Culture War, Part Nine: Time Capsule, Part Two
My Reaction – About Dictatorship and
a Legacy From Which America Will Never Recover
There you have it, the “un-retouched pre-Bush perception” from September 21st, 2000.
My reaction, at first, was that of being stunned, then saddened at what it reminded me of—the way things once were, what we had before it was stolen, destroyed.… But having had time to process and review the changes we’ve gone through and are going through, placed in relief against the assumptions of that former mind, something new has arrived.
Those were my fear eleven years ago. Not being Nostradamus, I’m sure my mindset was not unique; it was at least shared, I know, among many of my friends and colleagues at that time…probably even far beyond that. 
Still, now knowing what I had said and no doubt felt and thought more extensively about than what I actually put on paper, I can only be stunned considering my dire premonition. [Continued below audio]
Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. 
Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Bush Dictatorship
For since Obama took office I have been hearing these comprehensive evaluations and calculations in books by scholars, with enough clout and credibility to be broadcast on the mainstream and from several sources, that, first, the government under George W. Bush was run essentially like a dictatorship, by any definition of that. We are being shown how we lost our democratic rights, among so much else. The only thing that kept us from realizing this was the resistance by the media and the reluctance of the populace to face such a horrific prospect.
Basically, until Bush was out of office, hardly was there anyone with the courage to look squarely at what he was doing and has done and add it up. People who have lived under dictatorships can I’m sure understand that reluctance to point out such an horrific prospect while still under the regime’s thumb!
America May Never Recover
There is a second development that has caused me to be struck by what I said years ago. It is the calculations of a scholar who added up the damage left behind by Bush in America—economically for the most part, but otherwise as well—and concluded there was no way, ever again, that America could expect to have the relative prosperity, opportunities for the majority, not to mention standard of living, and so much more, that it once enjoyed.
Echoing like the fall of Rome
Essentially this person was saying that George W. Bush had managed to so “kneecap” America during his short…though long they seemed…eight years that America would never ever recover. This is an astonishing assessment, echoing like the announcement of the fall of the Roman Empire.
We haven’t always had the best of Presidents. But this person’s thesis, in the midst of the dire things coming out, and they continue to pile up, is being widely considered. While hoping him wrong, people are not discounting that he may be the only one getting it right. For it cannot be denied that few are brave enough or have strong enough stomachs to actually go piece by piece through the wreckage and add it all up and place it alongside the best assessments of America’s needs and responsibilities in the decades coming.
So it is with these things in my mind that I read that statement about Bush leaving a legacy from which America will never recover, which I had written eleven years ago and then forgot. And I am shaken.
But you are not me, and so there is the need for this explication as well as the need to completely leave the document as I found it, incomplete sentences and all. It was reproduced exactly in Part One, without even changing obvious typos or even confusions of grammar. I did not want anything to taint or draw suspicion around what you mostly have to take my word on.
I can only say that I feel no need to puff myself up nor do I care if you don’t see what I think is obviously there. But I still thought I’d give my best case possible to you for my credibility. For if I garner a bit of that, the reader just might see and understand the astonishment that I felt.
The Ignorance Excuse
Our Leaders Prefer We Think Them Dumb Than Culpable
This might seem to be overdoing it, but I’ve noticed that we live in a time where those in power, making these huge “blunders,” like to excuse themselves by claiming ignorance. It is quite clearly that they would prefer us to think them stupid than evil.
“Real funny, Richard”
I noticed one kind of use of the ignorance defense on TV a few years back. Richard Clarke, who had worked in national security in the Bush Administration, was talking about the widely held theory that our government was responsible for 911. He responded laughingly—which by itself is odd. But what he said is the exact way that those in power would prefer we think them stupid than culpable.
Richard Clarke’s response was a takeoff on the notion that, ha ha, government cannot do anything right. Government is the great scapegoat in this convenient societal defense mechanism; the US Postal Service is the prime example of how it is used. We ask things of mail service and those who forecast the weather that we would not expect in any other area. It is unreasonable, but society must have scapegoats, I suppose.
Social niceties are not profound political theory.
People need something to blame for their frustration when they are unknowing and denied information of the real factors affecting them. So we have these societal punching bags to collectively complain about which allows us to share our irritation, receive knowing support on it from others, bond with others in a shared laugh about it, and go on to other more understood matters.
But these things are not based on reason. They are in the category of those “obvious truths” I have been talking about—true sounding, but not true. Rationally speaking the postal service is about as reliable as a thing can get and much more reliable than what the private sector can do, and weather forecasters are far more on the mark than pure guesswork or the feelings in one’s joints would turn up. Still, both are remembered for their rare, but irritating occasional screw-ups than for all the times they are right on the money. It is just a social way of talking and bonding that we do in complaining about them.
Convenient-for-the-rich common nonsense inspired Reagan.
Yet, Ronal Reagan brought this common-nonsense to the level of a grand theory of government. He declared, “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem.” Jumping ahead, we see how idiotic that was currently in 2011 as we see government being stripped down to the bones and people suffering ever more because of it. Reagan based his government on this convenient-for-the-rich, irrational but widely held social ritual of complaining about things and using the government as an example of ultimate foolhardiness.
Clinton, to his discredit among all the creditable things he did, continued Reagan’s contrivance in declaring “The era of big government is over.” This is an example of the “triangulation” he was noted for—co-opting and holding the territory of his opponents and using the additional sway that move gave him to make gains in areas his opponents did not approve of.
Clinton gave sacrifice to the dragon of nonsense to get some good things done.
Unfortunately the drawback of that move was, first, that Clinton had to make tradeoffs to get his gains; he had to actually take action in areas no progressive would desire. So, Clinton “reformed” welfare, which is something that may cause suffering in our country forever. He did this so he could create the illusion of ending big government.
The second negative from this triangulation is that it gave credibility to these common nonsensicals about the foolhardiness of government effectiveness. It is nonsensical, as is done these days, to think that big government is a threat to one’s precious Medicare and Social Security! But this is the legacy of Reagan, and then Clinton’s, pandering to the irrationality of the masses brought on by decades of immersion in “obvious truths.”
So getting back to Richard Clarke. He laughingly brushed off the 9-11 conspiracy theories by saying that would entail a high degree of government coordination, which is hardly possible for our government (ha, ha, ha). This is a pristine example of the powerful preferring we think them dumb than what they really are…guilty.
The Ignorance Defense Is No Excuse
Another kind of use of the stupidity defense may have another culpable official saying “Well, no one, before the fact, had ever considered for a moment that people would take planes and crash them into buildings,” for example.
“No one beforehand would ever have thought…”
For that one, former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. It’s a statement she has made since 9-11, and even had repeated it in her last days in office. Never mind the well-known, and widely reported Intelligence that was released after 9-11 that had concluded that bin Laden had determined to strike in America using planes to crash into buildings, statements given to the American government many months before the catastrophe and which Rice herself is known to have been aware of months before the crashes, and which journalists record her having little interest in, despite several attempts at briefing her on it.
And she is only one of those who make the same claim, denying the warnings. The Intelligence on this was most damning, in that it was specific, in pointing to a lack of vigilance, and an apparent narrow ideological view which made them, apparently, not see all the evidence required to make valid assessments. But rather they were predisposed to certain conclusions and so scanned for the pieces that supported that.
We know in retrospect that is what happened, and we know how disastrous that view was. Which is why I am writing this. It is simply high time for people who knew better to stop letting these ideologues, whose very ideological bent was arguably the reason they failed so horribly, get away with the ignorance defense.
“Ignorance” means literally “to ignore.”
It is one thing to say that one did not oneself consider certain outcomes or possibilities, but to claim that “no one at all” ever thought these things…. Well, it is ignorance, literally, “to ignore,” that caused so many in power, ideologically bent, to simply see only what they wanted to see.
To know, yet to continue to assert ignorance, is defined as “lying.”
But, proven wrong, and shown and pointed out that there had been plenty of evidence to have led one to do things differently and to get it right, and to still claim that no one else knew, is defined as lying.
It may be human nature to lie after one has screwed up so badly, but it is not required of humans. And others have many times admitted they were wrong and humbly admitted their failings in not considering the very evidence in front of them. Bush’s Scott McClellan is one such person. He was the Communications Director under Bush, and wrote a confessional book admitting that he should have known better and done differently.
If so susceptible to “human nature,” there are others who would not be.
No, it is too damn easy to say “human nature.” People in such positions should, let us say, we would hope, have a tad more of the noble in them, a bit more integrity not less, or they shouldn’t be allowed to take such positions, which require at least the integrity and nobility to be working for the betterment, protections, and the increase of all of Americans, over against one’s own interests; and need I say over against one’s egotistical desire to try out on the world stage some ideological theory. Else, hell, there’s lots of folks—many are Democrats—who would have tried a lot harder under the same circumstances.
So, it strikes me as more than arrogant for people who created these situations out of their own ignorance, greed, and so on, to excuse themselves by basically painting everyone else with the same brush.
Guess what, Cheney-Bush-Rice, others would not have come to the same conclusion.
No, Rice and Bush and Cheney, who all engage regularly in this, “No one could have known” excuse, do not have the right, after being given (or after having taken) the reins of the most powerful governmental forces, to place themselves as innocent and humanly unknowing just like everyone else, as they perpetrated the kinds of deeds of evil that they were so ready to decry, and put down, in others, and now to escape their mistakes and their ideologically driven lapses of such consequence, to be making themselves feel superior and safe by saying, essentially, anyone in the same situation would have come to the same conclusion.
Ignorance not an excuse when you make every effort to not know.
Well, the facts are, as I will be pointing out again and again, that when you make the conscious decision to eliminate contrary points of view, even when there are more of them than support your bent, and having ignored reports, stifled opposition, and insulated one within a group of monolithic true-believers; all while that entire America and the world is requiring you to get it right; NO, when you basically set it up so that, after hearing things you don’t want to hear, you make damn sure that the only people that are around or will even be allowed in (Bush took it so far as to never allow anyone even in one of his town hall meetings to attend if they were not fully on his side), it seems to me, to be more than arrogance, I don’t know, to say that, having drawn one’s circle so small, and against the better interests of the American people that you would at least, having been given the job, to do it as well as any small businessperson and simply find out everything one can before making a decision.
We know you didn’t do your homework, but this is hardly grade school.
But now, why would it be? Why this need to go so far in denying the facts? Why the need, which as pointed out existed during that long period where it became increasingly clear that the Administration had gotten so many things wrong for lack of “doing one’s homework” that so many of the Bushies, like Rice, also felt this ignoble need to excuse themselves of their mistakes not saying they’d done wrong but, amazingly, adopting and engaging in the same kinds of excuses of common criminals, even a mass murderer to explain one’s failings.
Bushies using same excuse as a mass murderer—how does that strike you?
For as Charles Manson used to like to say, “how do you know what you would have done if you’d been in my shoes? How do you know that you’d not come to the same conclusions and actions after experiencing and learning what I did?” And adding, “What I’m saying is that all you smug people, thinking you’re so above the rest of us and so incapable of evil continually assert how good you are and to exaggerate with fake loathing and revulsion how different you are from these others? Why, except that you are aware of having some of these things inside yourself, a little bit of Manson, or Bundy, or whatever? You are aware of these tugs and pulls and so your protestations aren’t they mainly to try to fight back those things?”
And here he would laugh, “You see, what you people don’t want to admit is that we are all alike on the inside; and that includes the evil. That also includes the good, which you would deny that I have. In fact, you do not want to know that you could as easily done this as I did, under the correct circumstances.”
While, there may be some truth in what Manson and criminals like him have claimed, psychologically speaking, and his pointing to hypocrisy is certainly often merited, still he is talking about the human psychology and the imperfections of them. One can easily grant that humans are not perfect, but that does not mean that we’d all become killers in the same circumstances. That is something one cannot know. But what we do know is that different people can be in a particular situation and react completely differently: one may act nobly, even heroically; another may act cowardly, finding excuses, blaming others.
What I’m saying it that is unseemly to an nth degree to hear those who have taken over our government through their claims to be better, be smarter and more able, and to be more ethical—and would that include a little integrity, even nobility of character. So for these people, who have driven this country into the ground, after claiming higher ethics, character, morality, all the rest, than their opponents, indeed, so high as to warrant their receiving the job of most responsibility and requiring the most integrity than any other one in the world.
If you’re so common, why put yourself up to lead?
So then, after all that sales pitch at the beginning their excuse for screwing up is essentially that they were just the average Joe, the C—student, who didn’t like homework, and it being “so hard,” that they made common mistakes—one’s that anyone would make.
Well, 1) EVERYONE DID NOT MAKE THESE MISTAKES! And you showed yourself too incompetent in not even listening to them, and 2) if you’re so common, then how dare you place yourself above everyone else and lie about your character and so on.
If you were lying about all that as a political ploy just to win. .. so that you could, what? Have power? Help your friends and yourself become enriched, or whatever? Well the lives of all humans on this planet are affected by the decisions of that office. And if your intent was a selfish one, then the whole world suffered, for it was a job for them that you were hired to do.
It’s more than unethical.
Not doing your job, and lying to the American public to get the job, is more than unethical. It becomes treason when the office is used to extort from the American taxpayers, huge amounts of money to give to their rich friends and to corporations with ties to the administration like Halliburton, who made money hand-over-fist with no-bid contracts.
No, that kind of stuff is not the stuff of mistakes but is intentional. It is using the highest office of the land, and taking the hopes of us all, from the little girl who wants to see her Daddy again, the many languishing in hospitals for lack of health care …. The list is endless … it is assuming to be their hero, while spending one’s time dismantling the government and the benefits it provides for us all, which for several hundred years have been worked out.
To plunder government for selfish ends is more than a mistake of foresight.
And for one administration to trash and plunder that government for its own selfish ends is not a matter of “I didn’t think of that before.” No, it sounds like the excuses of criminals because that is what this recent bunch actually were.
So that’s an example of what I’m getting at, which is that, despite so many denials, especially by the people in power and their lackeys in the media—all claiming that they could not foresee this, could not foresee that, that this was truly unprecedented, and that nobody could ever have seen such and such coming.
Not a lack of astute people, it was a lack of intention.
What I’m proposing is that in fact many did see many things coming, not just unheard of and powerless me (although isn’t it significant that even I could pick up on certain things), that it was not a lack of astute people, but let us say an intentional leaving out of the conversation of policy,
any and all minds who could have and would have advised more correctly and would have prevented much if not all that has transpired and which now leaves America in a crisis to top all crises, at the worst possible time when so many other things of global significance are on the line.
So, hey! Thanks a Lot, George Bush!
You might want to step back and enjoy the humor in this as I did. This is my little, oh, “thank you note” to George W. Bush. It is a satirical piece. A supposed admirer-fan-chum of George W. Bush encourages thank-you’s for Bush’s “accomplishments,” which, described glowingly by the fan, sound quite the opposite to the listener. The fan has the most admiration for the great caper Bush “pulled off” at the end.
A Comedic Monologue
This comedic monologue combines the actual facts of recent history with a simple, unspun speculation of them, coming from the mouth of a fawning admirer who, for that reason, is allowed to elaborate on the shady dealings. So Bush, it is intimated, basks in the glory of having his ideas for illegal dealings praised as clever and awesome, or even cute.
This is political satire that will have you laughing from the total incongruity and irony of the monologue, but it will also leave you more informed and thinking. This is provocative, funny stuff.
And the audio only version of the above:
A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for the Great Bush-Paulson-“Filthy Rich” Caper
by SillyMickel Adzema
About the audio and video above.
[From February 2, 2010] Yesterday the airwaves were abuzz re: the CEO of Goldman Sachs taking $100 million in bonuses and thumbing his nose at Obama in doing so. Other reports this week are confirming the sleight-of-hand and shadiness surrounding the TARP bailout of the banks: Specifically, that TARP money handed out by Paulson was not recorded, let alone accounted for or monitored; and therefore it cannot be traced or even determined whether it went to benefit American corporations, let alone Americans, and not foreign corporations or even private interests or parties.
With these recent developments coming to light, along with the tea-baggers and Republicans continued blaming of Obama for everything from being born,
daring to take the oath of office with unpresidential skin pigmentation, to daring to reverse the direction of the country from the cliff that Bush had so clearly left us heading for, it seems it’s time to revisit those days of yore, those nostalgic last glimmerings of a time when we had a government solidly on the side of the people, that is, helping them in keeping them comfortably distracted from the sight of the truckloads of loot being removed from the Treasury to the coffers of the filthy rich and the huge, oftentimes, foreign or international corporations.
Let us return, then, to December, 2009, and President Bush’s last couple months in office, and recalling those halcyon days, render our gratitude anew:
And the text of the “Oh, Thank You..” audio and video:
A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush,
with Admiration for
“The Great Bush-Paulson-‘Filthy Rich’ Caper”C’MON EVERYONE, JOIN IN NOW!: “Why, Thank you, George Bush!”
…………….This is my little, let us say, oh, “thank you note” to George Bush for all his “hard work.”
Also, in appreciation of the “Paulsie Scam,” which we will be dealing with forever….
luckily it’s been arranged that won’t be too long.
…………….
“Thanks George W. Bush for all your efforts and “hard work” which have led,
your decisions and your Administration solely to blame—
thank you for being “THE DECIDER!” by the way —
to leave us in the midst of so many dire and rapidly expanding problems, so that many people are not just wondering if they will have a job or money, but that even if this planet will make it through another fifty years.
So, hey, thanks for all the hard work and for relieving us and all our grandchildren of any money, and….
oh, I see, there probably won’t be any planet for the little dears to live on.
And everyone dead and all….
Why, gosh, Mr. W., you’re so smart, you probably knew that!
So that’s why you and your cronies went so far as to commit grand larceny even at the end, scraping out the last of any money in the Treasury—wasn’t much left for Obama to do with anyway, after your eight years of partying on high with your Halliburton and your god-only-knows faceless “filthy rich,” gang.
Must’ve felt like the ol’ times, eh, except for the cocaine. . .
Er, I mean, I didn’t mean to presume, I mean, you can have cocaine, who am I…
Oh! What a relief, glad to hear you did not partake like the others. It’s just that….
I mean George, friend, my Man here, c’mon there were some pretty weird dancing and stuff and things—right at the end there—that had me wondering and worrying….
Oh, I get it, no cocaine, but wink, wink, you’ve got your ways you say? Hmmm? Finding things better than cocaine and getting away with it?
Well, he he, I’m not about to judge. I mean if we can have Rush Limbaugh asking for drug users to be hung up by their finger nails, even as he’s got a constant drip for a codeine fix, and he gets away scot free, why shouldn’t you have your fun? You always said it was haaaard work.
But I gotta get back to that stunt with the Treasury at the very end. I mean many, many a lesser, “criminal,” shall we say, mind would never go back again and again, let alone in broad daylight and in front of the entire world! Gad!
Was this all your idea to totally take everything while you could? Somebody else’s?
Anyway, it was brilliant. First, you enlist the support of that guy Paulson. Er, now that I know more about him, being worth $700 million, like and, getting bonuses of $37 million in 2005 and then 16.4 million the next year before he came into office with you…..
Why, could it actually be that he was the one that talked you into it!!! Naaaaaaw?
Certainly, he’d have to be characterized as one of them “filthy rich” that you helped to create, making people wonder who’s really calling the shots in Washington. …
But, never mind, even if it was his good idea—and now I understand he’s had plenty of experience—being involved with the folks who did Watergate and all…way back in his early days… with Ehrlichman and all—so that—no doubt he’s got lots of good ideas, ya gotta give him that.
But, hell, don’t want to take any shine off your apples. No, it was you who chose him. And despite his background, managed to get him on your side and portrayed as one of the most well-respected men on Wall Street, at the time… I remember that well…. I’d never know about his background, and I was most respect…everybody said it was a big…a good pick for you? ‘Course that was the old Wall Street; ‘cuz we now know those bonuses and stuff aren’t too popular right now.
Anyhow, brilliant move, you put this man of yours on task for the high-pressured auto trading that you knew would be required to pull off such a heist.
So you had your guy Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs…coming to take this position of Secretary of Treasury for you. And now we find out that none of that money went where it was intended to go and it did not change the situation but rather exacerbated it! Brilliant! More on that later, but…
more on that later, but, Jesus! I gotta say though…pretty incredible!!? I mean, Paulson himself, gets like, uh, what was it…50 some billion to a German bank? That then owes…Goldman Sachs 16 billion, and so he makes off with 16 billion on top, is that like…
What a crackup this guy is being! I mean he had everyone fooled, and, in fact, there is nothing at all being said about his involvement or his possible effects on what happened, even to this day.
That’s smoothness even you and I could learn from , y’know, Mr. W and……..stay away from him, man…. He’s just tooo smart for all of us, ok, I think he’ll have……. He, he, I think he’s already had his hands in all of our pockets, he, he, I figure… (I’m sorry bout that)… But anyway…
Naw, c’mon, let’s, let’s…we wanta go over your accomplishments tonight, Mr. President, I mean…. I mean..the whole thing…y’know, going to Congress, there….
Getting them to tally up that un-be-leiv-able sev-en hun-dred bill-ion dollars! …like almost a trillion dollars…. I mean they could not get that high, I mean….
Anyway…so we heard how you guys gathered these guys together in Congress…I mean how it was done, y’know, it was like…well musta been like one of those movies….like Ocean’s elev…. Like an Ocean’s 33, yeah! And. Anyway, so you gathered those suckers, those guys, in Congress together, who had the money, huh?
And, he, he, he, y’know, like, we heard afterwards how you guys gathered, Congressional Leaders… and… without explaining exactly how it would happen—of course
Congressmen could not be expected to understand the workings of economics and high finance like a Paulson could. So, kindly Paulson and his deputies explained using analogies, how nice of them to bring it down to their level, so sweet of them….
Y’know analogies…like this is like this, this is like this, y’know, and…yea, like that….
I just want to say how cute you are, W.. I mean, it was just, soooooo you….
Anyway, the analogy they used was that if Congress didn’t cough up the dough pronto—perhaps those weren’t the exact words, my bad. But anyway, that the consequences—and tell me W. this was all you, right?—The consequences would be that of a “GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN” (tell me, that part was you, right?) a terminal global economic meltdown that would… (wait, I’m getting an inkling here… was this next part, Cheney’s?) “End modern civilization as we know it for the foreseeable future.”
Wow! It gives me shivers just hearing it. I mean there ain’t no auto salesman in his wildest fantasies that could come up with something so absolutely, well, disabling.
You guys really took those suckers in Congress “out by the knees”! How could they have had a chance!
And, boy, there’s that implied nuclear thing again…”the meltdown”; yea. Doesn’t have to make any sense; I mean economics melting, but hey close enough. How clever! I mean that whole image of mushroom cloud, why it just worked stupendously to get us into a war. And now, this being economics…
Oh, my God, I see it; it’s like a fifties movie—”Oh, please help, we’re meeee-ee-llll-tiiinggg.” Yea, super scary. Heck, anything like that from fifties horror flicks…just good stuff.
Heck, you know that most people believe that stuff anyway.
So, I see, you feed them what they always feared anyway.
Brilliant. Brilliant.
But that’s my George, the W. himself, going with what he knows. And, hey, why bother coming up with anything else, that card’s a winner for you, my man….
And c’mon, level with me, I just gotta know, won’t tell anyone else… Was that Cheney with the “end of civilization” part?
C’mon, he’s already living the Wild West out there in Wyoming, he’s probably thinkin Mad Maxin it and everything… I mean, c’mon…. C’mon, it’s got to be him, that’s just sooo Darth Vader, who else could think like that?
Please tell me I’m right…I feel like I know this guy and that is….well, that is just sooooo him!…
So Far Above Us, They
Well That Was Fun, But Seriously, Folks: Paulson, Goldman Sachs
Well that was fun. But, more seriously, we find that there was plenty of help for Bush in pulling off his Ocean’s 12 caper. Take Paulson. Respected, regarded, head of Goldman Sachs, the acknowledged best and brightest of the Wall Street analysts, savvy folks who at the beginning of the banking crisis, as brokers like Merrill and Lehman were crumbling, some never to be heard again, Goldman Sachs was rumored to have come out quite well. It is said that they, when nobody else saw it coming (there’s those words again), invested to protect themselves in case of a downturn; perhaps shorting or buying puts, I’m not sure.
“Goldilocks economy”!?!
But that even struck me as rather astute as I had been doing the same thing, foreseeing a financial collapse, and not taken up with the Bush Administration’s cheer-leading of its own economic policies measured in the stock market and led by CNBC analysts all,
especially the slavish Kudlow and his claims that Bush had produced a near perfect “Goldilocks Economy.” This he repeated over and over, even as the market slid. And when it did it was always the fault, according to Kudlow, of someone who had it out for Bush and his policies. Seriously, hearing this guy daily, salivating on and on about Bush, you’d wish they’d just a got a room.
TARP handed out like candy
Getting back to Goldman Sachs, however, Paulson long gone, not even leaving records of where the money went, apparently just handing it out like candy to his friends. And we were told that we just had to trust him, for it was so dire, and yet so far beyond our ability to understand.
To collect a debt, steal money and give it to your borrower to give back to you?
Maybe so, but then when it turned up recently that a huge chunk of that money went from Paulson to a European bank (a German one, I believe, not that that matters). And that this bank turned around and paid Goldman Sachs $16 billion. To which I can only, sarcastically (what other attitude can one have and still remain comfortable while writing!!) add, well, way-ta-go there Paulie, good job, Paulie, now that’s one round about but rather effective way of collecting a debt.
Just who’s “civilization” was at stake?
Makes me wonder then just whose nuclear meltdown would be in the offing, just whose civilization would end. As we will see further on, these people are and always have been seeing themselves as SO FAR ABOVE US, and they manage to convince the rest of us that they are that (just look at how they convinced Congress and are going around a second time and are succeeding again!)
They are SO FAR above us that they truly, and I mean this sincerely for reasons that I will get into, they truly see their fates, fortunes, and futures as equivalent with all the rest of us. I.e., and now I’m tipping my hand a bit, like kings of old who might suffer depression and soon all in the kingdom would be claiming to suffer depression too (or would be obliged to say they did?).
We are Borg, you will be assimilated.
And, by the way, this is nothing like the kind of Unity of Consciousness I speak of later. No. No. Think of this more along the lines of “We Are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Daddy power demands your soul loss.
And more exactly it is this 25,000 year old pure and simple patriarchal authoritarian daddy power and their ability, with all their underlings depending on them for survival, to require the soul-loss and the robotic obedience of a group, each of whom know they will fare better materially (and being kept, most often, at a mere subsistence level) any improvement would be dearly competed for.
How dear the slavish underling
And how would they compete, you might ask. Well, how dear to a king’s heart is the underling who it seems so loves the king that he also suffers whatever the king does. Now that’s a pretty slavish thing, as humiliating acts of self-annihilation go, the aping that one is so in unity with the king that indeed they will suffer the same. (OK, now you say it with me, “Get a room!!”).
Auto Salesman Paulsen
But this point is to explain the seeming inexplicability of the power of such people, even over against that of a Congress that was trying to show some spine at that time, even though it was still dominated by Republicans, even they were having qualms of this kind of railroading, which several decried—and this is where I got it from—as seeming so much like the tactics of a slick auto salesman.
Auto Salesman Example of Congress Extortion
“Tell ya what, I’m going to do. You just sign this paper here; it’s only got a tentative price on it, I won’t hold you to it, but this will guarantee that beauty won’t be scooped out from under you tomorrow morning before you’ve had a chance to come in.
“Now, I know you love that car; and, quite honestly I want to see this deal go through, because I know a good match when I see it; and that car will be great for you. Leave it to me, I’ll talk to my supervisor tomorrow, I’m going out on a limb here, ya’know. But if I didn’t make my customers happy, I wouldn’t be happy, for that is what it’s all about to me.
“Just sign here, next to that number, and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do as far as bringing that down so it’s more affordable to you.
“You know, I wouldn’t do this for anybody else. But you strike me as a man of class. And I just know that you’re not going to let some minor discrepancy or other get in the way of your getting the vehicle that someone of your stature really deserves.
“And that’s what I’m I’ll about, I’m here to serve you and to get you the car you deserve. No, don’t worry about signing, it’s not a contract, really. In fact, if you change your mind by tomorrow, I personally will guarantee you that I will put in any time necessary to find the one of your dreams.
“Now you couldn’t do better than that, could you? Really now. I guess I’m just a sucker, but hey, I don’t see this job as selling machines, but more like arranging marriages. Like the Matchmaker—you know “Fiddler on the Roof”—ha ha!
(“Yea, right there anywhere, will be fine… oh, that pen not working, well here I’ve got plenty, in fact here have a couple, give one to your kid from me.”)
“There you go, now you’re doing the smart thing. I figured you to be a smart person the first time I saw you on the lot a little while ago.
“Well, anyway, I know you want to get home to your family, and tell them the good news.
“Well, of course, we’re still going to work on those figures tomorrow. Let’s just say I’m pretty damn sure I can get my supervisor to see it more your way, so I’m assuming we’re going to have the deal that’ll make you happy.
“So g’won now you old charmer, before you get me to throwing in a second car in the deal just cause you’re such good people.
“Yea, it was good getting to know you too. So I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.
“Oh, yeah, OK, I understand you can’t get here till late afternoon, I just assumed nothing would be able to hold you back once you thought of it at home. Yea, g’night….”
Pause. Now salesmen talking loudly at the man as he retreats:
“Oh, Mr. Bonior, just one small detail, if you don’t mind.
“Now, I know you weren’t sure about that undercoating, but I’m telling you that it’ll add years to your car, and, like I said, that may be something we can throw in; and if not, well it’s not that much.
“So d’ya want me to have that taken care of before you come in tomorrow? I can guarantee to put my best guy on it first thing in the morning, so the only think you’ll have to think of is how luxurious it will be driving home in this sweetness.
“No, you say no? Ya sure now? I mean you look like a great couple to me (chuckle). Not getting cold feet at the altar are you? (chuckle, chuckle)
“You’re sure you don’t want it, not yet?
“Okay, tell you what I’m going to do. You ARE a hard bargainer, darn you. (he he). Look I’ll put my best guy on it, he comes in at 8am. I really think that when you leave here you’re going to want to take this car away tomorrow, not another day.
“Now, now, relax; I heard you, just let me finish. I’ve been in this business a long time and by this point I hardly ever, if that, miss one of these “love at first sight” affairs I saw tonight. So, hear me out, it’ll be the best deal of your life, call it my “wedding gift”:
“Like I said I’ll put my guy on it in the morning. But if you call and let me know before that, well, then I’ll just take him off it, and crack it up to I just didn’t know you as well as I thought I did.
“On the other hand, here’s my “gift,” let me have it put on for you and—like I said I can probably get the cost completely waived—but let’s say I can only can half of it waived. Well, I’ll personally split the difference on the remaining cost with you; take it right out of my commission. It might mean I make $5 on this deal, but what the heck. Like I said it’s all about making you happy.”
Mr. Bonior turns and throws up his hands and walks to his car.
“OK, great, sounds like we got a deal. So, see you tomorrow, you’re going to be glad you came walking in her today, believe me. G’night again.”
Back to the astonishing “Paulsie” scheme, as one person astutely put it, “When anyone tells me I have to sign on the dotted line that day, or else . . . well, never once has a situation like that turned out right.”
Someone, I don’t remember who, was way ahead of everyone else. He used the word, “extortion.” We found out later how close to or exactly like extortion have been some of the tactics of the TARP money’s recipients toward the very Congress that provided them the money.
Other Unforeseen Events (Who wudda thought?)
Once again, no matter the situation, and despite the outcries of the American Republican Administration, who claimed to have encountered one after another of unforeseen and unprecedented events, no one ever dreamed could happen before. Such was always the refrain: “Who would have imagined such a thing could happen….”
Other Examples of Incompetence by Republicans, Katrina etc…Leading Into Stock Market Crash
In case I need to use an example or two to remind some readers of the prevalence of that claim and the absurdity of it as well: We see, Katrina, the unholy disaster wrought by that hurricane. Louisiana is devastated, particularly New Orleans.
Katrina was such a horrible blunder, they had to cover up the numbers who died!
The Bush Administration responds so horribly that the death toll is eventually no longer being announced in the media. Claims that it might be in the thousands were quelled by daily counts that only slowly recovered the dead, so that as the toll rose into the teens and 20s and up to 50, it was telling all of us listening that it may not have been as bad as we thought in terms of the loss of life.
Not so, actually, as I told my wife, many people died in their attics, inside their homes, and they haven’t even gotten to those neighborhoods. Indeed, I listened and only heard one time, years later and as an afterthought how several thousand had indeed been killed in that horrible flood. Recently a sign put there by someone was broadcast on TV: “4000 died here!” No doubt I am not the only one noticing the extent of the tragedy there was covered up to diminish the degree of political culpability.
First thing, the media colluded to keep anger at Bush Administration in check.
So, two things we notice in this example. The subtle way the media keeps anger at the administration in check by downplaying the horror. They couldn’t have done it any better had they been directly in the payroll of the government as the forces are who obeyed Bush’s commands to not let there be any TV coverage of Iraqi soldiers returning home in pine boxes and that even the graveyards were not to allow open caskets. So there is this collusion that is hard to understand. We’ll look at that a little later.
Second thing, again the refrain—“Who wudda predicted…?”
But, the inane refrain is always, and everywhere, and loudly proclaimed on all the airways, the Republican lackeys, along with Bush himself, proclaiming, Bush, in an innocent voice: “Who would have thought the levees would breach? This is horrible for the families, and blah, blah, blah, (but now back to covering my ass again:) We had fully prepared for a big storm, but no on predicted the breach of the levees.”
Did he really think you would believe that?! … (Did you?)
There is no euphemism for that kind of outright lie, and he deserves no covering up from anyone; he’s had too much already. No, indeed, I myself listened to storm reports over and over again for three days preceding landfall and sure enough, there was that one thing that was of concern to all: that the levees would breach. It was described what a devastation that would be; New Orleans being like a bowl, with much of it below sea level so a breach would not flow back out on its own.
More was said: how the levees had been a cause of much concern for years prior to the storm as those in the city knew that they needed work and strengthening in a big way, for they knew that if the big one hit, it would be about as devastating as it turned out to be.
But we hear from Bush: No one expected the levees to breach. Truly astonishing was the degree of lying that Bush-Cheney and others in that administration proclaimed, and which, despite even the media making at least some minimal amount of noise about certain things not being exactly congruent with certain facts, and so on. (One could do a great study of euphemisms for the many and varied ways that the media covered Republican comments without ever, not once using the word lie, or liar.)
I promised two examples, so how about the gem I discussed earlier in which Condoleezza Rice, year after year, takes refuge in this idea that “No one could have foreseen terrorists using planes to crash into buildings,” despite specific warnings delivered to the U.S. and specifically brought to her attention, which said exactly that.
But remember, when one meticulously surrounds oneself with only true believers, and fills posts with of importance with people with questionable theology degrees, and routinely stifles dissent (as was viciously done to Valerie Pflame to get back at Joe Wilson’s speaking out), then how will you ever get any information except that which you already know; or better yet, how will you every learn anything that does not in fact reinforce your beliefs, so how will you learn anything different that you might need to learn?
Checklist—So How Did We Do? Economy?
I reread my words of a decade ago. Example,
I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.
What? Me Worry About the Economy?
Hmmmm. Supreme Court? Check. Environment? Check. Our good economy? Well that topic demands more than a mere “check.” In the overnight change and the way it was done, the way it should have been foreseen, the way there was collusion at all levels… happen and the obvious conclusions to be drawn as to who made it happen and why, based on all the foreknowledge.
Was it intentional to destroy a country’s wealth and bring its workers to their knees?
Was it intentional to devastate the richest country in the world and to bring its workers to their knees? As well as the American government, before all the nations of the world having to humiliate … homeless beggars pleading for a handout also on its knees? What kind of American would engage in undermining this country, an outright act of betrayal?
Another betrayal
Just a side thought that might have value for some: In writing that last, I was reminded of Judas selling out to Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. So Judas, not being a typical Jew, was not a very good bargainer. He only got himself thirty pieces of silver, but still he was going to sell out Jesus.
And I was struck by the longevity and potency of a template so simple in this age of Ocean’s Eleven, high tech wizardry that could have been employed and indeed was employed, for example, for the 911 caper. Yet this simple motive is still moving people?
Apparently so aligned with the human nature hardly changed. A few bags of silver?
Utopia undone
Anyway, back to the economy, remember folks at that time, still under Clinton and before Bush took office we had a budget surplus that we were eagerly debating how we could use to benefit our country and world, including happy notions like universal solar for all homes, universal health care.
So many other things, so many ideas were bandied about, all real possibilities considering the size of the surplus which had been created by—this should be kept in mind for it is hugely important later, and now—the surplus was created by a moderate tax increase on the extremely rich and the creation of millions of new jobs, all tax paying jobs, combined with strict oversight of the class of government programs and the reeling in of any that had the marks of beginning to get out of hand.
All those happy ideas of how to use the surplus. Yet no one envisioned the possibility that actually occurred, requiring, as it would, that people of unnatural stupidity or intent to harm would not only manage to win an election but also take over government so thoroughly and eliminate intelligent input so thoroughly and seamlessly and obliterate any and all objection at any level, including that of the media, and therefore the population. Well, who would have foreseen such an elaborate and abhorrent possibility?
“Bring back the flat Earth!”
For one thing its abject failure recently apparent, its certainty to benefit few if any, its guarantee of destroying huge benefits possible that would benefit virtually everyone, and alongside that no media or public outcry? Impossible, it was thought. Who would have considered that? Who would have considered the surplus eventually being thrown into the “bring back the flat Earth” bin, essentially reviving the disproven economics of only eight years prior to when Bush, in his first term, the beginning of it, lowered the taxes for the filthy rich. {pic of insanity of Congress in doing the same thing and it not working out}
Einstein says, “The definition of insanity is…”
And so it was reviving the failed economics of eight years prior to that which had resulted in a great recession, a Clinton victory, and the reversal of that policy with the spectacular results I was reporting on.
So, in considering that possibility, a person would have to ask, has this person been asleep for twenty years, eight minimum? Or hopelessly self- and other-destructive? What?
Still don’t know the answer to that question.
Back to that time, however, still setting up the context that preceded the one of the last eight years. Clinton’s plan was simple and it worked. So, simple policy that ordinary folks employ in balancing their household budgets, not rocket science, applied sincerely by Clinton, had achieved what had been considered the impossible and as elusive as the Holy Grail: the quest of the Balanced Budget. Many a Republican President had claimed it as a top priority and made it a central plank in their election platforms. But in Reagan’s case, for example, a term or two later, after absolute failure and in fact causing a tripling or quadrupling of the National Debt instead, they had claimed it was as elusive and difficult to achieve as the Holy Grail, and also blamed the Democrats, largely for programs instituted in the past, like Social Security and Medicare, and so on, which they knew coming into office, and which they slashed. But still they could not achieve a balanced budget.
Conservative goal achieved only by “free spender”
Then, in comes Clinton, from the supposedly “free spenders” party, roundly criticized for budget-busting and National Debt increasing policies. 
Somehow the media and the Republicans had managed to conflate the two even after twelve disastrous years of Reagan-Bush that had proved…and dear people if only it had been remembered…proved for all time and had become a huge national debate if not uproar when George W. Bush’s first act was to reverse the economic policies of Clinton and reinstitute those of Reagan-Bush, with everyone in remembrance of the debacle that had been once.
You’re unlikely to know this, however.
But this is not brought out in the media.
In a country with a truly free press, not owned by the very people who would benefit by such a reversal, this renewal of the disastrous policies of only a decade earlier would have been all over the place and the analogies would ripe for picking, like: “Bush elects rebuilding the Titanic exactly the same way as before. Claims we as Americans are not dumb enough to run into icebergs as Europeans are.”
… ok, I’ve gone back about fifty, seventy years….
How ‘bout them kindly corporations, though?
Or, how about: “Bush proposes eliminating Food and Drug Administration, saying it will save taxpayers’ dollars. Claims no longer needed because the kindly corporations of the current era no longer need the regulations of the past, which were directed against people of a time that contained more unsavory, non-patriotic, non-American types, not like the corporations of today.”
Even as I’m saying these ridiculous things I can’t help thinking how variations of them were used in pushing through the changes that resulted in the debacle currently. As one example, even Greenspan is reported at one time, I believe it was toward the end of the Clinton era, to have said…check this out…that we have reached the point of corporate and monetary discipline, wherein corporations can be expected to be self-disciplining.”
Boy does that gall me. Homes in foreclosure, Chase Bank, out of the clear blue sky tripled our interest rates…. Yea, ok….
Greenspan, yea, you’re “sorry” alright.
Anyway, back to this: “…self-disciplining and not requiring the regulations of the past, which, if now acting as restrictions, if loosened, and trusting in their self-discipline…” This is all Greenspan speaking, now. …”would free their creativity eventually benefiting all…” I’m paraphrasing of course, but certainly Greenspan has been named one of “the dirty dozen” by CNN. Dirty Dozen being primary ones who created the economic debacle currently….
Muddling through, and looking decades down the path for relief. Anyway, this sorry character, Greenspan, that is, has admitted his part in his wrongness of vision, advice, and recommendation. But that example, with the very words that Greenspan used and the video of it kept in the archives and his clear retraction afterward, again in his own words and captured unmistakably on videos is slam dunk proven example that this inanity existed.
Idiocy rose to the top.
But the question that comes up… yea, and inanity at the highest levels, too… but the question that comes up, Is that not just an isolated example? Wish that it were so. For this I have not at hand though I’m sure there are loads of written testimony and concrete examples on the books that correspond nicely that Bush’s idiocy rose to the level portrayed earlier, disbanding the protections of the American people, using inane ideas meant to pander and gather acceptability for disastrous policy reversals.
Oh, one more spoken one in evidence before I get to the less obvious but more comprehensive reversal that has Bush fully opting to remove all the protections deemed by legislators over hundreds of years to protect the average American from the tendency of the corporations in their greed and their pressures of competition to overreach with disastrous consequences for ordinary Americans, including their loss of life, health, and finances.
With all their wealth, they couldn’t see Maddof coming?
What I’m speaking of has to do with the Maddof scandal. Called the largest Ponzi scheme in history, bilking so many of those who are in the know on Wall Street, or perhaps should have been.
For they had amassed enough wealth to have had it thoroughly checked out ahead of time and foreseen it. The pundits were nonstop in their analyzing various aspects of it that should have given rise to suspicion and led to investigation long before it actually occurred.
But there seemed to be no end to the, “I don’t know how this happened. It shouldn’t have. It seems impossible”…again that refrain. Lacking insight, history, and perspective and having gotten your job partially because of having a lack of understanding of the areas you cover as opposed to a better understanding, well, these things don’t seem to have any causes any more than that chemicalized frozen chunk of waste from airplanes landing here as opposed to there.
Well that kind of, “well, somebody should have known” and “We don’t understand why they didn’t” got blown out of the water when a former SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) official and investigator, or at least a would-be one, came before Congress.
Well before reiterating what transpired, let’s not forget those weeks of “How could this have happened?” spewed endlessly. The result of the testimony in Congress was that the SEC under Bush was told to lie low in investigating anything.
And well isn’t this the way a C student would think? Essentially they were given the directive to look like they were busy, but not to really accomplish anything or to do their jobs.
C-Student, Bluto-Bush
Bush’s response is always, he don’t claim to be an A-student. What is it with these Republicans all thinking they’re Hermann’s Hermits?!
Bluto-Bush
What are you in “Animal House,” Bush? Who are you? Bluto? Telling your housemates,
“Hell, buds, ain’t no need to do any studying or any of that crap.
“Look, we got a good gig! I got elected President.”
Ok, maybe that part wouldn’t be Bluto. However…
And that means…now sounding like Cartman…
“I can do what I want!”
Now like Bluto-Bush,
“So nobody tells us what to do, and we’re gonna pa-a-a-r-ty! Wo-o-o-o-w!
“So don’t worry I’ve got it all worked out, that we’ll get the answers before exams so that we’ll look like we’re doing something. Don’t worry, you’ll get your checks. And in the meantime…might I say…
“There’s a keg that’s just been tapped in the kitchen…a-a-a-a-n-n-d! … “
…bringing the volume down low now, conspiratorially like…
“And for those so inclined *snif* if you catch my drift…don’t kill each other in the crush…be cool…well let’s just say *snif* the microwave and toaster, I hear *snif* have been enlisted in cookin up something not so much for the palate, but…”
*long, long, snif*
And at that many of the frats had already started dashing toward the kitchen.
Bluto-Bush, raising his voice over the clamor and hollering above all:
“Let’s just say that if the right is right then right is white! Ain’t no better breakfast than that served on a mirror, yyee-oo-ha!”
Well, if you didn’t enjoy that folks, at least one of us did.
C-students all
So before attributing obvious blame, let us not overlook this example, this one example of something rampant throughout the media and throughout government at all levels for eight years of Republican dominance.
For eight years, Bush had let it be known that the SEC should not have to, in fact, should back off from investigating. Basically, the SEC was told not to do its job, basically the SEC was told to collect checks, to engage in busywork. And, it wasn’t the only agency that was disabled by Bush.
You ever notice how the ones claiming government can’t do anything right are the same ones making it that way?
But my point has more to do with journalism. For the question is, how could Bush have gotten away with all this? How could his dismantling of the functions of government, put in place long ago by people…well…no stretch needed here…obviously smarter than him!…gone unreported. In any other time, does it not seem likely that this sort of disabling of the SEC would have been uncovered by the Fourth Estate? Over the course of so many years? Were there no longer any investigative journalists in Washington? Were there just photogenic media personalities with little knowledge of the area of their reporting? Which is what Walter Cronkite had predicted was going to happen.
Well, the camera likes them.
Well, anyway from the sound of those journalists
…without a clue about the Maddof scandal … …y’know, I mean, with all this evidence nobody did anything… they were doing lots of scratching their head and wondering, and “Gee, I dunno” “Hard to understand” and such instead of off-the-air investigation which would have resulted in that time being used to enlighten the public about the unheard of government hand in undoing the government’s work instead of giving everyone the feeling that these things don’t have individual actors behind them…no one accountable for them…no one to blame, and no one to stop, and therefore life is just a random series of accidents…
Breaking news, this just in: To my brain, question! (di di di di di di di)…
…Well my brain had the breaking news so my brain had to do sound effects…
Anyway, question: Is it possible that the what-me-worry president’s philosophy…let’s say, encapsulated by “gee I don’t know how such a thing like that could happen and besides it’s hard work, so, as for responsibility, well…what, me worry? Ok? As for the source of responsibility, well, what, me worry? Got it all? Ok, it goes like this:
Besides, it’s “hard work.”
His philosophy is “Gee, I don’t know, nobody ever imagined such a thing like that could happen, and besides, it’s hard work, so as for responsibility, well “What, me worry?”
Ok, understand now? You know, the befuddled C student’s view of the world. Learned enough to know the kinds of things that could happen, but not having studied enough or curious enough to have learned why they happened and crucially how they are prevented, if not wanted, or made to happen, if desirable.
For that would have gotten a B or an A.
The question remains, did he bring in a world of C students with him? Well, there is lots of evidence of exactly that happening in his government.
But in the media? Well, is it possible that he set the example of “gee, I dunno, I dunno” becoming acceptable?
Pretty convenient to gut education if insightful people would resist you.
Well, it’s not so outrageous when you consider that Reagan did something akin to that: Setting up the average no-nothing as somehow more astute with genetically predisposed intuitions without having to know, to check, to search, find out, or discover…may sound a little confusing, but you’ll see in a second…making the average shmuck feel like he’s college educated. Pretty convenient too when your policies include cutbacks in funding at all levels of education.
So Reagan’s perfect scheme: Republicans know that educated people vote by greater percentages more for Democrats than for Republicans. So, first part: Gut education; make education more expensive.
Also, continue to change higher education…as started in 1971 so…as I saw it happen…so it is swept of all the kinds of content and courses that often lead to insight, that lead to people becoming individuals. Instead heavily fund highly specialized programs of ethically neutral technical information. Forget the arbitrary culture- and time-bound and ephemeral and changing nature of those technicalities.
Trivial Pursuit became a popular game…and a way of life.
I mean, c’mon. If you need an example of that, I’ll give you an obvious one: There was one time when I was in school, before, just at the time when the first PCs were coming out, personal computers. At that time I was learning computer programming and I was learning it from huge machines and we were putting punch cards in them. Now, I could have spent years learning that kind of stuff. Imagine how useful that would have been today? Or how useful that would have been in a few years?
But that’s the kind of stuff they’re being taught. Y’know, the kind of stuff that when you go to a very technical job they teach you. But you’ll never be able to find a place that to use that training anywhere else because it only applies to the thing that they were doing there? Well, that’s what I’m talking about. The more specialized you got…and this is even at the junior … at the bachelor’s level… this is supposed to go on, if then, at the Master’s and certainly not until the Ph.D level.
So, they’re learning things that are peculiar to a particular corporation, a culture, and a time, and they could change.
However that’s what’s being pushed and these are programs that are designed by the corporations in fact. So that they would produce the work pool that they could feed from. So they would get an already paid for, trained by the government, pool of employees. Something that they had had to do in the past.
Pander to the uneducated (to seduce them while picking their pockets).
Now, as for all those who don’t go into higher education for lack of resources and would not have gone anyway? But who would have felt inferior because of that? In the anti-intellectualism that you put out, something that is a technique of every totalitarian government ever to have existed…I’m talking about Reagan putting it out now…they encourage the uneducated to feel they’re smarter than if they had gone, and encourage them to look down on and despise the educated and what the educated come to discover.
Pump up their egos (while undermining their security).
If for example, like global warming… or the environment…in Reagan’s time. Or, the dangers of nuclear anything…again Reagan’s time…. Well you can appeal to the uneducated to simply feel better. Appeal to them to just feel better and to feel superior. And to think of the idiots who come up with that stuff as being people who sadly have scared the crap out of themselves with all of that book knowledge, when you, yourself have the intuition of the common, hard-working, uneducated man to inform you of what’s what, along with the help, of course, of a Republican Party (and now of course blatantly in the media with Fox “News”) a Republican Party that understands you like a daddy would.
“And to hell with what they say the Republicans are doing to our wages and such. Hell, I just know that they’s good people, and noticing that I’m a better person than my smarter brother…cousin, father, sister, whatever…who went off to college and got their dang heads all messed up with words that don’t mean nothing, so…what, me worry?”
So, anyway, now that I’m back from…wherever that was, Kansas or something…Anyway…sometimes I feel like I’m in “Sliders,” y’know?… I feel like I’m in that show, “Sliders”…sliding from one place to another, one person to another….
Stupidity Serves Them
Yep. It appealed directly to those uneducated and make them feel better, that those idiots, those intellectuals, are so dumb that they’ve scared the crap out of themselves with all the book knowledge when you yourself have the intuition of the hardworking, uninformed man, along with, to reinforce, the Republican Party that understands you like a daddy would.
“And to hell with what they say the Republicans are doing to our wages and such. I just know that theys good people in noticing that I’m a smarter person than my brother…cousin, father, sister, whatever…that went off to college and got their heads all messed up with dang words that don’t mean nothing.”
Your beer buddy for president (!)
So, if you’re familiar with that, then you might have an understanding of how successful they were in putting out this anti-intellectualism in our country. Isn’t that how they say Bush got elected in the first place? Is that, somehow, anti-intellectualism was so popular who it was said that people would rather have a President that they could go and have a beer with than to sit down and have a discussion with.
So they were quite successful with that, ridiculing education so they could have more success in politics. Well, they overdid it and one point. For their “success” in selling Bush woke some people up, to make us want to have an Obama, to make us want to have intelligent people to make us want to have people better than us not equal to us handling problems which are much much bigger than we would ever really want to know, let alone handle ourselves.
In answer to the question I posed earlier about whether the Bush Administration’s C-student mentality ended up in the media because it was encouraged, in a way? I would think that observing TV there would be an indication that a lot of that was going on.
It was high school all over again.
And it’s kind of like…reminds me actually of a culture of the … what you might call the moderately popular kids at school, who may be C students, and they’d have their little clique and like that. And they’d always have this like idea that their C status was of greater importance because there was more of them. So they had all kinds of put-downs for students who were A’s and B’s. They might be “jocks” ridiculing the “nerds” or “geeks” and such. It would be very similar to the way adults put down intellectuals. Apparently it never changes.
Let me get right back to it, now.
“We’re all … Alfred E. Neumann?”
So, this “what, me worry” … that’s a big topic, the extent to which that became our national mental state, became a template that was acceptable… that “I’m an idiot…” I get into that in other places.
Anyway, this, the Maddoff scandal broke. The journalists were not knowledgeable in their field, did not have any investigative journalists in their entire corporation to uncover the obvious occurring in all departments under Bush over many long years …. They did not have any investigative journalists in their entire corporation to uncover the obvious, which is occurring in all departments under Bush over many long years. That journalists without knowledge in their field were being hired for their lack of vision. Then they were being kept in the dark or something.
Anyway it showed the continuing complicity if not outright cooperation in covering up the Republican’s agenda and its failure as it became more and more apparent.
Drowning person fighting off their rescuer. How hard do you have to fight to get to help?
By the way, what happened at that Congressional Hearing: That SEC employee detailed how he’d become aware of the Maddoff scandal, and had begged his superiors to be allowed to investigate it and was turned down.
Going back again and again to ask permission to look into it, even offering to risk his life by going undercover to do it. Nothing. No permission granted. Nobody in the SEC wanted to know about the biggest ripoff of that sort in American history. So, The SEC, assigned to be the one to oversee such activities, absolutely refusing to do its job.
As I mentioned earlier, eventually it came out how Bush disabled virtually all of government that had put in place to protect average Americans from largely thievish entities many of whom would affect them unknowingly and from afar, like Food, Drug, and Water, et cetera, with dire consequences.
How he did it? He placed in the positions of power, of highest power, in these agencies people firmly entrenched with the industries or groups that are supposedly regulating these agencies. Commonly it is called hiring the fox to guard the hen house.
Checklist—So How Did We Do? Peace in the World?
Getting back to this checklist from 2000 after this long exposition about the economy. I said Bush’s election would lead to our
“…losing not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than these horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining let alone progressing in the freedoms and privileges we take for granted.”
Well, last time we got as far as the economy.
Next, our relative peace in the world. Well, check.
You Get to Scream Here
Shouldn’t there be some kind of resounding howl, perhaps a chorus of screams, maybe of screams of the hundreds of thousands of souls, people…Americans died…but other people, real people, died too.
Six hundred thousand Iraqis. Screams. Six hundred thousand Iraqis, four thousand American souls no longer here because of Bush’s inept policies, which we see with no doubt now, as Chevron and Exxon go in, that it was for oil.
But so much is known and already said on that so I’m not going to go any further on that.
Checklist—So How Did We Do? “Horrors Worse Than That”?
So next, “but things far worse than those horrors.” In this regard I feel it is illuminating to record an event…I mean, I’ll mention, “far worse than those horrors” …we’ve seen so much…we’ve seen torture, we’ve seen stealing of elections, we’ve seen taking over the Attorney Generals office as if it was their own…making up laws, spying on American people. But, ok, enough said….
Let’s Start With Wall Street
Let’s back off from the administration a bit, as I want to now show an example of how this exact same mindset was coming out in the mainstream media, particularly in regards to the crashing of the stock market. This idea that nobody knew or could have prevented the debacles we’ve seen, we’ve seen not only in Republican government, but seems to be the common denominator among those who perpetrated the things that have led to our calamity. A big part of this occurred on Wall Street; and since I’ve been an active trader, on-line, off and on, since 1996, I’ve watched this whole thing unfold. I can only say, that, tuned in every day, and simply being aware of certain patterns of reporting, I could see deep trouble was coming, which I’ll get into in a minute. First, a salient example of the attitude expressed above (“nobody could have imagined…”) being used also on Wall Street as an example.
George W. Bush-league players
To set the stage, I feel it is illuminating to relate an event I vividly remember seeing on the financial news in America, on CNBC, one day, in October of 2008, as the DOW was experiencing 500 point losses in a day, unprecedented except for during the stock market crash leading to the Great Depression. [Footnote 1] 
One of the expert trader/commentators—a person I’d often seen on the show—was being interviewed on the floor of the actual exchange, seeming to be surrounded by evidence of the carnage—there were actual strewn papers and such, just like in the old days, as I remember it, as stocks were tumbling (again!) with such rapidity that even the old call out system was being implemented, for some reason—for certain financial instruments anyway. And there had been the confusion and the outcries, and yes, even the panic that one would expect to see in an old movie about the Stock Market Crash.
An incredulous puffer-fish guy
In the midst of this all, this trader/expert was asked by the CNBC interviewer about his take on the scary and unprecedented retreat from stocks and those days of multihundred point losses, one after the other. This elderly obviously seasoned personality seemed to balloon out several sizes of his suit in his sheer incomprehension and his near perfect confusion. Still, raising his voicing, a little more squeaky and almost embarrassed, puffer-fish guy held forth, as if written on tablets, first, how “all the traders have lost money” and then, “Nobody’s doing OK….” But his afterthought hit me like a spear: He pleaded, “I mean who last year at this time foresaw anything like this coming….. I mean,” he said “anything at all, at all, like this coming up?”
At home, there was no way to restrain the howl of laughter that last comment triggered in me. While at the exact same time, I experienced this sharp pain in my belly, like I’d been stuck, well and good, by a spear. I couldn’t believe this “expert’s” comment.
Economics to piss on you
I pondered, is it funny, or horrible, that I had been making money hand over fist as I kept shorting the market, buying only puts, having fully expected this crash ever since Bush had put in his tax-cuts-for-the-rich policy in the first year of office? I expected this crash to come near the end of the W’s second term, like had happened to Reagan who had employed the same asinine throw-money-at-the-rich policy. Both presided over huge transfers upward to the already “filthy rich.” They did this
fully aware that these folks would not spend it to create jobs, but instead would buy yachts and—one big rage of the Reagan era—expensive art, which they bid through the roof, making headlines in those days, as one art object after another would break a new record. At the time, we all thought: “Great idea, Ron baby. Now you just tell me how money locked up in art will somehow create jobs and tinkle down on the poor?”
Would you remember your lobotomy? (If a tree falls in a forest…)
Yet here, only twenty years later, I see this seasoned elderly guy…obviously he’d seen more than I could ever have of the workings of Wall Street…yet he had not had a clue that this downturn could happen, nor apparently, had anyone, any trader, or any CNBC talking head, seen a thing. (Where were they 20 years ago? I wondered.) Still, lowly me—is it because I’m a Democrat?—lowly me, well did I remember the way Reagan’s “Robin-Hood-in-reverse” economics created a great recession, which brought Bill Clinton to power incidentally, but also how everyone was alarmed at the size of the National Debt, which, during Reagan and Bush The Elder, had more than tripled.
If they took away your memory, how would you know?
It wasn’t just me that saw this crash coming. For I found mentors in the market, who I picked because they also knew we were headed for collapse, and who even got laughed at and ridiculed publicly on TV for espousing these views. Still, I found these few not afraid to look squarely at the fundamentals, who were also not Republican cheerleaders propping up a Bush economy of giveaways to those not needing it. The market crashed, and we saw the many sheeple “supply-side” traders and “experts,” who had been in bed with that Administration and represented the special interests, suddenly realize that Bush could not keep the party going endlessly…anymore than Reagan could. Previously, I had watched as these same Republican-speaking mouthpieces for the rich and for the economics of greed had become over time the only voices being heard. Now, suddenly shocked that there were limitations on their thievery of the masses, these Bush league players could be seen running for the exits like a bunch of cockroaches when the light is turned on.
I also watched as these Republican-speaking mouthpieces for the rich and for the economics of greed were more and more the only voices being heard when the Mr. Ed horse-like chart markings of the DOW began that nodding, as if to say,
Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Ten: Time Capsule, Part 3
Footnote
1.
Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Three
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. 
Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Three” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
Tags: “my generation”, demonstrations, Filthy Rich, Republicans, The Sixties
Folders: American culture, Brainwashing, CULTURE, Consciousness, Corruption, Culture War, Democracy, Democrats, Dictatorship, Economics, Elections, Freedom of Press, History, Media, Media Control, Politics, Press, Psychology, Republicans, The Sixties, audio clip, downloadable, generations, illogic, insanity, irrational, mp3, politicians, propaganda, truth
Continue on this site with
“Time Capsule, Culture War, Part Ten:
Message in a Bottle, Part 3”
Invite you to follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
Becoming Authentic 