"Heads, I win. Tails, you lose." That's the ultimate rationalisation of the proto-fascist. When individuals lose their civility, and cease to own up to their mistakes, or to apologise... When individuals no longer forgive, or let pass small transgressions or accidents, recognising that we are all human - that we all share something more important or transcendent than individuals or groups bickering amongst themselves, wasting away precious time and energy which should otherwise be invested in improving technology and life - then we progress only towards reckless, selfish absolutism and dysfunction.
The classes separate, and claw to keep from sinking, from being pushed down by someone else's HEEL OF BLAME. How similar is what I describe, to the very process of spiralling dollar inflation? Prices rise faster, the future becomes more and more uncertain, people haggle over pennies, everyone determined he is RIGHT - based on past privileges - and, one day, in through the door walks the specter of an absolutist religion or government, to force ORDER upon everyone?
"Whatever happens, I'm RIGHT." Blame or be blamed. It starts when, in general, society tend to agree that the solution to any mistake is BLAME - accusation, "justice," punishment, FORCE. The more "RIGHT" is made through this fear-pushed drive to resolve conflict through "authoritative" MIGHT, then the more MIGHT ENDS UP FABRICATING WHAT IS "RIGHT" - and eventually, the need for actual justice, fair trials, true evidence, REALITY, become subservient to the absolutist reign of MIGHT.
"Eat, or be eaten." More and more, whomever is seen to have made a mistake, becomes a target of the bully-lorded MOB. More and more, a mass scramble occurs where the prime purpose of social intercourse is to avoid blame, and to foist blame on THE OTHER - in the great stampede to re-attain higher class status. More and more, one's OWN mistakes become blamed upon THE OTHER - it is THE OTHER who caused the problems! Not me!
And, the ultimate absurdity becomes this: IN REALITY, The OTHER makes no mistake whatsoever. Instead, it is the accuser instead who rampantly, habitually emanates mistakes and dysfunction, conveniently blaming them on the innocent OTHER. Like an addict.
And mere accidents or eventualities of nature or a change of weather or a slip on the ice - or simple human fallibility - these are gobbled up in self, and reinterpreted into some deliberate "attack" from the other.
This war mentality - shoot first, ask questions later - this looting of the commons - is a projection of sin, or blame, or evil, upon whomever is most vulnerable - and usually the most true, innocent or creative - i.e., the poor, the minority, the artist, the writer, the ill, the elderly. The banksters take our money, and we are asked to blame the elderly by taking away their "entitlements." This is how fascism comes to, and remains in, power. Divide and conquer.
I see this ethic of "blame or be blamed" bubbling up all around me now. More later....
After a few years of tightening our belts and not making waves, now society is edging towards the language of blame. And after years of listening to TeaBagger news stories, it's easy to fall in line behind their irrational logics - or fall in line behind the hostage-taking rationalisations of it's eat-the-poor budget proposals.
Look at society now. We are beginning to see that things are not working. A town wants to fix an aging sewer system, and ends up with a massive municipal bonds crisis, requiring more taxes or controls on the citizens.
Gas is too expensive, and some dim-wittingly think that well K-Daffy has something to do with that.
Our elected reps are treating us like children, invading our privacy at airports, etc., because they have convinced us there is way too much danger out there. The economy is up shit creek.
In a society where things fail to work - people not only give up their freedom for "more security" (fear), they tend to look around to find someone TO BLAME. It makes them feel better, to think that black people and their faulty mortgages are probably the big reason why society sucks - even though the wealth gap between whites and blacks has widened GRAVELY in recent years.
But, it doesn't just make people feel better - people will PAY to feel better, and taxes will be used to target the chosen "blame-worthy" targets (scapegoats) in society. This is not hard to figure out. It's comic book behaviour, and yet it happens in our real, grown-up world nevertheless.
Put a bunch of greedy boys in a schoolyard, each with a basketball. However it works at the start, what happens when you take away all those balls except one? "Lord of the Flies" happens, that's what, and the remaining ball, deflated, becomes a kind of weapon. "That's what the RULES say!"
So, I'm not sure if I posted it yet, but I wrote of how the fact that my phoneline fails was used as the latest family resort to blaming me. That's how they feed each other's power - RIGHTness. Rather, the phoneline was first strung up by a complete idiot, bending and curving through dozens of branches. He did this because this area of the city is poor, and people here don't count - or because the guy just wanted to get out fast, with his life. It's no surprise: idiots are assigned to the less preferred areas of the city. Perhaps they are bastards, whom their bosses and workers want to punish. And so, this neighbourhood suffer - it's a slow, oblique game of a thousand cuts. Nothing overt. Nothing that could catch blame. Consequence: Phone goes out, I am blamed. I honestly don' tcare by now - I'm just using my case as an example of what happens.
Well, the idiot tree trimmers came through a year or so ago. They are idiots because they have underdeveloped awareness of such things as horticulture or physics. Or aesthetics. They will cut a vast gaping swath through a tree - far more than needed, just cuz they like destroying things, and they leave behind some ugly sad monstrous shell of a tree, people who walk by inevitably lose one point in their IQ - which converts to how many brain cells, IDK. Well, they cut just about every limb off a tree up the street, except for one that was jotting out precariously over the street, and over electrical wires. THE MOST IMPORTANT LIMB THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CUT - was left there because, well, these idiots, working for the city, where inherently RIGHT, no matter what they did. And off they go, to eat their fat lunches on our taxes.
And I looked at this absurd, dangerous limb and thought, "One day, this will fall." I know a lot about how trees and their limbs fall. I used to do a bit of that. A mere bit. Anyway, last night, a storm came through, and the limb fell, and everyone's electricity went out. And, I'm sure, my relatives will blame me for this, too. Because, how could those tree-trimmers be to blame? That was all ANCIENT HISTORY - way way hidden behind our giant growing black hole blindspot, which we need for our own blame-placing games...
(Go back to my earlier post - 2 years ago? - about another idiot tree-trimmer in front of my house). You get into this city, and it won't let you leave - because people's mistakes are constantly being glued to you, and you end up paying for them. Because YOU are assumed to be an idiot just like everyone else - that's the name of the game. You are assumed to have the values and the intelligence and the competence and the emotions of a child. College degrees are completely unknown here. But, the rest of the country is pretty much the same way.
Let's look at the irrational tree-trimmer - who strangely resemble the now-idiot ARMY CORPS. OF ENGINEERS who built the shoddy levees which failed, and created 85% of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Their job is to cut branches - branches of things that are not thought of as living beings - things that are a priori considered a necessary nuisance. Trees must be controlled. It's all about controlling the tree, not about reasonable harmony, etc.
These guys feel they are being paid for demolishing tree limbs, on which they are experts, since this is what they do, this is what they are paid for, by the authoritative government, supported by the taxes of the authoritative majority, none of which include trees, or even dogs, bunnies or copper wire. Since I do it, it is right. You want to bet on this? OK. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
I may be insane, I may be an idiot, but if the last 40 years of Republican rule has taught us anything, it has taught us that everyone has the right to be wrong. Cuz right and wrong isn't as important as America, or greed in the marketplace, or rugged individualism. Or the dollar. I mean hyperspace economics. Money in trees.
Well, these guys cut the trees, and disappear into history. Street cleaners come by, do their stupid thing, and disappear. Drug dealers show up. Prostitutes. Violence. The limb falls one day. And all it means is not that the city find non-idiots to trim it's trees, but the city must increase taxes because services become more expensive, because of all this weather, and all the entropy in the government.
But, look at those tree-trimmers up there. They are not considering what their decisions mean to the rest of society, or to nature. They are up there because they are important. They are doing important work. They are right. They are making their money. This limb, that limb comes down, and to hell with the commons.
To hell with all the connections which hold us up here - the social bonds, the consequences, the logics, the multiplier effect, the winds of change, the neighbourhood, the aesthetics, the past, the future, and so on. We are flying around up here because WE ARE RIGHT - like firemen, we are being AMERICAN and cannot be blamed. We are of upper class, and if our feet land on the noses of lesser people, then so be it. The wisdom of the marketplace, the invisible hand, the trickle-down effect will one day show that my selfishness and narrow-mindedness is entirely justified.
And, so goes the rationalisation of almost everyone in society. Almost everyone in society believes himself RIGHT no matter what. And almost everyone in society does a job that is, to say the least, half-assed.
And then one day the entire society turns around and sees that life is no longer working. And people gradually start blaming each other, because each has this inner belief that he is right. And the tree trimmers are up there, floating around, thinking themselves demigods - in no need of foundation. But, in fact, the foundation of the commons - all those connections they ignored - in conspiracy with nature - is suddenly crumbling. The commons was once the only thing that held them up - gave them footing. So now they fall.
Instead of honouring the common foundation, they believed themselves gods, and they raped it instead. Tree-trimmers, banksters - at some point, there is no difference. They all think the country must take a hair cut - (everyone but them of course). They think the economy must come down to ground, (but THEY don't). They want to carry on with their supply-side delusions, where money grows from trees, and we have yet to evolve and learn to walk erect... But now they fall en masse, clawing for a regressing sky - an inflating dollar...
The Greenspan and the Reaganauts gambled away $60 trillion into hyperspace, that's value or money that didn't actually exist - more money than existed in the world. Someone had to pay for that. So, they thought that should be everyone except them.
Somehow, our mortgages, pensions, social programmes, investments/hedgefunds, jobs - and soon, THE PURCHASING POWER OF OUR DOLLARS - these managed to become what is being used to pay for their gambling debts.
Make no mistake - own not their mistake - our giving up of all this wealth, the wealth of our shared country, our commons, our trusts, our humanity, patience, civility, ad PEACE - is solely designed to KEEP LOSER BASTARDS IN POWER, controlling our futures, as they resume rolling the dice.
The corporate elites, the inbred royalists, the upper 2% - they demand their upkeep, or else they simply inflict planetary war. We've seen them picking off individuals who resist or expose - dead bodies show up in wet and juicy newspapers. It is the banksters - the Fedheads, the coporate raiders, the Quants, the hedgefund managers, the IMF, the ratings houses and investment banks, the inbred CEOs of expendable mega-corps like BP - the moneychangers - they guard the palaces of the ultra-rich like Cerberus before the cave to Hades.
And in order for their extraction of wealth from us to proceed, they must be sure that we the people do not blame THEM, or the upper 2%, or their political and corporate and media puppets and shills.
It is the banksters job to be sure that we the people BLAME EACH OTHER, or else, if all else fails, some foreign enemy, which will will necesarilly have to go to war with, making more $$$ for their sure-fire war and oil and bank machine. So, how they keep us blaming each other is a topic a vast dimensions - but, the fact is, that's what they do.
Look at it this way: You have a bundle of dollars. They sneak it away from you and hand you back a turd. They convince you to either believe that it's the same bundle of money, or else that your neighbour is stealing from you. They try to take your mind off of figuring things out, and instead fll it up with irrational fear and anger. To keep this emotional ponzi scheme going, they must eventually scare everyone all the way into war. Just so they won't get blamed, for raping us. Our country. Our commons: shared trust, value, respect, civility, benefit of the doubt, responsibility - dollar...
They have convinced us that the true values, backed by labor, are equivalent to the unreal, sociopathic trillions of invisible numbers they gambled away - and somehow, we now owe them our sweat and our blood - our common humanity - for some reason. It's a royal scam.
This happens every 80 years, according to the book, "The Fourth Turning". Four different successive generations end up with the country's economy being completely trashed by a lot of selfish sociopaths, managed by the banks. Then we go to war. This is what happened following the Depression of 1929. Whereas we were healthy enough, then, to elect an FDR, who stepped right up and BLAMED THE "ECONOMIC ROYALIST" BANKSTERS AND THEIR POLITICOS, Germany, on the other hand, responded, by bringing into power HITLER, who had everyone blaming the Jews, the Commies, the Poles, the Russians, the League of Nations, and so forth, introducing a ABSOLUTIST order of nationalism, that got everyone so whacked that they forgot all about the fact that they had been raped, as they were taken away, sent to battle, exterminated, etc.
We chose an FDR over a Hitler.
We will have that choice again, but we stand to choose Fascism over a new FDR - all thanks to the fine, relentless propaganda wars and blackmail of the Kochs, the Randians, Fox, and the insane GOP TeaBaggers. Think on this. If we are not all destroyed by radiation, we may simply elect to be destroyed by tree-trimmers in lock-step. Shared sacrifice, you know. Anything to escape blame...
And so, the habit of blaming everyone but oneself is become universal, and heats up like a neglected nuclear reactor core....
Went to a store yesterday. I may write more about this later. But the people working there were simply BROKEN in their pathology of making mistakes and blaming them on their customers. Walking through a park, two little girls pass by, one is saying, "At least, something something something BLACK PEOPLE!"
The UPS guy I wrote about earlier, so eager to talk down against blacks, right out openly.
I watch a little fight between nice little white kids and nice little white kids.
Of course, this is nothing new - on talk radio, and Fox, in Congress, etc. - but now it is a part of common discourse. Place blame, place blame, place blame. Step back. How do yo suppose that will end, if everyone is doing it, and everyone is needing to tread above all the rest, to avoid being blamed themself?
The spiral of Republicans to out-do each other, acting more and more extreme, where has that led but to a split party and a paralysis of our government and our economy - into a "VOLUNTARY DEFAULT" which the rest of the world is aghast to watch. It will only end in conspiracies of addiction to destruction.
I am saddened, because, even as you deny such threat is possible, I feel that we are already too far gone.
Everything is broken.
Tree-trimmers are falling from the sky.
We need a Mussolini to make the trains run on time...
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/mayor-claims-arizona-town-declared-martial-law/
That is where greed, the absolute RIGHT, gets a society: A completely vapourised commons, replaced by MIGHT from above. It is pure insanity.
Heads, we lose.
Coming next: Moron economics and the leaky roof debate - assignment: Goggle: "paul krugman new york times debt ceiling" - (also: "The Cult That is Killing America") - and also listen to BOB CHAPMAN on friday's ALEX JONES SHOW (final hour / overdrive) - http://www.infowars.com