Gorging and Sacrificing

Gorging and Sacrificing
Neo-Feudalism in the U.S.


Eastern Ohio is hilly with deep hollows cutting across it in a pattern resembling a comb when viewed from the air. Most of the hollows were carved by thousands of years of run-off rain water seeking and winding it’s way to the Ohio River. The geological history left few areas flat enough to accommodate baseball or football fields. Consequently, basketball became the default sport of preference. One native 1950s basketball star still holds the record for most points scored by a single player in college competition: 114 points.
I had my own basketball court, as did many other youngsters in the area. Unlike football and baseball, you could spend many solitary hours “shooting baskets”. After years of shooting baskets, I suddenly realized that I knew the instant the ball left the tip of my fingers whether or not I would score.
Logically, scoring in basketball is a one in one hundred possibility. The basket rim is parallel to the floor leaving a very narrow slit of opportunity to score. It’s like laying a paper target sheet flat and trying to hit the bulls-eye from straight on. Other variables include distance from the shooter to the basket. My eyes, located three inches apart, were able to triangulate the distance to the basket accurately, in a split second from several yards away. Then I had to calculate the exact arc for that distance and the precise muscle propulsion on a ball of that weight for it to travel that distance over that exact arc. In addition, a player could be moving or moving and jumping when the shot is made adding variables that logically would make scoring chances about one in one thousand.
Then, while the ball was beginning its upward arc, a recalculation was done confirming or denying the accuracy of the previous inputs and their executions. After years of practice, I was scoring about 50% of the time even while shooting jump shots. Apparently I, and several other basketball players, had developed sports super calculators in our heads. Everyone, we can assume, has that super calculator potential in his or her head. It’s just a matter of harnessing and exploiting it, I concluded.
In 1960, the U.S. Air Force sent me to the Far East. I arrived with a very low opinion of the humanity and intelligence of the natives. After a few weeks of interactions with them, I concluded that they were more thoughtful, considerate, humane, honest and intelligent than Americans are. In Vietnam, the U.S. military was killing Asians as if they were ants that had invaded a kitchen. My government shared my original attitude that Asians were inferior to us. No doubt that’s where I got that prejudice.
In 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down 13 students at Kent State University killing four. The majority of Ohio residents approved of the extra-judicial murders. Americans may trumpet their Bill of Rights and freedoms, but in the end, it’s security and order that they cherish most.
I had graduated from Kent State University a year earlier. My recollections of the anti-Vietnam War movement was a line of students and faculty standing silently shoulder to shoulder in front of the Reserve Officer Training Corps building. Many had signs castigating United States involvement in Southeast Asia. There was no indication of violent intentions.
Deep down inside, I realized that I could have been one of the victims of the shootings. If I had needed one more year to graduate because of work to earn tuition or some other delaying event, I could have been one of the dead or mutilated. It didn’t matter that I never joined the protests. Several of the victims were walking to or from classes. After several days of agonizing over the event that I thought could never happen in the U.S., I had an epiphany. That incident made me realize that my government considers its own people to be worth no more than ants. My government and most American people value property above people.
Gradually, my mind went through a reconfiguration. The beast brain that thrives on suspicion and brutality no longer dominated or cut off information to the cognitive sectors of my brain. I now had an entirely new outlook on the world. Just as I had realized that I had a super calculator in my brain that allowed me to shoot a basketball into small hoop with high accuracy, I also had activated an ethics super calculator that enabled me to see reality and truth, and suppress my self-centered, animal instincts. I had developed a humanity-centered nature. It seemed that just about every value and belief viewed through the ethical super calculator was the opposite of what I had been taught as a child.
The National Guard, politicians and media easily manipulated the self-centered primitive instincts of Ohioans and convinced them that unarmed students were a threat to their property, safety and order. Ohioans accepted, some even cheered, lethal action to confront or remove that imaginary threat. The entire nation was willing to commit hideous mass murders in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to remove a threat that any reasonable mind would conclude did not exist.
This nation is functioning on that part of the psyche that Sigmund Freud called the id. The super-ego, or the moral part of the psyche, has been suppressed. Recent studies of brain synaptic activity indicate that the super-ego is undeveloped when humans are born and remains immature until at least age 25. Based on the history since World War II of continuous brutal wars including torture and indiscriminate killing, we can conclude that the super-ego remains dormant in most Americans for their entire lives. My experiences of living in a foreign nation and witnessing the cruel side of my own government at home made it possible for me to question the id’s commands, suppress them and switc on the super-ego, or reason, for guidance.
The Iraq Wars provide an insight into the ethical status of U.S. citizens. In both cases, over 90% of Americans supported the wars even though elementary research would have shown that both were provoked, at least in part, by the U.S. Even absent that research, going to war, especially a non-defensive war, is a subhuman reaction. One million Iraqis died as the result of the First Gulf War and 1.3 million died as the result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The total of 2.3 million means one of every 10 Iraqis were murdered due to U.S. invasions. That literally is decimation of the Iraqi population. Americans functioning at the humanity-centered level are outraged. Needless to say, that is a tiny percentage of Americans.
The Vietnam War is a broader example. The U.S. used the most hideous weapons known to mankind against nearly defenseless men, women, children and babies. It massacred over three million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians and mutilated millions more. It prompted Martin Luther King to observe that “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” Yet, most Americans continue to believe they should not be held accountable for the most evil military actions since the Second World War. Most Americans don’t know, refuse to accept or dispatch into denial, that it was criminal. There was no contrition on the part of the government after facts proved the U.S. had acted as a murderous aggressor.
Dr. King was able to overpower his beast brain and identify the evil in his own nation’s actions, when the vast majority of Americans could not. King was a humanity-centered man. Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are two other well-known examples. All were harassed and arrested by their own governments and reviled by large segments of their own societies. Dr. King implied that most Americans are sociopathic savages. He and a handful of others were able to rise above the stampede urges of mob frenzy counseled by the beast brain, and identify the Vietnam War as the atrocity it was. King was not making an original observation. Over a century earlier, Frederick Douglas, in a 4th of July speech in Rochester, New York, stated that: “. . . for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America remains without a rival.”
In spite of all of the social, political, subconscious and natural pressures to conform to the herd and tribe actions and customs, people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus and Buddha emerge. They face overwhelming scorn and abuse from their peers, but remain resolute and determined. In the end, they are proved right and the herd wrong. They tapped into the power buried deep in their brains and harnessed it just as the accomplished basketball player does.


Predispositions

Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky demonstrated that the mind of an infant and child is predisposed to absorb languages. Their minds also have a predisposition for grammar. A child first leaning a language tries to put the subject first and the predicate last as Japanese and German languages do. Learning should be easier if we accommodated those predispositions as Brazilian-born educator Paulo Freire believes.
Other predispositions exist for survival. Fear is the biggest. It can be used to warn us of dangers, or it can be used to manipulate us to act criminally and against our best interests.
There is a moral predisposition. Clinical brain MRIs have identified increased activity in the right side of the brain when moral issues are presented. However, it seems that a minor moral position will meet the entire morality need in children and most adults. For example, the need can be met by taking an anti-choice position on abortions. That requires no sacrifice from, or cost to, most of the proponents of that position. Those same people are willing to cut off Welfare benefits to that same fetus when it becomes a child and starve it to death.
Another predisposition is faith. Primitive man faced many threats that were unexplainable such as weather, night and day and winter-summer cycles. There’s a strong desire to explain the causes of fears in order to deal with them. They created gods as explanations for the unknown. Greeks believed thunder was the gods bowling. Then all that was necessary was to please the gods so they would protect people from lightening, pestilence, floods, etc.
Faith is deeply ingrained in humans as the result. Faith is the biggest obstacle to advanced political and economic systems. The beast brain advises having faith in a monarchy, plutocracy, aristocracy or other oppressor-oppressed Feudal system rather than in someone selected by vote to lead. A charge against President Clinton was that he held up a finger to determine which way the popular wind was blowing and led in that direction. President Reagan, on the other hand, was decisive, they argued, and led in whatever direction he decided to take. In a democracy, the politicians lead in whatever direction the people want to go. When the leader goes in any direction he chooses, that is totalitarianism. Democracy is alien and fearful to those who admired President Reagan.
The beast brain also demands that economic decisions be made by faith rather than at the polling booth. Capitalism and its gear box “the silent hand of the marketplace” fits that demand nicely. Industrialization made corporations feasible for most economic aspects of life. That was not possible in pre-industrial agrarian societies. Corporations have expanded their control over, not only the economy, but politics, information, entertainment and nearly every other aspect of life. Corporations have become the new nobles and lords, the new oppressors as historian Richard Grossman has detailed so well in his book “Taking Care of Business.”
Where will corporation growth end? The World Trade Organization envisions transnational corporations ruling the world. Walter Wristen, former CEO of Citicorp, wrote “The Twilight of Sovereignty” describing a world ruled by corporations overruling popular wishes when profits are jeopardized.

The Supreme Predisposition

The most critical predisposition is a craving for a Feudal economic and political structure. The powerful beast brain instinct was necessary for survival during all but the most recent millennia of human existence. About 30,000 years ago, humans began developing cognitive powers in their brains. The brains increased in size. However, the beast brain remained the gatekeeper for information fed to it by the senses. It also could produce cortisol, dopamine and other chemicals to hinder and confuse cognitive functions. The result is a brain capable of devising hideous weapons and functioning at an animal moral level. Fear is the easiest way to induce beast brain behavior.
Hermann Goering, Nazi minister of aviation Under Adolph Hitler, testified after World War II that fear is the key to convincing people to behave like Nazis. Goering stated that the maximum fear could be accomplished by telling people they are in great danger from an external enemy and from traitors in their midst. This creates a “cornered rat” scenario. In Germany’s case, the external enemies were alleged to be Great British and Poland collaborating to encircle then attack Germany. Internally, NAZIs blamed Communists for acts of sabotage. Most prominent was an attempt to burn down the Reichstag. Fear sends alarms to our beast brain, the heart of the id. In a haste to respond to the danger, it blocks information from going to the cognitive sectors of the brain where the ego and super-ego can form decisions based on reason and logic.
After the Second World War ended, several psychologists conducted clinical studies to try and explain the barbaric, brutal behavior of the nations involved. Both conservatives and liberals agree with psychological studies concluding that at least 75% of people are deceived easily. If deception doesn’t work, peer pressure can bring most of the rest into line. John Dean, with the collaboration of Barry Goldwater until his death, summarized many of these studies in his book titled: “Conservatives without Conscience”. Those studies were done in part to determine how so many Germans could have behaved as brutally and savagely as they did in World War II. The conclusion was that most American also were capable of that behavior. U.S. leaders quietly shelved the conclusions. The Second Iraq War proved Americans still are capable of hideous cruelty and brutality.
This Goering scenario played out on Sept. 11, 2001 in the U.S. Foreign enemies attacked the World Trade Center. A few days later internal suspects carried out anthrax attacks. Paranoia swept the nation. Most Americans reacted just as Germans did in the 1930s. Americans demanded retaliation, agreed to have their rights revoked, allowed their government to spy on them and their neighbors, submitted to executive usurpation of power and accepted violations of the International Declaration of Human Rights including torture, endless detentions, extra-judicial executions and widespread use of weapons of mass destruction.
The outrage at the loss of life on Sep. 11, 2001 was not some heartfelt, empathetic grief for the lives of the victims. Actually only 2,006 of the victims were American citizens. The outrage was the vicarious emotional reaction to the horrible deaths of people who were so similar and geographically close to Americans. When over 7,000 U.S. soldiers died in the retaliations to the act, there was little grief and no outrage. Loss of life matters to the beast brain only if it relates closely to that life.

FEAR, THE IDEAL INSTRUMENT OF CONTROL

Paranoia can lead to insanity. During the Cold War, the U.S. had a strategy called Mutually Assured Destruction with the appropriate acronym MAD. This Machiavellian plan threatened to incinerate and radiate every living thing on earth. The U.S. was prepared to destroy itself and everyone and everything else if anyone obstructed the U.S. way of life and goals. Fortunately, the main “enemy” was the Soviet Union which never put a madman like Ronald Reagan in the top leadership role. Also, atheists have more reason to continue in this life as long as possible than religious zealots who expect to move on to a better world in the afterlife. Some religious zealots are eager to accelerate the time of that passage.
Paulo Freire’s research led him to conclude that societies break down into oppressors and oppressed (Pedagogy of Oppression). What amazed him was that the oppressed didn’t want to end oppression. They hoped to become a member of the tiny oppressor class. In the meantime, the oppressed envied their oppressors and tried to imitate them. This is logical behavior compatible to beast brain behaviors.
After the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 15th Century, returning Spanish rulers claimed there were biological differences between the nobility and peasantry. Nobles had blue blood in their veins. Peasants’ blood was red. Blue veins were visible through the light skinned nobility. Peasant veins were not visible through their dark Moorish skin. When they bled, it was red. The blue-blood myth endured for centuries even though many had witnessed red blood oozing from an injured noble.
The terms gorging and sacrificing could substitute for Freire’s oppressor and oppressed dichotomy. That would help explain some beast brain behaviors and beliefs. Gorging is a common instinct in the insect and animal worlds. The queen ant and wasp are gorged with food until they are much larger than the rest of the colony. The quedn produces all the eggs for her colony.
Alpha male and female wolves eat until they are gorged. After both are stuffed, the rest of the pack squabbles over the remains. When there is insufficient food for the rest of the pack, they blame the weak and under-performers, not the gorgers, for insufficient or scarcity of food. This insures survival of at least some of the pack when times are lean and conforms to Darwin’s primary law of nature: “Preservation and perpetuation of the species.”
The wolf behavior can be found among beast brain people and is most common in Capitalist nations. The wealthy are allowed to take as much as they can get. Poor and Welfare people are demonized as jeopardizing the survival of the herd or tribe by consuming the small amounts they take.
The gorging and sacrificing instincts explain the curious behavior of lower income, asset-deprived people defending exorbitant wealth in the hands of a few other members of their community. It also explains why community members will accept the absurd argument that traveling to the other side of the world to kill people and risk death could contribute to the survival of the herd. Ultimately, a Feudal society emerges. It will have a few privileged lords and masses of vassals, a few nobles and many peasants, a few oppressors and many oppressed members. The United States is on the brink of Feudalism today. The corporations serve as the lords and nobles. The underclasses are the vassals, serfs and slaves. This structure feels right to beast brains, and they don’t challenge the appropriation of their rights, freedoms and property by the corporations.

PRESERVING THE BEAST BRAIN MENTALITY

The Feudal structure requires the fear instinct to nurture and preserve the beast brain. With most natural threats to lives and well-being eliminated, the fear instinct diminishes. Now it’s necessary for the oppressors to invent fears. The U.S. does that by creating an atmosphere that’s conducive to a high level of crime, drug-addled hippies and menacing dark-skinned people at home and ruthless dictators abroad. That’s covered with an icing of cultural tension.
Natural fear reactions generally fall into two “F” word phrases: “identification friend or foe,” and “fight or flight.” The beast brain constantly surveys its surroundings for threats. It searches microscopically and macroscopically.
Microscopically, the beast brain feels threatened by the slightest changes from the norm. The beast brain can become obsessed with the miniscule and insignificant. If it’s at high fear levels as exists in the U.S., it’s constantly looking for outlets to relieve the fear pressure. When the Beatles came to America in the 1960s with hair down over their ears, the beast brain became alarmed. When President Kennedy didn’t wear a hat outdoors, that was seen as a threat to social order. The beast brains were outraged at fondling incidents by President Clinton. They were certain that behavior by the top leader would rock the foundations of the nation. They didn’t object to spending $60 million of their tax dollars to impeach Clinton even though conviction and removal from office was nearly impossible. They forgive infidelity, adultery, marriage vow violations, ethics violations and deception by Newt Gingrich. Many of these microscopic minds are willing to put him in the highest political office in the nation.
There also seems to be a big bad wolf syndrome. Beast brains can see monsters where none exist. The beast brain is eager to discover an alleged threat such as Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein, when logically there is none. It becomes a convenient outlet for pent-up fear, and consequently, an increased eagerness to accept its existence.
When a large threat is or seems imminent, the beast brain searches for like-minded, like-attired people to form a defensive herd. Then that herd attacks of flees depending on how the situation is assessed.
In the mid-1990s, several conservative Americans viewed the fall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to reorder the world. The best way to do that, they claimed, was to exploit the pandemonium of a crisis or catastrophe. “A new Pearl Harbor” would be the ideal catastrophe. It would “galvanize” the American people into a frightened herd that could be stampeded in any direction, they believed. Neo-Conservatives and their organization, Project for a New American Century, were the leading advocates of these ideas. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under President Carter, advocated a similar strategy also wishing for a “new Pear Harbor” in his book The Grand Chessboard (1997).
The instincts to survive in this world by any means available conform to Darwin’s ultimate rule of nature: preservation and perpetuation of the species. The religious message often is contrary to those natural instincts, creating confusion in the minds of spiritual people. This adds to paranoia and cognitive dissonance, or mixed signals about how to live one’s life. These people are more receptive to manipulation since they have no one certain answer to the issues facing them. They default to one answer for themselves and the opposite answer for others. To paraphrase Jesus, they can see the splinters in the eyes of others but can’t see the logs in their own eyes. In frustration, they tend to settle for a charismatic individual or class of people to tell them what to do. They become dependent on royalty or a noble class to lead them until their survival is intertwined with the survival of the royalty and nobility. The lives of the lower classes become disposable and expendable, while those of the upper class are deemed critical to survival of the herd or tribe.

RECONFIGURING THE BEAST BRAIN

Using the second Gulf War as a recent baseline of measure, we can estimate how many American minds are dominated by their beast brain. In the lead up to the Second Gulf War, the George W. Bush Administration implied that Iraq had the ability and desire to invade the U.S. and detonate a nuclear weapon. Considering that Iraq is the size of California geographically and about two-thirds it’s size in population, any invasion of the U.S. is inconceivable to a rational mind. They also claimed Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) and was barbaric enough to use them. Two United Nations inspection teams on the ground in Iraq could not find any WMDs. A person willing to do a little research could figure out that the U.S. commonly uses WMDs in its numerous wars. A fear-confused mind couldn’t see the contradiction. Those minds numbered between 90 and 92% of Americans.
From my experience, it takes five to ten years to reconfigure a mind from self-centered to humanity-centered. One or two shocking experiences to one’s beliefs are helpful. Americans have been subjected to a century of the world’s most sophisticated propaganda. In 1913, after a decade of government litigation by two Republican presidents against predatory, corrupt corporations and robber barons, the business community was determined that it never again would be held accountable for its crimes. Corporations poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, hundreds of Think Tanks and several public relations firms. In turn, they set out to saturate Americans with the message that private enterprise represents everything good and noble about America, and trade unions and governments are threats to American values, traditions and freedoms. NAM had incorporated Freud’s psychoanalysis revelations into its “public relations” programs. It was confident it could convince most people that laisser faires capitalism is the best economic system.
NAM and friends have been extremely successful. The Australian Sociologist and Psychologist Alex Carey, considered the world’s leading expert on propaganda, concluded from his exhaustive studies that Americans are the most brain-washed people in the industrialized world.
To change America from the world’s greatest purveyor of violence and land of revolting barbarity and shameless violence will be a major undertaking. To change Americans from the most brainwashed inhabitants of the industrialized world to enlightened citizens of the world who are immune to manipulation can not be accomplished over night. Not only are there millions of years of insect instincts and animal natures to overcome, but the world’s most well-funded, sophisticated propaganda system must be confronted and exposed.
If one-third of Americans were functioning at the humanity-centered level, that should be enough to civilize the United States and suppress its European mean genes and violent urges. That core could expose the propaganda. Teaching and guiding two people each could bring about enlightened, rational change.
A very small percentage of humans can score points in basketball with high accuracy. An equally small percentage of humans surmount their animal natures and become morally righteous. That is done with years of practice guiding the brain away from impulsive reactions. Intensive questioning and rigorous research of every major change is critical to becoming altruistic, empathetic and righteous and breaking away from the animal natures. All normal people have the potential to reach this state. The one caveat is the latest brain scan studies indicate that the conscience sector of the brain doesn’t mature fully until after age 25. At least five experience and training years are needed to reach the righteous human being level. Those years can begin before age 25. Beast brain people are raising children and instilling their moral perversions and confusions in them. That means they reach adulthood already corrupted and confused.

OWS issues and goals?

-The militarization of local law enforcement.
-Privatization of municipal services ranging from law enforcement to water and prisons. The main goal here is to drive down wages of those who do the actual work.
-All services and goods that are critical to our lives should be overseen by people we elect and can remove from power. Private leadership requires mindless, blind faith to people who often are not inclined to do first what is best for society and humanity.
-Empowering transnational corporations which are often immune to local laws and, by threatening to move or modify their business, can coerce local governments into granting concessions such as tax breaks and eminent domain. Ultimately, transnational and interstate corporations should be abolished.
-Embargo all goods and services produced or provided by employees paid less than the U.S. minimum wage. Otherwise, we are indirectly supporting slavery and worker abuse.
-Excessive remuneration to persons such as executives, actors or athletes. Should we enact a maximum wage up to 10 times the remuneration of the lowest paid employee in the business or corporation? Currently, some executives are paid as if they do the work of nearly 500 people.
-The fitness to serve of those in government who approved or consented, including inaction, to the bailouts of banks, investment firms and insurance companies in 2008. They have surrendered the right to represent us. Nations, such as Iceland, nationalized those institutions with great success.
-War-making powers of those in government, it’s agencies, contractors or proxies. Our government has demonstrated repeatedly that it lacks the moral and intellectual sophistication to be trusted with those powers. Should all wars be put to a popular vote except to repel invaders already on our land?
-The more greed and gluttony there is, the more it demands to be fed. Studies in Prince George’s County, Md., show that the rich never reach a wealth satisfaction level.
-Our current economic crises indicate that high compensation is not attracting high competency. It is attracting high corruption. Should we enact maximum remuneration laws, so that those with morals and principles could be considered for those jobs?

Globalization vs Freedom

We are facing nothing less than a grab for control of the world. The first attempt was in Seattle in 1999.
The World Trade Organization was to be the legal contract for a Neo-Feudal world made up of a transnational corporation nobility that would be unaccountable and privileged. The lower classes would become valueless, disposable peasants and serfs.
Just as nearly 7,000 American soldiers were sacrificed senselessly in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of thousands more mutilated with as much concern as for chickens in a Tyson’s slaughter house, Globalization will comb the world searching for those most desperate to produce goods and services for the privileged class.
Globalization has been in the planning stages since 1972, with the Uruguay Round of the WTO. In the U.S., Continuity of Government under Cheney & Rumsfeld began making plans for "state of emergency" provisions in case of a major U.S. crisis (real or imagined). The PATRIOT Act was a sampling of their work.
Milton Friedman, and others of his ilk, advised that there is “opportunity in crises.” The Iraq & Afghanistan wars provided cover for the creation of private security companies: 26 by the U.S., 10 by the U.K. One of them, Blackwater (now Xe), got a trial run in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. As hoped, there was no outrage from citizens or media. Americans are ready for a private, Praetorian Guard.
The 2010 election results were interpreted as the American people reaching an intellectual low. At a Republican convention, leaders announced that the time is right to implement privatization of all public institutions & resources. Wisconsin’s oblivious governor took the lead. He slammed into the American Awakening.

Milo Minderbinder lives on

As I was viewing today’s news and economic crises, the name Milo Minderbinder came to mind. Milo was a character in Joseph Heller’s fictional, satirical novel Catch 22. Milo was the supply officer for a B-24 Squadron in World War II. He ran a side business called M&M Enterprises. Milo reasoned that profits were the highest goal of a society, and that the war was being fought to preserve, first of all, that ideal. M&M hired employees from both sides of the war and sold supplies to both sides. If he made a profit, it was justified in his mind. Milo often used military bombers to transport his goods.
This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Catch 22. To me, Catch 22 was about madness. Each character, each bureaucratic entity and each nation had its own form of madness.
To understand today’s problems, it helps to apply the madness magnifying glass. One example is the economic collapse of 2008. Most of the laws controlling Financial and Investment firms had been removed or ameliorated after a long campaign by Ronald Reagan and the Chamber of Commerce assuring us that the old Robber Baron corporations now were enlightened and would act honestly and in the public interest on their own.
Only a madman could believe that people driven by greed can act altruistically. The market collapse and Savings and Loan Scandals beginning in 1987 should have been a tip off, but both parties continued the deregulation folly.
Just as Milo Minderbinder’s looney world spun out of his control and left him with warehouses full of goods such as Egyptian Cotton with no markets, modern day Milos, arrogantly calling themselves “Masters of the Universe” discovered that mastering a local economy was beyond their abilities.
Not to worry, they had an abundance of madmen willing to come to their aid. Our politicians decided the thieving “Masters” were more deserving than the victims of their scams.
Joseph Heller is gone, but his madmen characters live on.

The Intra-Nazi War

World War II actually was a war between Nazi nations. There were the Teutonic Nazis on one side, led by Germany and Italy, and the Anglo Nazis on the other side led by Great Britain and France and later the U.S. American industrialists from Henry Ford to Prescott Bush leaned toward the German side and gave material help to Hitler. Many more Americans, including many of my uncles, gave moral support. Others planned to replace the U.S. Government with Nazism, and made plans to kill FDR and/or overthrow his government.

The U.S. was forced into the war on the Anglo side when Hitler declared war on it in 1941 as the result of his treaties with Imperial Japan. FDR likely was an Anglo Nazi.

The U.S. spent decades trying to create the illusion that it was different and morally better than Nazi Germany. It integrated the military in 1947. It allowed Asians to vote for the first time in 1948. In 1964, it passed the Civil Rights Act which banned discrimination based on race and national origin. Medicare was introduced in 1965 and took effect in 1966, eliminating one of the Conservative’s favorite tools for disposing of useless, excess grannies. Eugenics, practiced in the U.S. from 1890 to 1920, adopted by Hitler, is being restored now that the U.S. has no moral opponents.

In 1980, Republicans decided it was time to resume the old, cherished Nazi ways. The U.S. had an unearned reputation for being civilized. It had mastered the science of propaganda pioneered in World War I. The media had been changed from a Fourth Estate to a Fifth Column. The vast majority of Americans were functioning at a three-year-old mental, moral and maturity level. They could be herded together and stampeded in any direction, no matter how immoral or criminal the act.

The German Reverend Martin Niemoller wrote a sermonette as he languished in a Nazi prison in 1943. He wrote:
First they came for the Communists.
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the trade-unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade-unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Americans defeated the Communists, the first and most reviled enemies of Nazis. Now they must go after the trade-unionists. They launched their full frontal assault on that group in 2011. The American Nazi high command is not the brightest group in the world. It is so gorged with greed and gluttony that its brain is deprived of nourishment and atrophied. It could defeat itself.

Reagan at 100

The Legacy of Reagan at 100

Feb. 6 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the U.S. Revered by many during his presidency, he retains a loyal following today. For them, Reagan’s word is gospel, his acts were ingenious. For instance, for 2 1/2 decades, Republicans argued that Reagan proved debt doesn’t matter.
Reagan was the savior to his devout followers. They advocated revoking the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms so he could be president for life. They wanted to carve his countenance on Mt. Rushmore alongside four of the most popular presidents. They praised his resolve. He made a decision and went ahead with it as opposed to Bill Clinton who held his finger up to the wind to see which way it was blowing to determine his course of action. They ignored the fact that leading in the direction the people desire is democracy. Going wherever the leader decides to go is dictatorship.
Reagan brought the U.S. out of strangling inflation, cut taxes and stimulated business to a renewed prosperity, his devotees claimed. He brought down the Berlin Wall merely by standing beside it and commanding it to go away just as Moses told the Red Sea to part so Jews could escape from Egypt. That act was followed by bringing down the Soviet Union itself with an expensive, budget busting arms race. Those accomplishments would destroy the cause of wars and generate a peace dividend, Reagan promised.
On Feb. 6, Reagan admirers across the U.S. gathered to celebrate the accomplishments and legacy of their hero and pray that the U.S. would produce another presidential candidate just like him.
Looking back over a generation later, what was the Reagan record? How did his actions affect future generations? Thanks mostly to Reagan the nation now has a $14 trillion debt. When Reagan took office, the national debt was less than $1 trillion, an amount candidate Reagan said was appalling and president Reagan would resolve immediately. President Reagan never balanced any of his eight budgets and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion.
Reagan reinstated the trickle-down, supply-side economics policies that were so disastrous in the 1920s and ‘30s. He added Milton Friedman’s neoliberal monetarist theories and changed the economic emphasis from manufacturing to service jobs. He repeatedly called for Congress to get the government off the backs of businesses and free corporations to do what they do best, grow and expand the economy. The fuel for predicted economic prosperity would be tax cuts and a smaller, less intrusive government.
Reagan’s admirers claim that is exactly what happened. However, according to many experts, reality is quite different. One of the best critics of Reagan is Kevin Philips. Philips is a Republican who served in the Nixon Administration as a statistician and strategist. He set out to defend Reagan from his critics, but after crunching the numbers, a different picture emerged. In his book, The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), Philips revealed some alarming statistics. When Reagan took office, the U.S. was the world’s largest creditor nation. When he left office, the U.S. was the world’s greatest debtor nation importing billions more each year than it exported. Wages stagnated as Reagan waged war on the unions. Mothers were forced to abandon their children and enter the workforce because a father no longer earned enough to provide for a family by himself. Non-union service jobs had replaced well-paying manufacturing jobs leaving families clamoring to earn enough to survive.
As in the 1920s, supply-side economics failed to trickle down, log-jamming the wealth at the top and starving the demand-side of the economy. Deregulated, unaccountable businesses proved that what they do best is plunder the economy. In 1987, the stock market took a record dive. Deregulated Savings and Loans went into receivership by the dozens and had to be bailed out by the taxpayers. Dot-Com information technology businesses collapsed because of corrupt, unmonitored business practices. Then several of the big accounting firms folded as unregulated businesses resembled casinos more than responsible enterprises serving as stewards of a nation’s economy.
Reagan cut taxes for prosperous citizens, but raised them on lower income working people. For instance, he raised Social Security contributions over 50% and used that surplus to disguise the drain on the Treasury from tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Savings and Loan collapses and other business failures were the first tremors of a pending economic earthquake. The earthquake was postponed recklessly and irresponsibly by borrowing massive amounts of money from future generations.
By the time George W. Bush left office in 2009, the national debt was $12 trillion, and interest on the Reagan-Bush debt became the third biggest expense in the Federal budget. Since 1981, Reagan presided over five record deficits; G. H. W. Bush, two; George W. Bush, four. Bill Clinton had zero record deficits in eight years. Every Republican budget since 1981 was a deficit. Fifty five percent were record deficits.
In foreign policy, Reagan also had a dismal record. He helped fund and train a contingent of about 3,000 Arabs who went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight with their Muslim brothers against Soviet invaders. Those Arabs were led by Osama bin Laden. When the U.S. established military bases in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War, bin Laden saw the act as aggression similar to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He issued several warnings for the U.S. to withdraw, which were ignored by two presidents. Bin Laden then turned to force, bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa, the Navy ship USS Cole and finally, the World Trade Center.
Reagan was obsessed with the Central American nation of Nicaragua which had the audacity to electharoldtagg@comcast.net Communists to lead it. He was determined to evict Communism from the American continents and used every means available to reach his objective. He funded “Contras” to overthrow the government. He mined Nicaragua’s harbors which got the U.S. convicted by the World Court for terrorist activities. When Congress finally cut off funding for the hostilities, Reagan turned to drug-running and arms deals with Iran, a nation on the State Department’s terrorist list, to get the funding. These acts of subversion, treason, money laundering and drug running became know as the Iran-Contra scandal.
The book Conservatives without Conscience (2006), authored by Nixon White House attorney John Dean in collaboration with Barry Goldwater, compiled several studies done after World War II by social psychologists. The madness of the war indicated existing theories of human behavior and psychology were inadequate. One conclusion was that 25% of conservatives would never comprehend the destructive, illegal and atrocious behavior of their idols and heroes no matter what evidence was uncovered. Reagan will have devoted followers for at least two more generations.

The Head of the Snake

Jacques Rostand, a French philosopher said: Kill a man, you’re a murderer. Kill a million, you’re a conquerer. Kill them all, you’re a god.
Rostand described the mind of a person functioning at a stimulus-response (S-R) level. That personality type is obsessed with the trivial and insignificant events and issues while failing to comprehend the complex and catastrophic threats looming over its head. For him, profanity can be a horrible, immoral outrage while mass murder is insignificant. It’s the style, framing and emotion-triggering words that sparks the outrage far out of proportion to the situation. When Bill Clinton got caught fondling someone who wasn’t his wife, the S-R crowd was outraged and impeached him. The Republican leader of the proceedings was an adulterer. Many of his committee members and the loudest critics of Clinton, such as Senator Vitter, also were adulterers and whoremongers, yet they were given a pass by the S-R herd. They even reelected Vitter by a wide margin even though his name appeared on customer lists of Louisiana madams.
Behind the fury is a snake that weaves itself into every fabric of public life where it manipulates and maneuvers the dimwitted flocks of sheep. The visible part of that snake’s head was plutocrat Richard Mellon Scaife.
Today, the snake is out to get Barak Obama. The snakehead this time is the plutocrat Koch brothers, Charles and David. The herd is reacting furiously and indignantly having learned nothing from its last deception and lacks any ability to absorb American values, principles and ideals.

THE REST OF THE SNAKE

In 1934, former Marine general Smedley Butler exposed a conspiracy to overthrow the “socialist” Roosevelt government and replace it with a Fascist type government like those thriving in several European nations such as Italy, Germany and Spain. The conspiracy became known as the “Industrialists Plot” for the wealthy manufacturers and bankers behind it. The Industrialists planned to form a private army, like Blackwater, composed of 500,000 World War I veterans and violently overthrow the FDR government. They would replace it with a Fascist and Nazi style government similar to those in Europe. Members of the coup had assisted the Fascists’ rise to power.
The violent overthrow was Plan B. Plan A was to assassinate FDR, Kennedy style, and install their Fascist government.
Coup leaders approached Marine General Smedley Butler to lead the troops. Unfortunately for them, Butler was a patriotic American and believed in democracy. He exposed the plot. The Democrats controlled every branch of government, yet, like Reagan’s subversive actions in Nicaragua and George W. Bush’s numerous acts of subversion and treason, the Democrats did nothing more than hold superficial hearings and cover up the traitorous and criminal acts.
The conspirators came predominantly from a group called the American Liberty League. The National Association of Manufacturers was a major supporter. One of the top leaders was a banker named Prescott Bush, father of President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush. Co-conspirators were a whose-who of American corporations: Colgate, Heinz, General Motors, Birds Eye, U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, Goodyear Tire and The Mutual Life Insurance Co. Du Pont was the biggest funder and most critical member. Its Remington Arms Co. division was ready to provide all the weapons needed. The media, except for Scripps-Howard papers, were willing propaganda tools for the plotters.
No one was punished for the conspiracy to murder the president, overthrow the government and shred the Constitution because the plotters were and are super-citizens that, like the Politburo in the Soviet Union, are the unaccountable rulers of the nation. That Fascist nobility is above the law. That nobility continues to rule the nation today.
The Fascists lost World War II. The Fascists won World War II. The world goals of Adolph Hitler and George H. W. Bush shared the same terminology: “New world order.” Hitler’s strategy was brutal force. The American strategy is world hegemony with periodic brutal crushings of small, defenseless nations as a warning sign to all other nations.
In the U.S., democracy is not a political system. Democracy is a diversion, like a baby’s rattle, that keeps the S-R masses distracted from reality, from those who are exploiting them and robbing them blind.