TV News LIES

The United States has experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history:  the transformation of a burgeoning welfare state into a rapidly expanding, highly intrusive and deeply entrenched police state, linked to the most developed technological innovations.

The ‘Great Transformation’ was not a single event but a process of the accumulation of powers, via executive fiats, supported and approved by compliant Congressional leaders.  At no time in the recent and distant past has this nation witnessed the growth of such repressive powers and the proliferation of so many policing agencies engaged in so many areas of life over such a prolonged period of time (a time of virtually no internal mass dissent).  Never has the executive branch of government secured so many powers to detain, interrogate, kidnap and assassinate its own citizens without judicial restraint.

There's a stand-up party game out, the traditional standby of social interaction in groups. Details have leaked: The game is from the Guild of Lazing Rich Old Buggerers (GLORB) -- the leisure service unit of Global Adherents of Special Persons' Protections (GASPP), itself a subsidiary of parent corporation HAVOCC, the House of Avaricious, Villainous, Oafish, Charlatan Capitalists.

It'll be a blast, as this is the same bunch behind Enron, the Exxon Valdez, fracking, GMOs, the BP oil volcano in the Gulf, mortgage crises, the credit crunch, bets on derivatives' bets, the hapless need for red-alert bank bailouts, inter-linked LIBOR manipulations, with even more in the pipeline, so to say, for the really lean years ahead.

It seems we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with the Barclays Bank prosecution for rigging the LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate). It seems that they are cooperating to avoid jail time. Bob Diamond who headed the bank until recently said "he was sickened when he saw the emails."

What he means is that he was sickened that his underlings were stupid enough to leave a paper trail. His nausea will be somewhat soothed by the $3.5 million he gets as a golden parachute. This, however, is about a tenth of what he expected to get. How will he make the payments on his Rolls?

Frankly, the statement pissed me off because it sounded to me, not like a beautiful vision for the world in stark contrast to the CON vision of greed, hierarchy and intellectual incuriosity - but the death knell of a once promising movement.

"Our process is our message?!"  WHAT?  Really?  I know that was probably meant to be a radical, bold, daring attempt at a fundamental shift in consciousness about how we organize our society, but it sounded more like a gift to the elites who are giggling with delight by the way Occupy just solidified itself as a fringe movement.

What happens when a mature industrial nation turns its back on democracy and lets its right-wing elite destroy the middle class? We've seen this movie before.

Most Americans have never heard of the Weimar Republic, Germany's democratic interlude between World War I and World War II. Those who have usually see it as a prologue to the horrors of Nazi Germany, an unstable transition between imperialism and fascism. In this view, Hitler's rise to power is treated as an inevitable outcome of the Great Depression, rather than the result of a decision by right-wing politicians to make him chancellor in early 1933.

What should we do with Occam’s Razor? Cut the Gordian Knot … or our own throats? Now we can do the “To Be, Or Not To Be” two step all day long, but by the time the clock tolls the Midnight of the Soul … what are we going to do? Do we snuff it and light out for the undiscovered country or do we take back the one we live in?

Once Upon A Time we believed everything we were told. While we were being taught how to dress and feed ourselves we were also beginning to learn a bunch of baloney. I learned how to tie my shoes just in time to walk to school to learn about God. As it turned out, I didn’t need to know those two things.