealism.
Whereas this actual Me Generation, these Yuppies, were predominantly a bunch of reactionary young people who said to hell with this idealistic stuff, and of helping out, and kumbaya, and all that stuff. They said, we’re for money, to hell with any one else. And somehow the WWII-Generation-owned media, assisted by a Fifties Generation now in their prime, convinced folks that these careerists out only for themselves were the one-time visionaries. Of course they only pulled this off because they owned or controlled all the major organs of expression in America—the newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, education, book publishing. I’ve delineated how they did this in one of the earliest all-out assaults, after their initial setbacks in the Sixties, of the Culture War/Class War they have been waging on the 99% since that time.
The media flooded American minds with the idea that the Me Generation was My Generation (I’m “talkin’ bout my generation” here) in the Eighties. They had prepared the ground for that lie, as there had been constant slander of my generation in the press since the beginnings of our activism in the Sixties, exactly like they are now putting out against the Millennials and those in the Occupy movement today. Beginning in the Seventies, owning the publishing and media industries, they concocted the lie that there was a conservative backlash going on. (See Chapter Two: Matrix Aroused, the Sixties and The Big Lie About Yuppies Being Hippies.)
This supposed conservative backlash was merely a continuation of Nixon’s laughable claim that he was supported by a “Silent Majority,” which he had used since the beginnings of his term in 1969 and which was obviously false, as demonstrations grew in size and support swung away from him throughout this period; and eventually he was forced to resign. But Republicans always claim there are a majority of real folks out there—“real Americans” as Palin and her kind say today—who support them but are doing it secretly. (btw, lol!)
Anyway, by the Eighties the powers-that-be were able to place this idea of a selfish “Me Generation” of Sixties youth, which they had been saying for a while, as being the ones on the campus at the time or recently out, the Yuppies. It fit their narrative. But it was a lie, and virtually all my generation knew it and thought it laughable. We stopped laughing after a while as over the years, it became clearer they had done such a good job of preparing the ground and repeating the lie that it stuck in the minds of those other than my generation—the Fifties Generation ahead of us and Gen X behind us—and the right wing, who of course saw this as red meat to further their causes. The media controlled by the 1% said the Sixties generation had gone from idealism to just wanting money, thereby discrediting their opponents, us who were consistently representing the 99%. At the same time they gave credibility to their claim of the superior veracity of their own values of greed, materialism, ruthless pragmatism, ego above all, and even me-spiritedness. Also, it validated, even glorified their personal traits of conformity, hard-headedness, cynicism, compliance, and even mean-spiritedness .
The Lies About Jerry Rubin
They could only give one example, Jerry Rubin; and even about him they lied and slandered. First off, neither Jerry Rubin, or Abbie Hoffman for that matter, were Boomers or Sixties Generation members. They were Fifties Generation, born in 1938 and 1936 respectively. Boomers were born in the post-WWII baby boom from 1946 through 1960. So that is enough to discredit what they said about “my generation.” But taking it as an attack aimed at the counterculture, let’s examine it:
They said Jerry Rubin was engaged in trying to make money. And they never mentioned what he was trying to make money on…
but God forbid anyone but them should try to make money anyway. You see, what the 1% do is drive people into lowered standards of living and poverty where they experience desperation for money at times. Then they can point to that grasping to survive as proof that their values of money above all else are legitimate and that it is not possible for humans to have any other values higher than that. They create the conditions that they can use to support and validate themselves…how convenient.
But Rubin’s position in this “debate”—which was actually a discussion of different ways the Sixties values might succeed, not be overturned—was that the POOR COULD BE HELPED by promoting programs to create wealth in their communities. I quote:
Someone who knew him well, Stew Albert, said this of Jerry in eulogizing him.
And,
Does that sound like someone promoting the interests of the 1%? Or like someone just out for himself, as Yuppies really are? Remember that at the time, militant, even violent revolution had been in the air for a while—with the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and the Symbionese Liberation Army and such. So “Yippie vs. Yuppie” was a leftist debate about tactics. Today it would be considered a discussion of liberal vs. progressive views…hardly conservative, Yuppie, or Republican views. And Jerry Rubin’s putting on a suit made him about as conservative as it made Bob Dylan a conservative when he picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Festival of 1965. Dylan got booed for what was only considered unusual alongside some very high, and strict, expectations about purism in music having nothing to do with political ideology or musical quality but simply technology. Rubin’s wearing a suit was the same kind of thing at the time he did it…and it had nothing to do with ideology but simply tactics—i.e., revolutionary technology.
Also, at the same time as Rubin was doing all this and supposedly a Yuppie, he was running a legal and civil rights office in an artsy/alternative part of L.A., Echo Park, where he also lived. When he died he was on his way to dinner in the company of Fred Branfman of the Making a Difference project, whose purpose was to bring money into poor communities by helping inner-city youth learn how to start their own businesses. Does that sound like a Wall Street careerist? Does that sound like he turned over his ideals and bowed to the god of money? So, lies, lies, lies. And these lies become instituted and they’re not challenged after a while, after you hear them for decade after decade after decade….
You have to be older to know that it wasn’t always the way they tell you it is. It helps to have lived in different times and places and to have seen things with your own eyes to be able to see through these inane “obvious truths” that people take as absolute truths. It helps to have had experience with the things they are talking about to know what are actual facts and what are complete fabrications.
Setting the Record Straight on Boomers
Boomer-Generation X Culture War
A friend who supports the Occupy movement, and who happens to be a Gen Xer, recently shared this with me,
If this person were correct, then why have the Boomers voted consistently Democratic? [Footnote 2]
The Gen X/Yuppie—Fifties Generation alliance was responsible for getting Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II elected. Boomers voted against Republicans, especially these; it’s all in the public record. Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II are the ones who did the tax cuts. Whereas Clinton—a Boomer and a Democrat—raised taxes on the 1% and balanced a budget for the first time.
Indeed, all Democratic candidates and Presidents going back to Roosevelt at least, with the one small exception of Kennedy favored and fought for raising taxes on the 1%, not cutting them, so as to relieve the burden on the 99%. The right likes to use Kennedy as an example of a Democrat seeing the wisdom of cutting taxes to improve the economy, but Kennedy’s proposed tax cut for the 1% was when the marginal rate was 91% range, not at 35% as today, and the country was prosperous. (See The Myth of JFK as a Supply Side Tax Cutter.) Also it was not instituted until Johnson began his term … which was incidentally when the huge deficits began. So Kennedy’s tax cut had nothing at all to do with the prosperity we enjoyed during his term, indeed its institution marked the beginning of increasing deficits.
Even today, it is Democrats—supported heavily by Boomers—who are opposed to tax cuts and favor reining in the greed of the 1%.
This includes Obama, who incidentally is a Gen X-Boomer cusper, born 1961. Note that he has surrounded himself with Boomers—Biden, Clinton, et al. And they are engaged in that same Democratic struggle of decades past of trying to get the 1% to pay their fair share in taxes. Meanwhile Republicans supported by that Fifties Generation (the Koch Brothers, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, et al) – Gen X/Yuppie (Palin, Cantor, Ryan, Rand Paul) alliance oppose Boomer-Democratic tax and other progressive initiatives at every turn.
So to accuse Boomers, who voted predominantly for these Democrats and their policies, of cutting taxes is grossly misinformed or a lie. And for a Gen Xer to do this blaming is either ignorant, a denial, or delusional…but is in any case a product of that misinformation I’ve been talking about.
For to address that Gen Xer’s charges of Boomer’s causing the dependence on dirty foreign oil, the Sixties Generation started the environmental movement. I know a little about this; as I explained previously, I was one of those who helped bring nuclear plant construction to a halt in America, which we did in Springfield, Oregon, in the early Eighties. We, Boomers…I was born in 1950…supported Democrats who fought for environmental legislation, alternative energies, and reduced dependence on dirty energies against Republicans, supported by the Fifties-Gen X alliance, who watered down those policies and legislated a rape of our natural resources and our environment to benefit big business, Big Oil, Big Nuke, Big Coal, and the 1%.
As for the accusation that Boomers sent our manufacturing base overseas and caused a lowering of middle class wages, how can that possibly be true alongside the more than obvious knowledge that Democrats are the ones who consistently push for and favor raising the minimum wage and are the union supporters? Can this OWS person not be aware of the parallel Wisconsin union movement which has Democrats and union folks up against Republicans and Gen X/Fifties Gen Koch-supporters? Or is he somehow unaware of the fact that Boomers have consistently voted in greater numbers for Democrats than Republicans over all these decades? [Footnote 2]
Well, this shows the amount of success the WWII Generation and Fifties Generation enjoyed in shifting the blame for their policies and their theft of the national wealth. And, by the way, it was the WWII Generation that had the greatest retirement wealth per person and who instituted Social Security and other benefit programs for themselves … making themselves the wealthiest as well as the “Greatest Generation.” Probably with the tax cuts, the current Fifties Generation who in their retirement years are raping the wealth of the country to fatten themselves, are bettering them. Whereas the Sixties Generation, scapegoated again, is facing cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and other benefits at the exact time as they need it and are facing or entering retirement—being beaten down, harassed, and scapegoated by the Gen X-Fifties Generation alliance again.
You think this is ancient information and is irrelevant to what is happening today? Remember that the comment I quoted above from my Gen X friend and fellow Occupier was from only last week. He has his sights set on my generation as the perpetrators of the problems; these ideas have caused a split between Gen X and Boomer Progressives. I can tell you that his comment is not atypical from others I hear from Gen X in their attitudes toward Boomers.
Similarly, to some extent the Millennials believe Boomers are at fault also—this is what they have been taught. They are simply misinformed and so are not so committed to the lies as the Gen Xers.
The Millennials are open to the fact they have been deceived. After all their Boomer parents are models of the fact that these “facts” are actually lies. The Millennials have been made to believe, simply, that their own parents and those of their friends are somehow just different from those “bad Boomers” out there who are really the selfish and tax-cutter ones.
Lies and toxic misinformation are not healthy, at all, for a movement that is predominantly an alliance of Millennials and Boomers, with some Gen Xers (notably, few Fifties Generation folks). After all, how do you think a progressive Boomer feels,
after fighting his entire life with his generational cohort for the changes that we are still fighting for with the OWS and Wisconsin union movements, and after hearing his entire life the made up lies, the slander, the scapegoating about himself, his generation, and his beliefs? How do you think she feels seeing those same lies being pulled out again and thrown against OWS supporters, for example, continuing therefore to throw salt into old wounds? And finally how do you think she feels to hear from her friends and allies in the movement that she has been the problem all this time, not the solution? It is disheartening, to say the least.
In this antagonism against Boomers, the other side—the WWII-Fifties Gen alliance, supportive of the 1% and their Tea Party sycophants—have won again. [Footnote 3]
For these WWII-Fifties Gen lies have thrown discord into progressive ranks. And they have thrown off the aim of our movements as to who the perpetrators are, giving the 1% a convenient fog of confusion behind which they can continue unfettered their actions against us.
Finally a most visible example of the right-wing/Republican Fifties Generation – Gen X alliance was shown in the last presidential election with a Fifties Gen, McCain, matched with a Gen X – Palin, born in 1964, coming smack in the middle of the Yuppies (1961 through 1970). This is the generational alliance and the generational values we should be targeting, not Boomers, and Progressives would do better to know that.
The “Truth Dividend” of Having Been Around
So, in understanding what might be the truth and what are obviously lies, it helps to be older, for you can know that it wasn’t always the way they tell you it is or has to be. It helps to have lived in different times and places and to have seen things with your own eyes to be able to see through these inane “obvious truths” that people take as absolute truths. It helps to have had experience with the things they are talking about to know what are actual facts and what are complete fabrications.
And with that seeing comes the knowledge that over the course of the last fifty years America descended into a deep slumber of untruth from which it could not awaken…regardless of all the righteous efforts of many true-seeing progressive activists who did their best to sound alarms.
Continue With Culture War, Class War, Chapter Sixteen: The Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen: Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three – 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, 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 Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835355
Footnotes
1. A lot of confusion about Boomers, Yuppies, And Generation X has been generated by the Census Bureau and main stream media. A generation, see below, is defined as a cohort of people occurring roughly every twenty years who share some common viewpoint and experiences.
This is what a generation actually is:
Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau definition of Boomers is different. See Baby boomer.
Why would it be different? That is the crucial question. The Census Bureau’s definitions of Boomers and Generation X is as follows:
So why are those born 1961 through 1964 considered part of the Boomer Generation by the Census Bureau, which has informed much of the discussion on this? Why is the Census Bureau attributing only 17 years to Generation X but 19 years to Boomers, when in fact the Boomers were born in a World War II “baby boom” that had them being born in a distinctly shorter period. Whereas Generation X was born of the Fifties Generation during a more languorous, hence longer period? Why is the Census Bureaus including as Boomers those born at those end years of 1961 through 1964 when the number of births was decreasing, not “booming”?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know this decision by the Census Bureau has served pundits and right wing commentators in giving more weight to their positions by diluting the distinctly liberal voting record of actual Boomers. As I have been stating above, there was a concerted effort to scapegoat Boomers and to confuse them with Yuppie-Gen Xers. This confused definition by the Census Bureau is part of that. It has allowed pundits to slander the Sixties Generation, as I said, by attributing qualities to them that were actually a part of the WWII Generation’s Culture War Attack of creating a generation different from and more compliant than the Sixties Generation/ Boomers.
At any rate, that is why we have the discrepancy shown in this description of the Pew Report findings on “Boomer” voting patterns. Let’s look at a few relevant findings:
This supports what I’m saying about generational voting patterns. The difference lies in that this author has to differentiate between late Boomers and early Boomers. They are opposite in their voting patterns. This person wouldn’t be so confused if he placed the generational divide where it belongs, at 1961, not 1965. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1960, as shown in the chart below, which also shows Generation X beginning in 1961.
The Boom Generation defined by Howe and Strauss, as shown in the chart above, born 1946 thru 1960 are the ones who vote consistently Democratic. They are the ones who shared common events and experiences growing up and were shaped by them, notably the Vietnam War; the JFK, RFK, and MLK assasinations in 1968; the sexual revolution; the explosion of the use of LSD and pot as drugs, and the counterculture. These events were not on the cultural map that faced the ones born 1961 through 1964, for they were too young. Yet how can one define a Boomer-Sixties Generation that does not include these as formative experiences?
So this discrepancy is an example of what I’m talking about in this article. For it continues the confusion about Boomers and contributes to the scapegoating and the denigration of Boomers as being a Me Generation and Yuppies being former hippies by simply getting confusing results by including some from Gen X—some actual Yuppies.
To include those born between the four years, 1961 through 1964, you end up getting the confused results this author gets. You are including the likes of Sarah Palin and Eric Cantor, fer Chrissakes! I’ve never heard anyone mistake them for my generation. It would have Barack Obama, born 1961, categorized as a Boomer, as if there is not an obvious generational difference between him and some the notable Boomers in his administration, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. But by seeing that Obama is a Yuppie-Gen Xer, it helps explain the differences between him and the actual Boomer president, Bill Clinton.
For more on this, see Generation Jones, which is the term given for those born 1954 through 1964. They are seen to be very different from the Boomers. They did not confront the same social realities as did Boomers. They even came of age after the Vietnam War. They missed the counterculture movement. It is ludicrous for generationalists to include these with Baby Boomers as especially the second half of these have an entirely opposite world view from Boomers. Their stalwarts include Rick Santorum (born 1958), Sarah Palin (born 1964) and Eric Cantor (born 1963)…hardly Boomers. Notice that it also includes Rand Paul (born 1963), who as expected is the son of a Fifties Generation parent with whom he is allied, Ron Paul (born 1935).
See also the write up on Generation X in Wikipedia, which addresses this confusion as to where the dividing line between Boomers and Gen X is as well.
Finally, see Baby boomer, which discusses this confusion and adds two important considerations: The person who coined the term “baby boomer” described them as those born between 1943 and 1960. So why did the Census Bureau change it? The second point discussed is that many theorists have two distinct generations during this supposed period of Census Bureau Boomers—Boomers and Generation Jones, which are said to be those born 1956 through 1964. So this latter group is not included with Boomers.
Is all this not confusing enough? Does it not play into the right wing agenda to dilute their opponents power by confusing their opponents profile, so they can lob any charge against them? Or attribute any self-congratulatory trait to them, as they wish?
Most of all, this strikes me as devious in that it allows right wingers to blame Boomers for the cadre of youth, the Yuppies, who were actually their creation—that of the 1% and those reactionary culture war forces—and were in no way influenced by, so should hardly be included in, “my generation” of Boomers, the Sixties Generation.
2. BLAM!! From the site, Gallup Politics, of May 8, 2009. Even though continuing the misinformation that Boomers were born up till 1964, going with the Census Bureau definition, Gallup Poll data still solidly support the premise that Boomers are predominantly Democrats, as well as the fact that Millennials are as well.
Notice here that not only are arbitrary birth figures used to stipulate Boomers and Generation Xers, but everyone older than a Boomer is classified as part of the World War Two Generation—”The Greatest Generation.” So they would have everyone born in the forty-five year period from 1901 through 1945 to be WWII Gen even though some were born during the war and had their coming of age after the war and in the decade of the Fifties—those born 1925 through 1945. Elsewhere this generation has been termed the Silent Generation or the Eisenhower-Presley-McCarthy Generation…I’m calling them the Fifties Generation for convenience sake. Still, the study does find Democratic tendencies among Boomers, however wrongly defined, and Millennials. And it finds Republican leanings among Generation Xers, however wrongly defined, and the Fifties Generation, however wrongly defined again, as shown by the graph below:
Now contrast what above is said in the Gallup Poll about Boomers with what is said here about “late Boomers,” or who Howe and Strauss and other social scientists would call Generation X, and I would call Gen X-Yuppies:
The article above also describes the Democratic voting patterns of the Millennials, or what they call Generation Y.
On the idea that the Millennials being the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation/Boomers, as I continually point out, I offer the following definition of Millennials from WhatIs.com
Finally a most visible example of the right-wing/Republican Fifties Generation – Gen X alliance was shown in the last presidential election with a Fifties Gen, McCain, matched with a Gen X – Palin, born in 1964, coming smack in the middle of the Yuppies (1961 through 1970). This is the generational alliance and the generational values we should be targeting, not Boomers, and Progressives would do better to know that.
3. There is some scapegoating done by Millennials out of this misinformation. The following was published a few days ago, on June 17, 2012. It is further validation of the antagonism against Boomers regarding the issues of the movement—OWS and Wisconsin union:
Continue With Culture War, Class War, Chapter Sixteen: The Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen: Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
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