Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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The best thing one can do to help prevent panic is to TURN OFF THE TV. With the constant drumbeat of putrid propaganda out of your head it will be much easier to clarify your mind. For those willing to make the effort, there are sources of information -- short wave radio, portions of the internet, and some books -- but in these times it is more important to know what your neighbors think than what the news anchor says he thinks (with a gun to his head or a bribe in
Who knows where our current economic crisis will lead? Maybe it will be a Mini Depression, maybe a Greater Great Depression, but in either case the designed purpose of this deliberately induced crisis is to allow a very small number of people to further monopolize wealth and power, and force us into feudal servitude and subjugation. This is simply what concentrated power does every chance it gets, right down through history. This has happened over and over again in society after society that set off down the garden path of dependency on authority. This is what the framers of the Constitution tried to prevent when they devised a system of democratic rule, separation of powers, and limitations of governmental prerogatives. By allowing the government to ignore our constitution, by allowing the concentration of power in a few hands, we have ignored the founders. We have been the authors of our own suffering. We have been drunk with self absorbed self righteousness -- and now comes the hangover. Not every one of our elected representatives is a crook, but enough are to have turned our "representative democracy" into a sick joke. The result is that we now have only a pretense of representative government. The smaller the scale, the more government tends to represent the interests of the people, simply because it is easier to watch over leadership close to home, but regardless of the level of governmental power, if we do not watch carefully what government is doing, and question everything, then we are certain to suffer from government that represents the interests of a wealthy elite rather than the interests of We The People. We have learned this before and apparently need to learn it again. The price of liberty IS eternal vigilance, and we have been sleeping on the job. Our founding revolution was started and manned by ordinary citizens meeting together in local venues and communicating with like-minded citizens by horse-mounted messengers. If we have the courage and foresight to start again at the beginning with such local groups willing to network with each other, it should now be much easier a task to organize a change of government than was faced by our ancestors. They made the mistake of turning over the actual running of the government to their "betters," the educated gentry of the time. I hope that we will have learned from that mistake, and this time keep power in the hands of ordinary people rather than those claiming special authority due to class status or superior education. If we had followed the likes of Thomas Paine to run the country rather than representatives of a hereditary elite such as Adams, schemers on behalf of wealth such as Hamilton, and degenerate plutocrats such as Aaron Burr, we would likely not be in this terrible fix. The only leaders we should accept should be of the people, chosen by ordinary folks, and easily recallable by We the People. Great wealth should disqualify people from leadership positions. At the very least we should not make the mistake of again turning our fates over to bankers and insurance underwriters. Our system of elections was never very good. We have tolerated childish and corrupt electoral political processes for so long that it has become hard to imagine that such a thing as responsible and honest electoral politics is possible. But elsewhere in the world honest elections are held all the time. The difference? International observers are monitoring those elections and real exit polls are being conducted to verifying the results. As long as we continue to tolerate election fraud we can only expect to be continually ripped off and denied our inalienable civil rights. As long as we continue to mainline the false pride of American Exceptionalism, the feeling that anything American is better than anything else, we will continue in bondage and have our futures foreclosed. We need to get beyond our false pride and ask for the help that is needed. Pretty obviously we need international observers for our elections. Like children we have consistently voted for those who monopolize the TV screen and are described to us as the "only viable candidates." Like children we vote for those who tell us lies we want to hear. And like children without the benefit of adult supervision, we are robbed and mistreated by con-persons masquerading as leaders, who secretly harbor contempt for us. Part of growing up, and that is the real challenge for our society now, is recognizing when contempt has been warranted by our actions. For many generations we have proven ourselves to be dismally gullible, content to have a litany of false promises, false praise and insincere reassurance served up to us as a smoke screen to cover up the crimes of our elite. Under the influence of deliberately engineered fears, we have been foolish enough to generously finance a system of laws and enforcement that has turned our country into a sort of low security open air prison. Our local police are under the control of federal agencies and are not free to act justly. We have allowed them to become servants of power rather than servants of the people. We have more people per capita in prison, for no realistic reason, than any other developed country. Those of us not formally imprisoned or under the control of probation officers must deal with prison-like regimentation, illegal searches and surveillance, and fear of arbitrary violence by the authorities. We have allowed the authorities know more about us than we know about ourselves. We have allowed our professions to become prostituted to serve the greed of our predatory elite. We pay twice what any other country pays for health care, and for this we get a health care system that is dismal in comparison to many poor countries. Our lawyers and legal system are the butt of well-deserved contemptuous jokes. We have essentially no freedom to organize and collectively bargain for decent pay and working conditions. In brief, we can exercise few, if any, of the rights stipulated in either our Constitution or in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which our government is a signatory. We have been acting like clueless dopes, unwilling to defend our rights, and we are being treated accordingly. We have allowed our currency to be devalued and our production to be sent off shore, resulting in a mountain of debt that is unpayable. We have contributed to our debt slavery by consistently consuming more than we could afford and saving not at all, naively trusting that financial markets and corporations will deal honestly with our pensions and that the social security program will be there for us when we need it. A people unwilling to save for the future has no future except debt bondage. We have allowed predatory capitalists to unleash a torrent of violence and subversion on the rest of the world in service of imperial aims. Much of our suffering is the result of agreeing to live off the crumbs of international piracy. Seeking wealth through the impoverishment of others guarantees that one's turn for victimhood, when it comes, and we see it coming now, will be particularly harsh. We need to stop our leadership and corporate centers of power from robbing the rest of the world, ostensibly, on our behalf. We need to put an end to aggressive foreign wars or they will bring an end to us. The path of imperialism is a grand death march for the perpetrators as well as its victims. These are revolutionary times, but not times that call for violent resistance. We must recognize that we live in a prison run by a totalitarian regime that lies to us about everything. Those encouraging us to resist violently are likely to be agents of the regime, agents provocateur, seeking to help cull the heard of troublesome livestock. Resistance need not be violent. Mental resistance trumps violent mindless resistance. In fact, in the absence of resistance in the mind, in the absence of cool critical judgement about risks and
Good luck to us. In solidarity forever, Herb Ruhs, MD PERMANENT LINK Meaty stuff. Honest, scary, yet inspirational ... I was thinking toward the end how frickin' FABULOUS it would be if any one of our so-called leaders could deliver a speech like this ... but we're going to have to do it ourselves, no leaders, no heroes ...Exactly. At least no leaders that are not on a very short leash and tightly muzzled. A synonym for hero -- target. Herb Ruhs, MD PERMANENT LINK
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