Brainwashing Is Not a Form of Personal Hygiene

BRAINWASHING IS NOT A FORM OF PERSONAL HYGIENE.

Nor is being brainwashed a guarantee of personal bliss, though it’s becoming apparent that there are many who swear by it.

It’s like reverence for innocence. Well, yes, kids sure are sweet, unsullied, open, positive, vibrant, curious. They wear their innocence well and we all envy their abandon. But we’re protecting them. So we bear all the risks and potential for endangerment. They play. We watch the playground to make sure there are no perverts, rabid dogs, or kidnappers.

As adults, it’s a different story. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ and ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ work for a while . . . until the axe falls. Or the bill comes due. Or the door is kicked down in the middle of the night. Being stupidly innocent as an adult can bring heartache and tragedy, in fact, typically does. While embracing wholesome open-mindedness and holistic trust, so as to not preclude learning and discovery, we are also well-advised to maintain a wary eye for the sham, the con, the manipulation, the lie, the entire range of possible mischief humans are capable of.

From what I now see reported on the news, such prudence is no longer at all possible. Evidence would suggest that a dam has been breached. A tsunami of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, deep fakes, propaganda, calculated deceptions, accompanied by a bottomless barrel of salacious scandals and mindless trivia, has flooded the once-habitable terrain of public discourse and understanding. We are drowning in bullshit.  

It shows. People are becoming confused, erratic, and increasingly desperate. We’re being constantly bombarded with bad news, rendering us numb, dumb, wary and increasingly frightened. It seems that folks are stressed out to the max. We have the firing squad of 24/7 if-it-bleeds-it-leads news coming at us from every direction. We’re surrounded by crises, personal, political, national, international. It’s beyond overwhelming.  

This makes us hunger for both relief and anything that will make sense out of the chaos.

Which renders many, if not most people, vulnerable to brainwashing.

I recently saw a compilation of talking heads relentlessly hammering home completely vaporous, frankly ridiculous but engaging, arresting, highly charged, and clearly effective memes. I presume that a majority of citizens, already reeling and punch drunk from years of propaganda, hearts and minds filled with hatred and fear, stumbling about in the house of mirrors that media has become, react to a frightening degree by buying into what these people are saying. Repetition is like kickboxing. Or like kneading dough. It’s just a matter of time before the target succumbs to persistence and becomes a subdued and unresisting lump, next to be carted off on a stretcher or put in the oven. Or in the case of the TV/smart phone-addicted public, put in a coma-like trance, a hypnotic stupor, an obedient oblivion. Cut to KFC commercial or ad for a miracle age spots remedy. Launch the cruise missiles.

Here’s the video (if you can handle epic levels of tedious repetition).

Seriously? We are fine with media messaging that’s like Chinese water torture? To have our brainwaves flat-lined by nonsensical, hyperventilating, Orwellian vapor. This is not news reporting. To think so is like mistaking a metronome for a symphony orchestra.

But that’s where we’re at.

To suggest for even a moment that somehow this state of mental paralysis came about organically, the result of societal entropy or personal devolution — as if random impulse, modernity, complexity, technology, solar flares, pollen, coronavirus, climate change, over-the-counter drugs, 5G, GMOs, aspartame, and ozone depletion, randomly interacted and the default became wholesale stupidity — is both foolhardy and extremely dangerous. It didn’t just happen. It is part of a plan. That plan is about control and oppression, gross manipulation and enslavement.

Let’s give credit where it’s due. Our manipulators, our oppressors, our autocratic puppet masters, are phenomenal at what they do. They’re organized; they’ve got the bucks; they’ve gained a total monopoly over the seats of power and the social/political levers of control; they are unencumbered by ambivalence, morals, common decency; they are merciless, ruthless, focused.

For just a single but highly representative example, read this article about how the lunatic power elite work to shape the entire narrative about the conflict in Ukraine.

Now, take that level of calculated deceit, cold manipulation, audacity, unscrupulousness, ruthlessness, arrogance, pernicious intent, disdain for we the people, and scornful sense of entitlement, then replicate it over the entire spectrum of social/political ills, crises, and dysfunction — the things we whine about and debate constantly: the economy, wealth inequality, corporate welfare, socialism for corporations and Wall Street, our deteriorating education system, our crumbling infrastructure, our fake democracy, the ruling elite-controlled two-party duopoly, Covid-19 “pandemic”, our entire shameful health care system, the destruction of labor unions, the criminalizing of dissent, the marginalization and disempowerment of minorities, the Fed, the CDC, the FDA, the FCC, censorship, citizen surveillance, our two-tier justice system, and perhaps the worst and most egregious of them all, the expanding militarization of our country and its foolhardy, suicidal pursuit of world conquest.

Yes, just imagine all of this contention as the product of sociopaths and power-drunk bullies, who have no sense of duty to country, or responsibility to you and I normal everyday citizens, smug self-anointed sociopathic despots who are incapable of conceiving of, inaugurating, and promoting anything which doesn’t serve the narrow agenda of an ultra-wealthy ruling aristocratic class — truly sinister malefactors who live and breathe to humiliate and subjugate others, abuse their power and privilege, gain advantage and mount incomprehensible piles of money and affluence, regardless of the harm and suffering it causes everyone else.

Yes, imagine that!

But wait! . . . you don’t have to imagine it after all. You just have to look around you.

Because that is exactly what is going on.

This is what we end up with when WE THE PEOPLE lose control of our country.

This is what we end up with when self-serving oligarchs control the narrative.

This is what we end up with when fed a 24/7 diet of lies and propaganda.

Now the question is: What can we do?

The answer couldn’t be simpler. Or more difficult.

This is where improbable teams up with impossible. Because the only way to stop this is through individual responsibility — everyday citizens taking charge, both of their own lives and our government. The existing private and public institutions which have engineered this juggernaut of blind ignorance and social control surely are not going to change. The puppets of the oligarchy we dutifully “elect” to represent we the people know who butters their bread. They and their ruling elite sponsors reap huge rewards from keeping us dumb and misinformed. So if anything is going to reverse this disastrous course, it will be us as individuals, hopefully working collectively to provide support and reinforcement, wielding the power of ‘NO’.

Obviously, this is a very tall order, as epic in scale as apocalyptic it is to be on the present course. We have to be honest. Perhaps it’s impossible. Old habits die hard. For most of our lives, we everyday folks, busy with their personal lives and trusting by nature, have relied on what we thought were worthy, reliable government spokespersons, TV news anchors, elected representatives, thought leaders, even celebrities, for the honest scoop on the specific events going on across our nation, more generally for our broad understanding of the world out there beyond our immediate reach. But slowly, imperceptibly, they turned on us. They increasingly recited from a intentionally faulty script, designed to hide the truth and substitute a fabricated reality. This was calculated — correctly so — to make us easily manipulable, often voting and behaving against our own interests. They fooled us so many times, we lost count and became completely detached from reality. Evidence? Look at what we put up with as citizens. We are treated abysmally, our government no longer works for us, and somehow we maintain pride in a nation which regards us as some necessary evil it needs to patronize with hollow promises and fairy tales about exceptionalism and greatness.

Most Americans now are totally brainwashed. We everyday citizens have no idea that those who we were certain we could trust are now lying to us with every breath they take. Any resemblance between what we are told and reality is a coincidence, or a convenience because it just happens to fit with the web of lies which surrounds it.

That’s hard for anyone to swallow. It’s depressing, demoralizing, unsettling, infuriating. Worse, “staying informed” has always been and still is so convenient. Just flip on the News at 6, read Time or Newsweek or USA Today. Scroll through Yahoo News on a smartphone. These wonderful trusted sources look and feel as they always have. But now they’re all streams of toxic misinformation and propaganda. And most people have no clue.

So quite honestly, I’m not very optimistic.

But of one thing I’m sure. We can stop this. We know what to do.

The only question is: Will we develop the presence of mind and resolve to . . . ?

STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Brainwashing Is Not a Form of Personal Hygiene | John Rachel

People Power – Part 2: Focus and Unite

Distractions divide us and guarantee we’ll never talk about essential core challenges. The egregious, central obstacles to “promoting the general welfare” are never mentioned by the talking heads, the pundits or politicians, to whom we look for guidance and leadership.

Distract and divide promises catastrophe, even to those who use it to further their sinister agenda. It’s astonishing how myopic most of the people at the top are, eh?

The control of everything by a tiny, short-sighted ruling elite is now total and the consequences are apocalyptic. We helplessly watch as their pursuit of wealth and consolidation of power has resulted in a merciless war being waged against the 99.999%, the trashing of the ecosystem, and destruction of any prospects for humans ever living in harmony with either — that is, co-existing cooperatively and constructively with one another and living sustainably on the only planet we can call home.

There are three major battlefields for this amoral and sociopathic assault and we rarely have meaningful discussions about them, are forced to wade through a swamp of deceit and disinformation to even identify and try to address them, or are consigned to having non-sensical discussions which have no possible impact on outcomes.

Wealth Inequality:  The funneling of wealth upwards has accelerated and long ago passed the threshold of irreversibility. 24,000 people die a day from starvation, while guys like Bezos, Gates and Musk have so much money they couldn’t spend it all in a million lifetimes. Corporations continue to consolidate and a handful of investment firms literally own everything. The system rewards monomaniacal pursuit of obscene levels of riches and opulence, the media lionizes self-aggrandizement. Every major religion has posted the warnings. Maybe they’re onto something.

War and Peace:  War has become a religion and ‘peace’ an expletive. The U.S. economy is now built around and defended by endless wars and requires world conquest to continue satisfying its rapacious appetite. Arrogance and hubris have replaced civility and common sense. We are now confronting two major nuclear powers at the same time, Russia and China. The U.S. won’t back off and Russia and China will not bow down. Total war would be the last chapter in human history. No need to return the book to the library. Books and libraries would be radioactive dust.

Ecological Destruction: Notice I didn’t say ‘climate change’ and this is intentional. Because this exemplifies precisely how the cabal uses a worthy topic to defeat any hope for real reform. Climate change is one component of a war on the entire ecosystem which supports all life, which includes ocean depletion, toxicity of air and water, species extinction, soil depletion, desertification, deforestation, promotion of monoculture, not to mention the assault on the human organism with poorly tested medicinal drugs, chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, food additives, industrial and agricultural pollution, manmade radiation, the intensification of exposure to electromagnetic waves, gene “therapies” and genetic modification of foods, on and on. We are directed to focus all of our attention on climate change, a battle we might at best win — likely will not win at all — over the next five decades, at the expense of all other perilous policies and undertakings, working in sync to compromise and probably destroy the prospects for survival of life on Earth. Pretty clever, eh?

Distract and divide assures that these three destructive trends work synergistically. Wealth inequality is created and sustained by war, war itself makes the rich richer, the military is the number one institutional source of ecological destruction, ecological destruction drives desperation and creates the conditions for war over resources and resource-rich territory, wealth inequality puts the decisions about the health of ecosystems in the hands of those who are incentivized to externalize the damages their pursuit of wealth creates — dumping it in the laps of the 99.999% — likewise with the decisions to go to war. It’s an endless, accelerating, self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop — a race to the bottom in terms of quality of life and a hopeful or even survivable future for the masses of humanity. We are too distracted to assess and discuss them rationally and constructively, too divided to put up even a weak fight.

All three of these globalized pathologies likewise reinforce political control, as power is in parallel funneled and concentrated upwards.

Reversing any and all of this can only be achieved with focus and unity by a huge percentage of the global population: unwavering focus and unassailable unity directly targeting those responsible for the unfolding catastrophe.

There are two courses of action with the potential to break and defeat this skewed, oppressive, top-heavy, hierarchical system.

1) Imprisoning or killing the rich and powerful.

. . . and/or . . .

2) Vanquishing their control of all private and government institutions, then restructuring the entire system.

Neither is pleasant or easy. It seems, however, these two options are still on the table.

But let’s be clear. They won’t be for very long. Historical opportunity never arrives at a convenient time or when we expect it to. And it can disappear in a flash.

Moreover, while totalitarianism, oppression, abuse of power, class warfare, enslavement certainly never arrive at a convenient time, even a superficial glance at human history tells us these are what we can always expect.

Google ‘sociopaths’.

History also teaches us that the more ennobling, inspiring periods of history, those occasional surges that we deem progress, result from substantial numbers of people focusing on the challenges and uniting their energies, dedication, determination, creativity and time.

Focus and unite . . . the only solution.

Of course, often there have been violent revolutions — refer to #1 above — which create the conditions for comprehensive legal, systemic reform and restructuring — refer to #2 above. While nothing dictates that they are inseparable, again referring to history, we usually see them conjoined when the battle is in full swing.

I regret having to conclude with this, but there is a third possible course, the product of unprecedented technological advances, the direct result of humankind’s incredible ingenuity. Both our capacity to 1) generate life-terminating levels of toxicity in the environment and 2) produce weapons of war with total lethality for life on earth, puts the ultimate spanner in the works. We are in a race against time. If we continue to poison the planet and/or unleash the fury of nuclear war, other options become moot considerations. The end of the end game will be the end. Period. No sequel. No do overs.

Focus and unite . . . the only sane and possible solution.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

People Power – Part 2: Focus and Unite | John Rachel

Life In Japan: A Generous Spirit

We have a nickname for our friend Keiko Iwashita. My wife and I call her “Bangladesh Lady”. There’s a very inspiring story behind this.

Keiko and her husband 岩下八司 (Hachiji) have an NPO (non-profit organization) called Polli Unnoyon Shonsta, which raises money to establish schools mainly in Bangladesh.

Keiko and Hachiji currently have 27 schools in Bangladesh, 2 in Nepal, 1 in Myanmar.

With 163 million people, Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world, and one of the most densely populated. 98% of the people are Bengalis and over 90% are Muslims. The economy has recently been growing at an impressive rate but in terms of per capita GDP, it still ranks 164th in the world.

When the rich countries prefer to protect their privilege by committing billions of dollars to defending themselves against largely imagined foreign threats, competing in pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet, much of the generated wealth funneled into the holdings of the already obscenely wealthy, it is only through individual efforts like that of Keiko and Hachiji that the enormous gap between rich and poor nations can be reduced. Maybe on paper it doesn’t look like much. But the difference they are making in the lives of those children who attend their schools is profound.

Charity begins at home? Actually, charity in this case begins at someone else’s homes, and those homes are 4,500 kilometers away — it’s 2,799 miles from Osaka to Dhaka.

Then again, Bangladesh is like a second home for this amazing couple.

People often say they want to “change the world”, do something positive, contribute to the betterment of humankind, but feel overwhelmed by all of the problems we face. Life is so complex and convoluted, usually it’s hard to know how and where to begin.

In a time, where 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s population, there are more things to do in more locations than ever.

Keiko and Hachiji point the way with their generous spirit and inspiring example.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: A Generous Spirit | John Rachel

Life In Japan: School Lunch | John Rachel

As an American, when I hear a reference to ‘school lunch’ I think of school lunch programs back in my homeland. School lunch programs are designed to help the poor. Believe it or not, every night more than 13 million children go to bed hungry in what putatively the richest country in the world — the richest nation in history! The euphemism is these kids are “food insecure”. That’s a polite way of saying neglected, victims of grotesque wealth inequality, and systemic racism. School lunch, school breakfast, and after school meals, are an attempt via various government programs at keeping these children alive and minimally healthy.

Here ‘school lunch’ has an entirely different meaning.

Yes, it refers to that time around noon when across the entire country, students from four to twenty-four are sitting down for their mid-day meal.

But here in Tambasasayama, it has another very special connotation. This weekend, in fact, Masumi-san and I had a “school lunch”. It was at a restaurant set up in one of the schools which is no longer functioning as an educational institution.

Japan’s population is in freefall. This attrition is especially significant in communities like where I live. When kids here graduate from high school, it’s either off to university, or to where the “good jobs” are, which from the prevailing perspective of local youth is surely not here. Being a farmer is not glamorous, nor does it offer the opportunity to amass a decent fortune. Or falling short of a decent fortune, getting one of those high-paying corporate positions with Panasonic or Mitsubishi.

The upshot is that our town is shrinking in numbers at a rate faster than even Japan itself. Many of the schools which once served a thriving farm community now sit empty.

Well, they sit empty unless put to other use. The former school where we had our meal not only has a restaurant, but a curios shop, an arts & crafts workshop, and an art museum for showcasing local artists. Where we sat down to have lunch was previously the office area where the school’s teachers had their individual desks, a room where they could think, create teaching plans, grade tests, get away from the noise and chaos of the students.

In the grand scheme of things, the world is over-populated, exceeding the planet’s ability to support the human race living in the splendor of modernity, convenience and luxury. Most environmental experts judge the Earth’s current growth trajectory unsustainable.

In other words: we need fewer people.

Inadvertently, perhaps, Tambasasayama is doing its part to reduce the human imprint. There are very few new couples starting families here. Few babies are being produced. Meaning a number of beautiful old schools will continue to sit idle, collecting cobwebs.

Here’s one. It even has an observatory on top, where elementary students a decade ago would gaze in wonder at the heavens.

Looks like a decent place to store rice. Or soybeans. That dome is a good start on a silo.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]


Life In Japan: School Lunch | John Rachel

The Richest Sociopath in the World

 

[ This article appeared almost a year ago at OpEdNews and Dissident Voice.  It was written before Jeff Bezos divorced his wife, MacKenzie, after 25 years of marriage. While the final settlement affects his total net worth, the important calculations and the overall thrust of the article are still solid.  Wealth inequality of this level is a grotesque, socially destructive artifact of capitalism.  I think I was able to capture the scale of Mr. Bezos's wealth and mind-numbing callousness to his employees and the country which has been instrumental in helping him build his empire.  Mr. Bezos had better hope that the "camel through the eye of a needle" warning was just the mad ravings of a smelly proto-hippie wandering in the desert way back a couple millennia ago. ]

Obviously the above pie chart is a put-on.  It is well-documented that working conditions for most employees of Amazon are abysmal, dehumanizing, bordering on the abuse we normally associate with slavery.

Moreover, the median employee's salary under Jeff Bezos' imperial lordship is $28,446.  No one working a regular job there has paid off their credit cards and is driving to work in a Mercedes.
Jeff Bezos is referred to as The Richest Man in the World and his personal fortune, while growing by $191,000 each minute, is currently estimated at $168 billion.

So "$28,446 vs. $168,000,000,000? While I can acknowledge the simple math, I find the contrast of such numbers on a gut level difficult to grasp.

To get a handle on such inequality, let's try approaching it from different angles.

One way to put the disparity into perspective is to recognize it takes Bezos just under nine seconds to earn what Amazon's median worker does in an entire year.

Another is to recognize that for a worker to go through Jeff Bezos' current personal fortune -- and of course, it continues mounting at accelerating levels as I write this -- at his/her current median annual income of $28,446 per year, WOULD TAKE 5,905,927 YEARS! That's close to 6 million years!
For Jeff Bezos himself to go through his current $168 billion, assuming his earnings stopped dead this very moment -- which as you and I know they won't -- SPENDING $1,000,000 A DAY, would take NEARLY 460 years. Yes, even spending $1 million a day, in the year 2475 he'd still have plenty of cash, tens of million of dollars mad money.  We can feel confident that he wouldn't be foraging through the dumpster behind 7-11.

Now, further consider that while the $28,446 median salary is above the national poverty line for a single individual if that person is the sole breadwinner for a family of four, it is marginally above it, which is why many Amazon employees must rely on government assistance to keep from starving.
As well as calculation, I did some speculation -- a simple exercise in imagination.

Apparently Bezos' wealth generating machine is raking it in so fast, he's currently making $11.5 million per hour ... every hour ... 24 hours a day ... seven days a week. $11,500,000 per hour!

So here's what I was picturing in my mind's eye ...

If for 40 hours of the 168 hours in a week, Bezos were willing to scrape by on a mere $5,840,000 per hour, he could give every one of his 566,000 Amazon employees a $10 per hour raise.  Of course the remaining 128 hours in each week, Bezos could continue earning his normal $11.5 million per hour, not having to share any of it with the pathetic slobs who work for him.

Rhetorical question: Does Jeff Bezos have any concept of what that $10 per hour increase would mean to his employees?

I'm not going to even suggest here I'm offering this for Bezos to entertain.  There are so many advantages to him both as a putative member of the human race and the employer of over a half million workers -- advantages that are so OBVIOUS -- if they haven't occurred to him by now, then his brain functions in ways beyond my understanding.  For one thing, he could point to his new fig leaf of "generosity" and ask people to stop calling him a selfish prick.  Second, Amazon employees I'm sure would respond to his largesse with greater company loyalty and increased tolerance for his onerous working conditions.  And he'd still be the richest SOB on the block and could mock the pauperish Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as pitiable wannabees.

Consider . . .

The most poorly paid Amazon employee now makes $12 per hour.  The $10 per hour raise I proposed would boost those $12 per hour workers right up there with Costco employees, who make an average of $21 per hour.  And with the across-the-board $10 per hour increase, Bezos' higher paid employees would be earning among the finest wages in the world provided by a major corporation.
And by golly, there's a plus side to the plus side . . .

Bezos's bold and gracious gesture would result in a public relations coup of cosmic proportions!  Amazon would no longer be demonized -- well, not quite as much -- by us bleeding-heart lefties as a capitalistic scourge and one-way ticket to Hell for the future of mankind, even if its environmental record is appalling and its business model generally the stuff of steroid-laced neo-feudalism.

Granted, Bezos would have to do some belt-tightening.  He'd have to watch his pennies but could probably manage it, eh?  Maybe he could skip a couple meals and do some of his own weeding at his estate.  After all, after lavishing the $10 per hour raise on all of his employees, he'd only be pulling in $1,705,600,000 per week.  I know I know!  Like me you're probably getting all teary-eyed for the poor guy.

Let me get to the extremely anti-climactic conclusion of this lament qua analysis.

Since nothing will change until the system itself changes, meaning the one in place now that creates, incentivizes, and lionizes the obscenely wealthy -- reference current holder of the Office of President of the United States of America -- I can only recommend this ...

We have been labeling Jeff Bezos as 'The Richest Man in the World'.  Yet, quite honestly I don't personally know any human, man or woman, who behaves like this gluttonous chunk of self-indulgent meat.  It actually makes me nauseous to think we're members of the same species.

Thus, from now on let's use the correct terminology.

Let's call Jeff Bezos what he really is . . .

THE RICHEST SOCIOPATH IN THE WORLD.

We could probably order bumper stickers to help correct the record . . . from Amazon, of course.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



The Richest Sociopath in the World

Mobilization Without Method Is Meaningless

 

Everyone knows this expression:  There was method to his madness.

What does it mean?  It means that regardless of how crazy the person acted, no matter how much he appeared to be nuts, behind that facade there was a solid plan, and that plan presumably resulted in successfully achieving what he set out to achieve.

It is this sense of 'method' I'm referring to in the title of this essay.

If there is any doubt about my message, here it is:  To mobilize people behind any cause, regardless of how worthy that cause is, regardless of how intrinsically appealing it may be to get these folks marching, singing, chanting, shouting for that cause, if there is no clear strategy which targets an equally clear and obvious outcome, with a realistic expectation that the strategy will achieve that outcome, then the mobilization is a waste of time.

I didn't say it wasn't fun or satisfying.  I didn't say it didn't have notable and perhaps positive collateral effects.  But I am saying that anyone who thinks that mobilization is some guarantee of making substantial change and achieving desired reforms is surely kidding themselves.

This is why, despite being the biggest mass movement in recent history, OWS completely failed.  Spokespersons for OWS will say it didn't fail at all, because it had no preconceived agenda or goals.  But that is a frivolous cop out.  By the time OWS went international and 'occupy' was attached to everything from towns to shopping malls, labor unions, and even Facebook, there was certainly a goal.  It may not have appeared on any official documents, but that was because as an experiment in unstructured, horizontal command-and-control, married to spontaneous democratic expression, any attempt at formalizing anything at all was discouraged and successfully thwarted.

Nevertheless, it was evident to everyone who watched the marches, read the protest signs, listened to the speeches, or was constantly bombarded by the most successful, ubiquitous meme to erupt in colloquial English in the last five decades -- the 1% vs the 99% -- exactly what all of the brouhaha was about.

In the broader sense, it was about the ruling class -- the 1% -- forcing its elitist world view and self-serving agenda on everyone else -- the 99% -- using their privilege and raw power to callously and ruthlessly turn everyday people into serfs.

In a more specific sense, it was about overwhelming, abusive, and anti-democratic wealth inequality.  It was hardly random that the movement was started in the heart of America's financial district and the anger and vilification was directed at incomprehensibly wealthy investment bankers and Wall Street high-rollers.

Of course, any thoughtful exploration of these two parallel themes -- monopoly on power and obscene accumulation of wealth -- would naturally conclude that they are inextricably related and mutually reinforcing.  Not that there was much analysis going on.  The OWS protests were pretty much an 'it's-us-against-them' affair, with lots of noise and bluster, but with absolutely nothing remotely resembling a grab for power anywhere in sight.

Thus, in terms of specific demands, it was quite common for news commentators to ask:  What do the protestors want?

This was a legitimate if mostly rhetorical question.  As a matter of record, there were no actual demands aired by the movement, much less tacit undercurrents of a coup d'etat.

There weren't any coherent demands, no specific policy proposals, not even obvious ones.  It wouldn't have been out of place, as an example, to at least talk about GBI -- guaranteed basic income -- as a conspicuous path to begin addressing the grotesque level of wealth inequality.

There were no hard and fast calls for student debt forgiveness, free college education, mortgage default relief, capping credit card interest rates, free access to universal health care, and a host of other palliatives which would have somewhat reduced the wealth gap.

This is not a criticism of OWS or anyone who bobbled up, even if temporarily, from the rank-and-file to take credit -- or blame, depending on where you stand in judgment -- for what happened.  OWS was an intriguing and inspiring new experiment in activism, which attempted to skirt the usual pitfalls of hierarchical, top-down organization.  It was what it was, and I believe should be respected for that.
But that doesn't prevent us from learning from it, and taking every precaution to not make the same mistakes again.

If you're going to assemble a mob, give them something to do.

Give them something which will make a substantial and decisive difference.

Camaraderie is a good thing.  It's a social high.  Feeling like you're part of something offers relief from a sense of isolation and helplessness.

But it's only a feeling.  It's not politics.  Politics is about power.  Only power can confront power.
After the marches are done, after the protest signs are put away, when we're in our cars or on buses headed back home, we always need to ask ourselves:  Do we now have power to implement the changes we want?

If the answer is 'no', then we didn't have an effective plan.

The best time for an effective plan is BEFORE we hit the streets, before we march and sing our songs, before we waste valuable time and energy in a frustrating and fruitless attempt to get those NOW IN POWER to do anything for us.  Asking the the ruling elite and their lapdogs in our governing institutions to listen to our demands and serve our interests is like asking a carjacker to be sure and wash our automobile and return it in the morning with a full tank.

Here comes my plug:  I have an end-to-end plan, a carefully-crafted strategy for engaging a broad base of U.S. citizens, uniting them into an overwhelming voting bloc, directed at stopping America's out-of-control militarism and endless wars of aggression.

You can get a general idea here:  The Peace Dividend

Next time we march for peace, we'll know where we're headed and how to get there.

At least, that's the hope that gets me from day to day in these insane times.

---

 

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is now available both as an ebook and deluxe paperback at many of the usual outlets . . .

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[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Mobilization Without Method Is Meaningless

All boats rise in a rising tide? Really?

 

The haves want the have-nots to believe sharing wealth is not a zero-sum game.

The mantra:  All boats rise in a rising tide.

But that's not the way things are working out, eh?  The wealthy get wealthier and the poor get poorer.  Certainly on a planetary scale, with human population increasing globally at about 1.11% annually, there is a rapidly swelling underclass who have no concept, much less any chance of sharing in the vast quantities of goods, services, opportunities, and resources churned out by our great engines of economic and technological development.

The same is also becoming more and more true here in America, with wealth inequality increasing astronomically over the past several decades, vastly accelerating after the crash of 2008 crippled the middle class, further sunk the lower class, decimated savings and home equity, destroyed jobs and job security, and plunged already indebted average citizens into even greater debt. True, the rich did same somewhat of a hit as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, but predictably bounced back with a vengeance. 95% of the wealth generated in the slow but steady economic recovery over the past eight years went to the top 1%. In 2016 alone, the world’s rich elite increased their wealth by $237 billion.

In terms of our boat analogy . . .

I suggest we regular folks buy life jackets.

Because as the luxury liners supported by the subservient ship of state rise to even greater heights of opulence for the already wealthy and privileged, our fragile boats will be swamped in the wake of their showy extravagance and wasteful wanton affluence.

The rich and powerful have never made much of a secret of their disdain for regular folks. But as long as America citizens remain incurably detached from the reality of their lot, when the ravenous kleptocrats of the Trump administration rev up their feeding frenzy beyond anything ever before witnessed in the history of the world, everyday Americans probably won’t have to worry about being put in cages or internment camps — of course, the prisons will be kept bulging in our for-profit prison system but that’s business as usual. In their callous indifference and Machiavellian marginalization of the less fortunate, the wealthy if nothing else are coldly efficient. Extermination by war or disease or relentless grinding poverty are the time-honored and road-tested methods for effortlessly "draining the swamp" of unwanted creatures like you and I.  The wealthy don’t need to ponder and won’t even flinch at the inevitable carnage.  They won’t even notice.  Their evening wear won't even get soiled or their reputations sullied by the noxious clouds of incinerated souls and destroyed lives, families, communities, and even whole nations, as poverty, war, chaos and human neglect on every front stampedes the unprivileged — the slobbering masses — into the abyss of sociopathic excess.

There are no pangs of conscience for those who don’t have one.

Wealth is a zero-sum game.  That’s true regardless of how much wealth exists in the world. If someone has something, then everyone else does not have it.  We can make more of that something but capitalism — especially its grotesquely virulent current iteration, neoliberal capitalism — is built on want and shortage, thus quite by design there will never be enough of that something for everyone to benefit equitably.  Recent history is all the evidence we need for this: while it’s true that since the dawn of the industrial revolution the engines of progress have mounted bigger piles of everything, it is also apparent that those piles have ended up in fewer hands.

In what may be the most astonishing, outrageous and incomprehensible economic statistic I’ve experienced in my lifetime, Oxfam just released a study of global wealth distribution which offered this gem:  Eight individuals now own as much wealth as the bottom 3.7 billion people on the planet.  Or presented another way:  The top .000000107% of the world population have as much wealth as the bottom 50%.

Under these conditions, as the tide rises a handful of luxurious and unsinkable yachts inch closer to God and millions of sunken hulls rot at even greater depths in the dark void at the bottom.

Does any sane person really think it can continue to go on like this?

Are there enough sane people around to make a difference?


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



All boats rise in a rising tide? Really?

The Red White and Blue Color Revolution

 

Orange . . . Rose . . . Purple . . . Yellow . . . Saffron . . . Green . . .

The West, with of course America itself in the lead, loves color revolutions!

I say:  Game on!  Let's go for it.

But instead of another color revolution posing as a victory for democracy but which in reality is more colonial subjugation by the Greater American Empire, let's have a color revolution that will really make a difference.  Let's install democracy in a country now truly desperate for real citizen empowerment and the vast saving graces of representative government, transparency, freedom of the press, respect for human rights -- you know the list, since its trumpeted 24/7 by our propaganda machinery, whether these inspiring and noble ideals have any basis in reality or not.

Yes, we'll call this one:  The Red White and Blue Color Revolution!

It will be regime change, of course, because that's what color revolutions are all about.

But this one will take place in Washington DC, putative center of the Universe, the grand "decider" when it comes to all things global, the bright beacon of hope and freedom and enlightened leadership.

If it isn't already obvious, U.S. citizens now live in a police state under the oppressive and ruthless rule of an authoritarian oligarchic elite.  Everyday citizens have no voice in their government, their most vital constitutionally-guaranteed rights have been nullified, their tax dollars are being used in service to a kleptocratic cartel of corporate/banking/energy industry/Wall Street/military-industrial-government-complex insiders, they are under constant surveillance by a sprawling Stasi-like security state.  Anything resembling basic social services are under siege and being slashed in the name of austerity, and promoting the general welfare as chartered by the Constitution is dismissed as socialist daydreaming. Our essential infrastructure is crumbling, the result of gross indifference and neglect.  The quality of our air, drinking water, schools, communities, even our daily life, continue their steady decline. While the rich immerse themselves in greater opulence and grandeur at the banquet table, the rest of us dumpster dive for what scraps we can scavenge in the alley in back.  They snidely reassure us:  "Buy a lottery ticket! You might win."

So what about our elections?  How is hope and change holding up in the voting booth?

The simple truth is that the dismal array of prospects we are now forced to select from to "represent us" in their official capacities shows no prospect for any of this turning around.  Choice at the polls is an illusion.  It's always between one corporate lapdog and another corporate lapdog, regardless of party affiliation.

This is intentional.  The major party duopoly is configured to maintain the status quo.

Those in power intend to stay in power and use that power to enrich themselves and their wealthy benefactors who will use their wealth to keep their minions in positions of power.  It's an unforgiving closed-loop feedback system, the political engine of crony capitalism.

It keeps "them" in and "you and I" out.

There is only on solution . . .

Regime change in Washington DC.

Translation:  Replacing every elected representative who does not guarantee absolute, non-negotiable, unambiguous loyalty and service to those who elect him or her to office.

The Red White and Blue Color Revolution!

I'm dead serious.  Because America is in dead serious trouble.

We need a clean sweep.  We'll "drain the swamp" . . . for real this time!

Let's not fool ourselves any longer.  Anything less will doom America to further rapacious exploitation, and consign Americans to total enslavement under ruthless totalitarianism:  One nation under God . . . by the rich and for the rich.

As revolutions go, they can be peaceful or violent, responsible or bloody.

That will not be our choice to make.  It'll be up to those in power.

Either they'll go quietly, respectful of the democratic will of the people.

Or . . .






[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


The Red White and Blue Color Revolution

Thought Experiment

 

Let's say that you spend $20 on two fifths of whiskey, get so drunk that you have a horrible automobile accident, hitting a school bus, killing over fifty elementary students, causing serious injury to several others.  Three of the children who survived are now quadriplegics, two others have permanent brain damage, a number are disfigured because the bus caught on fire, and they couldn't get out in time.  Moreover, enraged by your clearly irresponsible behavior, several of the parents, solid members of the NRA -- thus well-equipped with assault weapons and handguns -- have vowed to avenge the death and crippling of their children.  You find yourself being hunted down and must be on the alert at all times for a potentially lethal attack.

Now let's imagine that through the magic of quantum theory and Einsteinian relativity, we could take you back to before this entire incident.  You have that same $20 in your hands.  You're given a choice.  You have full knowledge of what will happen if you buy the whiskey but you have an option:  You can walk up to a complete stranger and hand him the $20.

To make it interesting, let's say the stranger is a bum.  Let's say that from all appearances the guy is not employable, lives hand-to-mouth on what he can panhandle.  It is also easy to imagine he will spend the $20 on cigarettes and beer.

Knowing what will happen if you keep the $20 for yourself -- the whiskey, plowing into a school bus, mangling a bunch of innocent kids, creating enemies who now want to kill you -- would you hand the $20 to the bum?

Since all of the good people who visit my website are the most intelligent, rational, decent and sensible humans on the planet, I will assume to a person that all of you would opt to hand the $20 over to the bum.  Not only would you be sparing yourself a monumental amount of grief, and a stain on your conscience from which you might never recover, I have no doubt that the warm bubbles of Good Samaritanism would fill you with giddy abandon, a tactile bonanza for your good sense and generosity.  What a splendid feeling!  Why, it would be better than a kick-ass dose of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors!

So what if the guy is a bum.  A lot of people never find their groove.  That $20 will make him feel like he won the lottery.  He can spend it on whatever he likes.  It's really none of your business, right?  And it's not like you haven't made some bad choices at one time or another.  What about that time-share you bought in the Bahamas that turned out to be a shed for garden tools?  Let him buy some cigarettes, a Hustler magazine, and Wild Horse.

Alright.  Now through the magic of Blog World -- where anything can happen because the person writing the blog can make up whatever he wants and being somewhat disconnected from reality or just plain nuts is no barrier as long as he can afford the $27.95 a year for an internet domain -- let's say YOU are suddenly in charge of the entire federal budget.

Now you don't have just $20 to spend or giveaway.

You have $1.16 trillion dollars!  That's the total discretionary federal budget for 2016.

Here's the choice.  Do you continue to spend the majority of the money on defense, buying unnecessary junk, building and maintaining military bases -- the U.S. already has close to 1000 in 143 countries -- starting wars, bombing nations into complying with our agenda, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, spreading even more terrorism across the planet?  Do you inflict carnage and suffering on undeserving citizens in distant countries, blowing up not just school buses, but whole schools, hospitals, villages, whole cities?

Or do you give some aid and comfort to those who for one reason or another have fallen on hard times here in the U.S.?

Despite the putative recovery from the 2008 crash, despite America still being by far the wealthiest country in the world, despite having the largest economy in the world with a whopping GDP of $18.56 trillion, there are some 45 million Americans living below the poverty line.
There are over 500,000 homeless people in America!

Does that compute?  Over a half million human beings, many of them children, without a place to live in the richest nation in the history of the world?

Just considering the enormous amount of waste the direct result of Department of Defense incompetence and skewed priorities, it seems obvious something could be done about this.

The $1.5 trillion which is being spent on the biggest boondoggle in military history, the F-35 fighter jet, could push every single one of the 45 million poor above the poverty line for at least the next five years.

The $1.0 trillion which is being allocated to upgrade our already excessive nuclear arsenal, which currently has over 7,000 nuclear bombs -- enough to destroy the entire planet forty times over -- could put every homeless person in a $1,000,000 mansion and give them $50,000 to live on every year for the next twenty years.

Is this so outrageous?  The idea of "helicopter money" to the homeless?  Helping those folks who struggle every day to make ends meet pull even with the rest of us?

Finland is right now testing out the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for citizens who are now unemployed, a no-strings-attached, tax-free stipend of $630 per month.

Yeah, some of those homeless and poor people might not be employable.  And a few might buy beer and a Hustler magazine. 

But the truth is most of them will feed their kids and replace the bald tires on their car.

I'm not suggesting we give million-dollar mansions to every homeless person.

The point of this article is to put things in perspective.  We hear these figures bandied about all of the time.  $3 trillion for the Afghanistan war.  Another $4 trillion for the Iraq war.  Figures so mind-boggling, it's almost impossible to wrap our heads around them.

Can anyone out there say with a straight face we can't find some money in the vast wealth of the U.S. of A. so that everyone can have at bare minimum a decent life?  So that we can be proud of our country and the way it treats its citizens, especially its most vulnerable?

We can do whatever we decide to do.  That's what a democracy is, if we still have such a thing in America anymore.  It's a matter of getting over the brainwashing we have been subjected to all of our lives.  It's a matter of reconnecting with the values which allegedly are the foundations for our Christian nation.  Granted, Jesus wasn't a U.S. citizen but it seems a lot of people here claim to align with his teaching.  Does this sound familiar?

“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” - Matthew 25:34-36

So, returning to our "thought experiment" . . .

Does the comparison of America's leadership to an inebriated driver plowing into a school bus full of children hold up? 

Is there any doubt?

Our foreign policy has the U.S. military careening across the planet spreading death and destruction, chaos and fear, violence and terrorism.  The whole bunch -- Obama, Biden, Carter, Clinton, Power, Rice, Nuland, Kerry, Clapper -- are drunk on power.  Yes, they are drunk on their sense of entitlement and destiny.  They are drunk on psychopathic fantasies of conquest and empire.  They are drunk on delusions of becoming deities.

And a school bus of innocent maimed and dead school kids, however horrifying and tragic, is small potatoes compared to the tens of thousands murdered, mutilated, crippled, driven from their homes, subjected to the worst possible conditions, by U.S. military aggression over the past 15 years, with the fraudulent War on Terror, pursuit of regime change, and wholesale destruction of nations which posed no threat to the U.S. or its citizens.

Yes, these lunatics are DUI alright.  They are driving America and the world to the brink of destruction, under the influence of greed and profit-seeking by the defense industries and a fanatic loyalty to the bogus pseudo-ideology of neoconservatism, a brain-eating, morally debilitating virus spread by sociopaths like Robert Kagan and Paul Wolfowitz.

So there's the choice.  Help some people who need help.  Or continue to let the crazies get behind the wheel of the mightiest military machine in history so they can perpetuate the destructive rampage that makes the U.S. the greatest threat to peace in the world today.

I titled this piece Thought Experiment.  But in reality, this is no cerebral exercise at all.
Because when you step into the voting booth on November 8th, you will have this choice or some version of it staring you in the face.  Every decision you make is another iteration of this choice.  Who you choose as your congressman, who you select as your senator, who you vote for to become president.  Their priorities become your priorities.

No one who has read even a handful of my articles will have any doubt about where I stand on the election.  I believe everyone who has regularly breathed the toxic brew of cronyism, self-serving lies, and monomaniacal propaganda, which currently permeates our nation's capital, must go.  We cannot make progress without complete and total regime change in Washington DC.  A clean sweep!  But I'm extreme that way.  I keep thinking we can have a government which truly represents the people, looks out for their best interest, one which puts the enormous wealth and resources of the U.S. to proper use, promoting the general welfare of its citizens.  Realistically, for starters that would require kicking our addiction to war and then becoming the world's greatest purveyor of peace.  Without that, we can never escape the moral and financial bankruptcy which will inevitably destroy our nation, if not the entire world.

Just remember.  There's a reason why America is one of the most feared, and increasingly hated, reviled, and targeted nations in the world.  There's a reason why the world is in the screwed-up state it's in.  And if you return the same people to office who caused this mess, then you become part of the reason too.

It doesn't have to be this way.  We don't have to have perpetual war.  We don't have to live under the thumb of the rich and powerful.  We don't have to be the victims of grotesque wealth inequality.  We don't have to sit back and watch as our country is looted and our democracy becomes a standing joke.  We don't have to march to the constant beat of war drums and drink the Kool-Aid of ultra-nationalism and exceptionalism.

Which America will you choose?

November 8th.  Voting is not a thought experiment.  It's the real deal.

By the way, as noted in the fine print on the image at the head of this article, that is an unretouched photo of contiguous rich and not-so-rich neighborhoods in Santa Fe, NM.  Bernie Sanders made wealth inequality central to his recent presidential campaign.  People responded to his message for good reason.

It's not just embarrassing.  It's unacceptable.  It's immoral.  It's unconscionable.

It's un-American!

Maybe we can't all live in mansions.  But the poor and homeless certainly deserve better.

Let's spread the wealth around a bit, eh?  We begin that with peace in the world and peace right here at home.  Peace with one another.  Peace with our own souls.

Does this make me a socialist?  A hippie?  A peace-and-love Pollyanna?




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Thought Experiment