#FromADearAndTrustedFriend from the Land of Rainbows
The war between free thought and social conformity, verging on dictatorship these days, has been fought for quite some time. The propaganda machines and their special rhetorical forces have continually divorced people from their ability to consciously think for themselves by mass dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. There is still resistance to allowing free access of quality information with which average people can use to formulate their thoughts in regard to their natural and human rights.
My fear is this. In a classic military battle you have offense and defense both fairly easy to identify and counter, but this system of disinformation produces the sly option of evasion. This form of evasion through the use of misinformation and disinformation is the weapon of the ruling elite which I think has the most impact. It is far to easy for the exploiters of the people to overwhelm the people’s conscious awareness so as to prevent the public to focus on the intent to completely redirect their mental focus because of a technique that often is so subtle as to be imperceptible.
I fear when people who should be able to see eye to eye and fight for the common goal are thereby completely incapable of such a concerted effort because they have become fixated on some little thing like a word (and it’s possible social ramifications), or trigger topics. I view this as a technique which could be termed “evasive rhetoric”. “Trigger words” placed as if they are landmines arrayed in order to keep the “warriors of the righteous” from reaching their common goal by causing separation and descent. And I certainly believe that the other side is capable of placing them, planting these ideas into the minds of their confronters. What do you think?
This post is to some degree a reaction to the preceding piece by my very good friend who must remain anonymous due to the repressive nature of the exploiters from whom he must eek out a living. It was also inspired by a conversation with my very best friend and brother Steve. And it has been informed by all the books I have read, the people I have engaged with and the experiences of my life.
The most powerful force in politics is the psychic (mind-tinged with emotion; or emotive thought) energies of the people, primarily of the “working-class” (many of whom have been sold the idea that they are in the so-called “middle-class”. Make no mistake about it if you earn your living working for someone else and are not in their management team (1) then you are working-class no matter how well you get paid or what neighborhood you live in. This will comprise between something like 60%-80% of the population (2). Traditionally the ruling elite have comprised between 1% and 5%. By some analyses I have read suggest the ruling elite in mid- to late-18th century Europe (specifically England) were about 5% of the population. The “middle-class,” the “entrepreneurial class” or, more anciently, the “merchant-class” tended to comprise about 5%-20%… This traditionally left upwards of 80% of the population who were responsible for the actual creation of wealth which they have never been permitted to keep as the ruling elite held the “monopoly of violence” by which they extracted the produce of the “producing class”. On these figures I am providing gross estimates which should serve as a general guide and they should be read as just that: a general guide: I stand to be corrected on the precise figures. To do this required they, the ruling elite distribute some portion to a buffer class traditionally called the “merchant/artisan class”. I am here choosing not to address the fullness of the “First Estate” which traditionally included not only the King and Queen but the higher ranking clergy. This subject will have to await another post.
The common method of controlling this enormous psychic force seems to be divided into two primary strategies:
Firstly, to pit one group of the working-class against one or more other groups within the working-class which divisions are usually artificial divisions. The perennial “other”: of which the most common version in this nation has nearly always been the Indian (indigenous or “first peoples”), the African Diaspora (which as served as the “slave class” to this day if you consider the exception contained in the 13th amendment to the US constitution) and Latinos (3).
Secondly, either to misinform, to disinform or by not informing (that is, to withhold information from) the mass of the population about what is happening in their society. One additional method is simply to bury the overburdened producing class in an overabundance of a combination of all these forms of persuasion.
This second method often goes hand in glove with the first. When the ruling elite are in the process of stealing the wealth produced by the working-class or when those elites fear the working-class might start to figure out what is being done to them, their children and their children’s children. In efforts to control the psychic energies of the working-class their attention is often directed toward some “nefarious other” as the culprit of the ills suffered by the workers’, that is, the vast bulk of what composes society thereby manufacturing some combination of these methods into a unified and coordinated attack against the interests of the working-class, that is, “the people”.
While it is only one example the following story is a prime example of how this process works. The propaganda industries, in particular, the “liberal” news media, is not there to inform us of the actual events occurring in our society. Events which impact us, the average person on the street, in every aspect of our day-to-day lives. This misdirection by the various branches of the great “propaganda machine” which all too often is used to dilute the solidarity of the actual produces of the world’s wealth. Said in another way: these so-called “liberal news media” are here to distract us and/or to outright lie to us about what is who is siphoning off the wealth of our nation and ultimately of the world at large.
This post involves the so-called “Russia-gate” scandal where we are told that Russia interfered with our “sovereign democratic process”. While I have exceedingly little doubt that Putin attempted to interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election this is, in my opinion, merely being used as a distraction from those who are and have for more than 35-40 years been engaged in a intricate pas de deux or dance which is designed to appear as if the two sides are fencing when in fact they are simply fighting to see who gets to “guard the ‘King’s Treasure’, that is the wealth extracted from the actual producers.” These media, News and entertainment actually serve only as a venue for disinformation about why we presently have a Nazi in the White House, ahhh… excuse me Nazis (plural). This distraction about the interference in other nations’ sovereign right to choose its own government is a method nations have used for centuries, nay, for millennia. It has been an ongoing process for so long it predates the existence of the “nation-state” itself. One of the best examples of this was Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, or simply Otto von Bismarck, whose practice of Realpolitik shaped the very world we live in to this day.
No, no, no… NO! please, don’t misapprehend me here. This is a vital point. I am not condoning the practice of any nation interfering with any other nation’s internal politics, but if we dare to condemn “them” for interfering with ours; how dare we interfere with theirs. I state this because the most egregious violator of “not” interfering with the national sovereignty of other nations is our very own national government which is manifested as imperial overreach. None of this is to condone interference by “foreign powers;” it is simply an attempt to place this issue in some perspective.
The real problem with American “democracy” is that the united States of America was never intended to be a democracy. The founders and the framers abhorred democracy; democracy scared the hell out of them because it was a power they could not have controlled. They considered democracy to be “mob rule”. For those who are among the more acute observers of American political theater should recall this term being as it was applied to the US’s, then current, form of governance in the not too distant past. It was used by the ideological predecessors of the very people who just bankrupted this nation with the most massive transfer of wealth in this nation’s history, and arguably, in the world’s history dating back to perhaps the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. They freely admit that over the next 10 years, a single decade, their “wealth transfer bill”, their presumed, Tax Reform Bill, which was just signed into law will place this nation in debt to the tune of, at least, 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS (4).
To return to the prime point: the real problem with American democracy is that the ruling elite within both major parties have been working to undo what democratic process had creeped into our system over the course of our nation’s existence. For instance, when the ruling elite of the Democratic Party lost their bit to have Eugene McCarthy receive the nomination in 1972 they instituted the now infamous “super-delegate” system as a means of countervailing the will of their parties constituency. Since then we have had no Democratic Party nominee who was not throughly bedded with the corporate elites. Take the Clinton’s for instance. Bill was initially promoted to national prominence with the financial backing of, among other corporate master, Charles and David Koch. Yes, those Kochs, the enemies of the DNC, climate science and the welfare of average Americans. Doesn’t that seem curious to you? It surely does to me.
In an attempt to return to what is intended to be the central focus of this piece which is the use of the “liberal news media” to misdirect the psychic energies of the masses. I here submit the following short interview of American journalist, author, constitutional lawyer and co-founder of “The Intercept”, an online news publication dedicated to what it describes as, “adversarial journalism” by “On The Media” produced by WNYC Studios where he discusses the “fake news” of CNN, NBC, MSNBC and possibly others just this past week concerning “smoking gun” reports about collusion between the Trump Election Campaign Team, Russia and Wikileaks (5).
FOLLOW THIS LINK: On The Media interview with Glenn Greenwald (6)
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(1) Overseeing the work of the producers of wealth.
(2) When the lumpen-proletariat are included, aka the poverty stricken.
(3) Many of whom has an ancestry that dates to the earliest involvement of Europeans on this continent. Much to the dismay of many between a third and a half of what we think of as the US was stolen from Mexico in a war of aggression during the mid 1840s and of Texas about a decade before. With this theft came a huge population of Latinos, but they have always been considered by the Euro-Americans (as is their wont) as illegitimate inhabitants of the land their fore-bearers had inhabited for generations at the time of the theft.
(4) Try to keep in mind these estimates nearly always prove to be overly optimistic thus we might easily find it proves to be more in the order of $3 Trillion. If history is any predictor, which in this case it rather likely, as this same process has been practiced here in excess of 35 years. It has also been practiced in Europe for over two decades and in England for over 40 years. It has also been practiced in Latin America since, at least, 1973, and throughout the developing world ever since to this present day. September 11, 1973 to be precise when the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile was overthrown by a CIA orchestrated coup d’etat. This is often referred to as “Disaster Capitalism”, TINA (There Is No Alternative), trickle down economics, and supply-side economics to name some of the more common appellations applied to this system of wealth transfer. There has, to my knowledge, never been a case where the result was different.
(5) Again, please don’t misapprehend me here because I am fully aware that FOX (FAUX) NEWS is probably a more egregious violator of this than even MSNBC. And as stated earlier I have no doubt that Trump is not only a full fledged Nazi but is a throughly corrupt and despicable personality. My point here is that there is much more than enough to condemn Trump with without resorting to FAKE NEWS.
(6) Other sources that might provide insight and quality analysis are:
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Global Capitalism: December 2017 Monthly Economic Update
With a brief synopsis below:
Education: Top in education year in and year out is Finland who teaches children to cooperate before competition. Zero tuition at all levels from grade school to higher education. No private schools because that is to have a two-track system which is anti-democratic.
Worker coops: This is not some utopian fantasy about the future. This is something people have been doing all around the world, including the US. Coops are not invisible, tiny or marginal.
Paid parental leave: That’s when a government, society passes a law that says every employer must give paid leave to people who are parents. Number one on the list is Estonia with 87 weeks of paid leave-nearly two years to help raise your child. This is a kind of “family value”. Coming in at number two in the world is Bulgaria at 77 weeks paid leave to parents to express their commitment to family values. Third country: Hungary. At number four: Japan. Fifth is Lithuania. Sixth is Austria. Seventh is Czech Republic. Then Latvia, Norway, then down to number 41 the only country of the 41 countries followed by the OECD, (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) which has no paid parental leave–you’re here.
Movable housing, aka, RVs are bought by two groups, the retirees and the 25-34 year-olds because with the modern “Gig Economy” there is no security to be able to make the commitment necessary to purchase a house so they buy a movable house so they can move from town to town. When you hear the word “recovery” and you see a statistic look at the increasing production of this. You are not observing a recovery; you are observing a downward ratcheting of the standard of living.
In 2006 Mohammed Yunnus won the Nobel Peace Prize by coming up with a theory stating that what is holding back people in poor countries is they don’t have capital, money. If they had money they could start and build a business. Mr. Yunnus’ solution is called “microcredit”. Enter large commercial banks to make loans to people they could draw interest from whom they had not thought of before. Essentially this produced a system of economics called “supply-side economics”. It was a disaster because no one thought of the need for the demand. This lovely model is lovely precisely because it allows governments to help businesses without saying they are helping businesses.
What is the rationale for cutting taxes for corporations in America: that is what (has now just) been done.
Supply-side economics, trickle-down economics, liberating the entrepreneur––these are rationales for shifting the distribution of wealth and income from the middle and the bottom to the folks at the top. You can’t possibly have democracy with this level of inequality; the two don’t go together.
The decision by the US to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Why is the “revolt against sex abuse” happening now? Why not at some earlier date?
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The Tax Bill: The fundamental purpose and function of this law is to redistribute wealth and income from the middle and the bottom of this country to the top. What this is all about is a redistribution of wealth rationalized by catch-as-you-can arguments that they hope people won’t think through enough to realize they are being had. Here’s the worst one. The Republicans, sad as they are, have been busy for the past 25 years undoing the New Deal, undoing the vast collection of social welfare that was enacted in the aftermath of the collapse of the 1930s. And the rationale they had, why they had to cut food stamps and cut welfare. Remember Clinton? “The end of welfare as we know it.” – all that sort of bombastic stuff. Which by the way the Democrats did as well as the Republicans – the rationale behind it, let’s remember, was America had a deficit. We owe so much money we can’t afford a welfare system. We can’t afford to do all these wonderful things. We just can’t afford them, because if we did them we’d have to borrow the money and that would increase the deficit of what we owe we can’t do that. That’s what Republicans have been using as a rationale for 30 years. That’s why its awkward now that the very tax bill they (have now passed and signed into law) to cut taxes on business they can’t figure out––in the early years, at least––how to do that without massively cutting social programs.
By the way, to not borrow money to enable them to cut taxes on corporations, that would mean cutting your Social Security. That would mean taking away your Medicare and Medicaid-not all of it, but big chucks of it which, by the way they are planning to do next year anyway. They are going to keep spending roughly what they are spending this year, cut the taxes and borrow the money instead. The Party that said the deficit was the worst thing you could have – so bad that you had to cut school lunch programs – is now the champion of bigger deficits.
But here comes the best part: when the government cuts the taxes on corporations and the rich and then has to borrow the money to maintain what the government’s programs are because it’s not getting that money from the corporations and the rich – it has to borrow that money from the corporations from those same corporations and rich folks. They will not, instead of paying taxes will now lend it to the government.
The ruling class will have to come up with rationales as to why this tax cut didn’t work for the average American and that will be in the form of scapegoats just as it has been for the last, well… forever: the scapegoats will be the immigrants, the African Americans, the people who aren’t white, intellectuals, urban people, northerners etc. It will be “those people have done it to us”.
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And at:
THE REAL NEWS presents THE UNDOING OF THE NEW DEAL
On the Real News, we’ve been doing a lot of coverage, stories, about the battle within the Democratic party between the Sanders wing and what I would call the oligarchic ring, otherwise sometimes referred to as the Clinton wing or the Clinton/Obama wing, sometimes called the Corporate Democratic wing.
Well, we want to go back a bit in history and talk about the origins of this fight. At least, one of the critical turning points. We’re not going to go way back to the beginning of the Democratic party. Kind of go back to Roosevelt and the New Deal and Henry Wallace, who became Roosevelt’s vice president from ’41 to ’45, what happens in 1944 when Wallace gets dumped as Roosevelt’s vice president, and Wallace represents perhaps the most progressive politics that a vice president certainly ever had. Maybe the most progressive politics that someone ever made it to that kind of power ever had in the United States.
We’re going to go through over the course of a few segments how this battle unfolded and put the Sanders fight and Sanders wing of the party’s fight with the Corporate Democratic wing in some historical context.
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FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing The New Deal Index Page
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Beginning with a speech made by then Vice President Henry Wallace at:
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Henry Wallace Speech
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Then a program published by THE REAL NEWS titled “Undoing the New Deal” published on March 10, 2013
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Roosevelt’s election and the introduction of the New Deal, Jennifer Taub and John Weeks discuss the post-war period and how successive administrations dismantled it.
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Preliminary Video
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Followed by “Undoing the New Deal: The 1944 Coup Against VP Henry Wallace (pt1)” published on December 4, 2017
Historian Peter Kuznick and Paul Jay discuss the historical context of the fight between the Sanders’ progressive wing against the oligarchy within the Democratic Party; the overthrow of Vice President Wallace by an alliance of party bosses and Southern racists was a turning point in the decades-long process to roll back the New Deal
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 1: The 1944 Coup Against VP Henry Wallace
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Then “Undoing the New Deal: Truman’s Cold War Buries Wallace and the Left (pt2)” published on December 7, 2017
Historian Peter Kuznick says Truman bought into the Republican’s post-WWII campaign against Russia and used the hysteria to purge the Democratic Party and defeat former VP Henry Wallace in the ’48 Presidential election; with host Paul Jay
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 2: Truman’s Cold War Buries Wallace and the Left
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Then “Undoing the New Deal: Roosevelt Created A Social Safety Net, Not Socialism (pt3)” published on December 10, 2017
Historian Peter Kuznick says the New Deal created necessary programs and regulations that mitigated the effects of the Great Depression, but he wouldn’t nationalize the banks or challenge private ownership
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 3: Roosevelt Created A Social Safety Net, Not Socialism
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And “Undoing the New Deal: Truman Embraces the Cold War (pt4)” published on December 14, 2017
Historian Peter Kuznick says that while Truman supported the New Deal, he paved the way for its undoing by fueling the anti-communist, anti-socialist fervor which played into the hands of the right; with host Paul Jay
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 4: Truman Embraces the Cold War
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Then “Undoing the New Deal: African-Americans, Racism and the FDR/Johnson Reforms (Pt5)” published December 18, 2017
Historian Gerald Horne says that to pass the New Deal legislation, FDR allowed discriminatory practices to appease the racist Dixiecrat section of the Democratic Party; the reforms of the 60’s that responded to the upsurge of the civil rights movement helped Black Americans, but have been undone by Democratic and Republican administrations since
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 5: Truman Embraces the Cold War
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Undoing the New Deal: Clinton Rolled Back the Deal, Obama Blew a FDR Moment (pt6)” published December 20, 2017
Historian Gerald Horne says that President Clinton’s “reforms” were a staggering blow to the social safety net; President Obama had a rare political moment where he could have created a modern New Deal, but he wouldn’t do it
FOLLOW THIS LINK: Undoing the New Deal Part 6: Clinton Rolled Back the Deal, Obama Blew a FDR Moment
Roger Willis Mills II
rogerwillismills 