Jun 182012
 
 June 18, 2012  Posted by at 4:15 pm Earth

thesetrees

We're gonna get a bit controversial on the TAE blog today. I know for a fact that some people will be very offended by this posting, written/compiled by Surly of the Doomstead Diner. Therefore, I'd like preface it with a disclaimer, so to speak. I am going to introduce the issues involved here and give you a few of my thoughts on why they are so important to be considered at this point in time.

The long and short of it is that the posting encompasses an ongoing (never-ending) debate between RE, Surly, I and countless others on various forums, including TAE and the Doomstead Diner, about the wisdom of launching a modern day Inquisition, or what I call the Orkin Man Master Plan ("OMMP") – a plan designed to systemically root out very high-level officials of our corporatist financial system across the globe, and ultimately exterminate them. Everyone agrees that the plan will invariably involve a significant number of innocent "casualties of war" along the way.

First of all, RE wants to make clear that this is just his personal view – one that he feels compelled to defend against critique – and is by no means a reflection of the majority view at the Diner or something that dominates the conversation over there. So let's just take this for exactly what it is – a comprehensive debate over the merits and the wisdom of the OMMP – nothing more, nothing less.

RE argues that such a plan is humanity's last best chance to take the offensive against these wicked forces and destroy them before they destroy us, and it is ultimately a Utilitarian issue of sacrificing a certain % of innocent lives to save an even greater %. Surly disagrees. Some of you may have also read the lengthy exchange between RE and I on this issue, and therefore you know that I whole-heartedly disagree with RE as well.

Surly and I both agree that, in the last instance, it comes down to a question of morality and personal values. Although, there is also plenty of room to debate the nitty-gritty details of this particular OMMP and how it will WORK or NOT WORK, as the case may be. Some of you may be wondering – why even give any credence or exposure to RE's view by acknowledging it in a posting here?

The truth is that most of us are eventually going to have to confront these issues in our lifetimes, and there's no sense in hiding from them now or pretending they don't exist. People are out there making similar arguments to RE as I write this today, and they are only going to make them even louder tomorrow, as societal conditions worsen. And they are dead serious…

Seeing as how the Golden Dawn (neo-Nazi) party has gained a good deal of popularity in Greece in its most recent national elections (GD obtained its first presence in the House of Parliament), this issue of radically reactionary policy is nothing if not very relevant to the process of financial, economic and sociopolitical collapse. It is exactly the type of blowback against "the system" that TAE has been warning about for some time.

Many of the people advocating for some form of OMMP, like RE, truly believe that such a path is our best chance to save the human species and the planet from total annihilation at the hands of minority elites, and have justice meted out to those deserving of it in the process. And some of them, like RE, also happen to be damn convincing with their arguments.

My personal participation in this whole whopper of a debate boils down to my belief that it is INCUMBENT on us to be prepared with a response to calls for blood, and to defend our commitments to avoiding such an outcome – whether those commitments are based in ethical, moral and/or practical concerns. If we are not prepared, then we have already lost the argument before it has even started.

Once the calls for retribution start sounding off in earnest, the momentum will be near impossible to stop. That is why I am posting this here and hoping that TAE readers share my concerns on the one hand, but also come to this issue with tolerance and objectivity on the other. If you are already offended just by reading this Intro to the article, then I strongly advise that you skip the rest of the posting altogether… because, trust me when I say, there is a lot more material for you to stomach below.

Now, with all that out of the way, what follows is Surly's article on the OMMP debate, which really does a great job of tying many different strains of thought together in a succinct and coherent manner. The centerpiece is Surly's very insightful look at the life and times of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

This exposition on Pol Pot is immediately followed by RE's response (separated by lines within the text), which has been excerpted from a more fully-formed response to both Surly and I that can be found on DD – Unforgiven. Surly's concluding thoughts on OMMP continue below the fold, where he ultimately tells us to reflect on the priceless question that must be answered by ALL of us at the end of the day – do you TRULY know which side you are on?

 


The Orkin Man: Which Side Are You On?

 

 

The Orkin man is one of RE's favorite memes, often invoked as a symbol of retribution by the meek against the great. When we watch gangsters confiscate houses with impunity and murder by proxy and a pen (see the story of Norman Rousseau), run the economy into a ditch, commandeered great bonuses and be subject to none of the usual proceedings of justice, it is easy to despair and to look for revenge. This overwritten screed is a meditation upon what has become a thought-provoking thread rife with implications, a thought experiment which, if followed through the course of its own ineluctable logic, obliges each of us to measure where we would fall, and what we would do, in the event TSHTF.

 

 

What has actually happened here in this country on these rare occasions when people have stood up en masse to Fight the Power? In a previous lifetime, I investigated and created a documentary about the Battle at Blair Mountain. You will likely not have heard of this, the teaching of labor history having apparently been classified as a Class I misdemeanor here in the FSA. In the largest uprising in the United States outside of the Civil War, in 1921, thousands of miners waged armed warfare in Logan County, West Virginia against mine owners, sheriff Don Chafin, and federal troops, in an effort to unionize the mines.

In Mingo, Logan and McDowell counties, miners worked under incredibly bad conditions, were paid next to nothing, had no freedom of speech or assembly, and were dispatched with impunity by mine guards and local politicos in an atmosphere reminiscent of a third-world dictatorship, or contemporary South Carolina. In 1921, thousands of miners and families were evicted from their tents after having the temerity to join a union. The Miners' March, as it was called, was set to change all that. The military was engaged, as always, to Protect Property Rights, those most sacred and revered of all rights extended by the Hand of God to the white, male property owners who created the FSA. The miners' intention was to march to the southwestern coalfields and free fellow miners from abominable treatment at the hands or mine owners.

The miners were opposed by a well-armed contingent of mine guards and State Police with rifles and machine guns. These would eventually be joined by 2,000 regular Army troops armed with airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. The two forces met at Blair Mountain, in Logan County, along the ridge line.

This was the Battle of Blair Mountain.

The battle marked the first time U.S. troops were ordered to bomb civilians. Federal troops squared off against citizen miners, many themselves veterans hardened from recent service in WW I.

The union leader Bill Blizzard eventually surrendered his army in order to avoid further civilian casualties. Blizzard was acquitted in court of insurrection. Future UMW & CIO leader John L. Lewis fought alongside Blizzard at the Battle of Blair Mountain and succeeded in getting recognition for the union 14 years later in southern West Virginia.

One of the songs that sprung up in the wake of these labor troubles with the song "Which side are you on?" It was written by Florence Reece, the wife a union organizer for the UMW in Harlan County, Kentucky, when the miners of that region were locked in a bitter and violent struggle with the mine owners called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the Reece family, the local sheriff illegally entered their family home in search of Sam Reece. Sam had been warned in advance and escaped, but Florence and their children were terrorized in his place. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to "Which Side Are You On?" on a calendar that hung in the kitchen of her home. She took the melody from a traditional Baptist hymn, "Lay the Lily Low".

 

 

A Song by Florence Patton Reece

 

Come all of you good workers

Good news to you I'll tell

Of how that good old union

Has come in here to dwell

 

Chorus:

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

 

My daddy was a miner

And I'm a miner's son

And I'll stick with the union

Till every battle's won

 

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there

You'll either be a union man

Or a thug for J.H. Blair

 

Oh, workers can you stand it?

Oh, tell me how you can

Will you be a lousy scab

Or will you be a man?

 

Don't scab for the bosses

Don't listen to their lies

Us poor folks haven't got a chance

Unless we organize

So the miners organized together to Fight the Power, to take the law into their own hands because the law was an ass. What they got for their trouble was the full response of the state in all of its Majesty and force of arms. Eventually the legal system would catch up. In the fullness of time, union rights would be recognized, at least until after World War II, when the elites mounted their counterrevolution under the banner of "right to work" laws.

In my loathing for the Banksters and their apologists, I take a back seat to nobody. The bailout of 2008, otherwise known as the "banksters coup," was just the cherry on top of the same toxic milkshake served up as economic and social policy over the last 30 years. The insane clown posse that passes for the modern Republican Party has eyeballed the demographic trends, and pasted together an assemblage of what Drfitglass called "the scattered,raving remnants of the Confederacy for one, last glorious bonfire of democracy." Combine the wholesale assault of the remnant of the New Deal in an atmosphere of "industrialized political hatespeech," Fox News, Hate Radio and the Tea Party with its Billionaire backers, and it's easy to succumb to the desire to want to kill something.

Intellectually I hold with Kunstler's "lamppost and 40 feet of sturdy nylon rope" as the due for the "masters of the universe "who have ground down our economy and wrecked the ship of state. But personal morality makes looping the first skein of rope over the lamppost morally fraught. On the other hand, one is left with the spectacle of the pigmen rooting among the remains of the economy and the country, like Wu's pigs disposing of a fresh corpse in HBO's "Deadwood."

 

 

It is this episode that springs to mind as I consider the "Orkin Man Master Plan" (OMMP) as discussed on the forum of the Doomstead Diner.

The Orkin man is a favorite device of RE, the invoking of which I have enjoyed since the same since his days on The Burning Platform blog. The Orkin man is an exterminator who cleanses the dwelling of lice, vermin, termites and all manner of infestations. The analogy is clear. The remedy less so.

One poster on Doomsday Diner posed the question, "Who gets to be the Orkin man?" Indeed. Who gets to be the decider? Being the decider has great costs, which turned on a fundamental moral issue, at a time when our moral and spiritual institutions are in decline, church attendance down, and many people utterly and completely unequipped to weigh moral and ethical questions. And as much as I like to give voice to my inner hunchback, there is that "judge not lest ye be judged" morality imbued by a Catholic education and nun-beatings that inflects one's thoughts, processes and decisions, even decades later.

As I reflected on the more recent exemplars of individuals taking on such a strategy in this country, and after Blair Mountain, my mind skittered to thoughts of Kosovo, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Pinochet's Argentina, and then settled on the best recent example: Pol Pot whose efforts to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions. Those Khmer Rouge wanted to return to the land as well, and also wanted to cleanse the parasites, usurers and useless eaters from the face of Cambodia. A cautionary tale about the work of idealists who want to remake a society by means of "cleansing" the "parasites…"

It took a while for ol' Pol to consolidate power– he needed to throw in with Sihanouk to fight the right wing junta the US had installed, then the US had to leave the 'Nam and Cambodia. But once in power, he began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia that would warm the heart of the most doomy doomster. Pol Pot had seen Mao's Cultural Revolution first-hand during a visit to Communist China, so he figured to go The Great Yellow River Swimmer one better.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies, " a move that would apparently gain favor among participants in this thread. Pol Pot now stood up his own "Super Duper New and Improved Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which in itself was new and improved, hence renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

Remember Pol Pot's ringing declaration, "This is Year Zero?" Ah, search your memories. Society was to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences to be extinguished. Intellectuals, bureaucrats and other glasses-wearers were to push wheelbarrows, the better to repent of their pointy-headedness, and to learn the glories of peasant Communism. Foreigners were expelled, embassies closed, foreign economic or medical assistance refused. No use of foreign languages. Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. (That will kick those usurers in the ass.) Businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world, almost as effectively as if information were controlled by a small handful of media companies.

Something about that live-or-die thingy tends to bring out the excesses in our revolutionary heroes. I'll put that in my "Robespierre was overworked and misunderstood" file.

Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. All of Cambodia's cities were forcibly evacuated. At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way. Can't let that stop a man with a purpose.

Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days, the better to become compost and improve the yields.

 

 

Workdays ran to the 18 hour day, Pol having taken the American South's "right to work" euphemism to heart. The starving were forbidden to eat the fruits and rice they were harvesting, as that was confiscated by the Khmer rouge and loaded onto their own trucks.

And you can't have a party without the purges… a veritable binge of purges. Up against the wall went the remnants of the "old society" – the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, glasses-wearers all, no doubt. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Eventually the taste for human blood leads to a paranoia of sorts, and why not? Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.

The casualty count rose until Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed, and a Vietnamese puppet government put in.

Pol Pot disappeared into the jungles of Thailand with his Khmer Rouge remnant and waged guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments for decades, eventually sputtering out and dying of an apparent heart attack before he could be dragged to trial before an international tribunal.

 

 

So it matters little who you pick as the Orkin Man, or how good your motives are, or how thorough your efforts at re-education or eradication may be. The role seems to carry some occupational hazards, as if the appetite for blood, human death and destruction carries with it the seeds of insanity.

Although the image of banksters and stockbrokers mucking out pigpens and pushing wheelbarrows through knee-deep mud remains compelling.

(Surly continued below the fold…)

 


 

Unforgiven (RE's response to Surly)

I go through this bizness of the Nasty Dictators all the time with Ashvin over on TAE, and certainly it is not an easy position to take on the Orkin Man Idea when you have such nefarious types as Pol Pot in the Terminix bizness.

I am NOT defending Pol Pot here, because he took on this massively counterproductive attempt at social cleansing with tons of wrong ideas and with tons of corruption involved as well. It also was bound for failure because it was undertaken while the Conduits were still functional.

Taking out the Crystal Ball here and looking into the FUTURE though, let's consider some of the ideas involved in this mess.

 

 

Surly: Mao's "Great Leap Forward" included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies, " a move that would apparently gain favor among participants in this thread. Pol Pot now stood up his own "Super Duper New and Improved Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which in itself was new and improved, hence renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

On the "Forced Evacuation of Big Shities" question. It wasn't true for sure in Cambodia, but look at the Mass Death that may occur in the Big Shities if they are NOT evacuated before JIT delivery fails. You could have a 99% Death Rate in those places. If Pol Pot II was running the show and forcibly evacuating people NOW, maybe you only get a 50% Death rate. So here PPII goes down in History as the Mass Murderer of say 3B People. Except if PPII had NOT done this, 6B would have gone to the Great Beyond instead.

It's obviously a tough call to make for a Political Leader when to pull the plug on the Big Shities and tell everyone they have to EVACUATE NOW. It will inevitably result in a Massive Death Toll. But if you think it will be WORSE if you don't do it, if you are willing to take the heat as the worst Mass Murderer in all of Recorded History, maybe you do it.

Surly: Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days, the better to become compost and improve the yields.

OK, here we have mostly agreed that Industrial life is going the way of the Dinosaur and people HAVE to go back to the Land as Farmers at least, if not H-Gs. What is going to happen to Obese J6P when you put him out on the land pushing a plow? Instant Heart Attack! Most people currently used to EZ Living courtesy of the thermodynamic energy of Oil simply are not IN SHAPE to work out in the Fields. Is it PPII's FAULT these folks are too fat and weak to pull their own weight out there?

Surly: And you can't have a party without the purges… a veritable binge of purges. Up against the wall went the remnants of the "old society" – the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, glasses-wearers all, no doubt. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Eventually the taste for human blood leads to a paranoia of sorts, and why not? Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.

Here of course is the EXCESS which occurs in many an Inquisition/Reign of Terror type scenario. There is going to be a lot of BLOWBACK resultant from many people who have lost their comfortable life and who want to see PPII DEAD because of that. He gets blamed for the problems they have; he gets blamed for their loss of economic status in the society. So PPII gets PARANOID, for good reason. People really ARE out to get him. So he starts Killing Them before they Kill Him.

This of course is the Omellette issue Uncle Joe talked about. Its just about impossible to be a manager of massive Die Off without yourself becoming a Target. Yet if SOMEBODY doesn't get int here and try to manage it, the Die Off is WORSE. Morton's Fork situation of course.

Now, back in Uncle Joe, Mao and Pol Pot's era, if they played along with the Illuminati they likely could have avoided all that dieing. Except these guys wanted to Exit the Game early, and to exit it they essentially were cutting off their Noses to spite their Faces. They lost the ability to Trade with the outside world and were attempting to Go It Alone, and this messed up all their in place systems which sorta worked as long as you paid your Vigorish to the Illuminati.

So all of them go down in History as the most vicious and Genocidal Dictators in all of Recorded History, at least in gross numbers if not in Percentages. I still maintain that the Romanoffs were WORSE than Stalin, but that is not really that important here at the moment.

Moving into the FUTURE here, the issue is you cannot even Save As Many as you Can by PLAYING BALL with the Illuminati. Why? Because said Illuminati are Fresh OUT of Cheap Oil to sell you with Loans they hand out to you. So unfortunately here in this Morton's Fork situation, the social dynamic is likely to produce numerous PPIIs and Great Uncle Joes. Because unless somebody does SOMETHING to try to keep the society organized up, the Dieing will be WORSE than it would be if you have some Dictator FORCING people to evacuate the Big Shities. They aren't going to do that on their own until it is too late and they all are starving and Cannibalizing each other.

Surly: Although the image of banksters and stockbrokers mucking out pigpens and pushing wheelbarrows through knee-deep mud remains a compelling one for me.

You know, I paint all sorts of pictures based on the Spanish Inquisition and the Reign of Terror, but the fact of the matter here is that if you simply took away all their wealth and power and dropped these folks into a Housing project in Chicago and left them their Shoelaces, Silk Neckties and Gucci Belts, they would all Hang THEMSELVES in short order. So if you want to go about it this way to absolve yourself of a sense of Guilt for lopping off their Heads, I am fine with that one also.

Regardless of the means here, whether it is Seppuku or Capital Punishment, the situation is going to create the BLOWBACK from people who once had power, now removed. They will attempt Counter Revolutions and so forth. So you get forced into a battle here no matter what, and people DIE no matter what.

Practical sort of fellow that I am, I work my way through this dynamic to try to find the pathway with the least pain and the greatest survivability for the typical Slave in our society. The means I see working best is to take the battle to the Illuminati before they get the Death Camps rolling in earnest here. You do have to wait for the Failure of the Conduits though, because as long as the Illuminati have the Big Ass Military and Gestapo organized up and functioning, you stand no chance here. Once those Conduits fracture though, the playing field is LEVELLED.

Then you don't just get MAD, you get EVEN.


(Surly continued…)

But point was that any kind of social engineering, social cleansing, ethnic cleansing executed by a political agenda will inevitably collapse, most often due to its own corruption and increasingly escalating paranoia on the part of the strongman or the secret oligarchy of "deciders." There is a reason that we are taught from a very early age, "vengeance is mine saith the Lord, " "Thou shalt not kill," and other Biblical admonishments against the taking of life.

It could be that this ancient wisdom recalls that wielding the tools of vengeance is simply above the pay grade of us mere mortals. On the other hand, psychopaths recognize no such compunction. But the question remains: what do we do, what action should we take at a time when psychopaths have commandeered the engines of government and commerce, economic or rate with complete impunity and beyond the reach of such justice as still remains?

We are thus faced with an untenable situation: if any one of us were to put on the Pol Pot T shirt, we would find ourselves in a similar situation, fraught with awful decisions and tinged by paranoia, regions of the mind visited by Joseph Conrad. Far preferable to remember the biblical injunctions that direct our conduct, as Ashvin observed:

Ashvin: It's not about what we you and I can justify to ourselves with our personal beliefs. It is what you can get OTHER PEOPLE to accept based on their beliefs. Anyone who truly believes in Judeo-Christian theology cannot accept OMMP any more than they can accept Infanticide, even when they are committed with "good intentions" for some Utilitarian goal. According to them, God is perfect and they are imperfect. God has commanded them to avoid certain Sins, and they must have faith in God's wisdom no matter what. It is not up to them to decide what sins are acceptable via good intentions or utilitarian calculations.

Matthew 7:14-27

 

14"For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

 

15"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16"You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17"So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18"A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19"Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20"So then, you will know them by their fruits.

 

21"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22"Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' 23"And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'

 

24"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25"And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27"The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall."

I'm just using [true Christians] as an example of people whose beliefs are fundamentally in opposition to OMMP. They will become your enemies… but them and who else? I think you can easily make the argument that most true Hindus and Buddhists will as well. Now we are easily talking about a lot of people. How many people who claim to believe in these Immortal Truths will have the nerve to follow through when your so-called Herd is stampeding against them? I don't know, probably only a small fraction.

 

But my point here is that some of them will, and people like me will admire them for doing so. It's an amazing thing, really, to have that kind of total devotion to some higher power even in the face of what appears to be the likely threat of species-wide extinction. Talk about a small gate and narrow way!

(Surly)

The question each of us has to address is, Which side are you on? If you knew that those in control were working to box you into a freight car headed to an unknown future, but which would likely involve Fresh Towels and Hot Showers, would you get on the train or would you take the fight to them? And would you take the fight to them knowing that they controlled all of the vectors and tools of violence with force overwhelming to individual scale?

Indeed, our elites have changed the laws to enable the military to operate with impunity here in the "North American battleground" (yes, friends, if you are paying the least bit of attention, we are indeed the enemy), as they have likewise militarized our local police forces, complete with spiffy looking SWAT team suits, armored vehicles. and drones, as the latest invention. We have as our president the only Nobel Peace Prize winner with a personal kill list. So it may be well to say that we're living in a time where the lessons of history no longer inform what we may be able to infer about the future. All bets are off.

 

 

Ultimately, I hold with RE when he says, "save as many as you can," although we may differ about what that means. As an occupier, I believe that our presence in the streets and withholding our consent is everything that we can do. The community gardening movement is a step toward self-reliance, and teaching others to be self reliant. A self-reliant independent populace is anathema to the powers that be. But even the most psychopathic will find it difficult to dial-up a drone strike against a community garden, unless I miss my bet. Our resistance will be nonviolent, as the state has an utter and complete monopoly of the tools of violence, and a demonstrated increasing bloodthirstiness in applying them. I do not wish to make it easy for them, and have little desire to become a martyr, in a time when even bankster loan officers can murder with a pen and a computer.

Hunter S. Thompson once described himself as a "Road Man for the Lords of Karma." Since nature, or God bats last, my own view is that through education, self-reliance, and nonviolent resistance we can change a culture. The history of this society guarantees a rain of vengeance and disproportionate response on the part of the minions of the elites, in a road that runs from the Cherokee "Trail of Tears" through Logan Country through Zuccotti Park. And even if successful, the victors turn into monsters. Changing a society will take generations; generations which we may not have. Our opponents have been at this for many decades; we should not expect the quick fix.

In the coming days, each of us will need to stand up and be counted. At least I know which side I'm on.

Home Forums The Orkin Man: Which Side Are You On?

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  • #4201
    ashvin
    Participant

    RE,

    I don’t think there’s much left to debate down this spiritual road. You are convinced that spiritual truths have zero application to human dynamics in the “real world”, and you are unwilling to do any research about the spiritual perspectives and principles that you casually dismiss.

    All of the evil you see happening now and in the future is exactly the same evils that those of faith see, but they have fundamentally different explanations for why it is here and therefore fundamentally different views on what we can do about it.

    You and I will say that we knew all this stuff was coming down the pipeline for years, and they will say “oh really? well half this crap was prophesied in the Bible 2000 years ago, and in some cases even earlier…” Even you like to quote Revelation 18 as being relevant to how monetary collapse would go down today.

    If you still can’t understand why their faith is critical to what they think is an acceptable course of action and also what they believe will happen in the future, both to them personally and the world as a whole, then there’s nothing more I can say to make you understand that.

    You think they’re wrong, they think they’re right, and I think they are a lot more right than you are. That’s all there is to it.

    #4202
    ashvin
    Participant

    Reverse Engineer post=3826 wrote:
    This is Elementary, my dear Watson. Whether your deduction is the more realistic scenario or not is open to conjecture, but the fact is that if it does indeed play out that way it is NOT the OMMP, it is then the IMP, Illuminati Master Plan. The significant DIFFERENCE between these two plans is who ends up DEAD here. In the OMMP, it is mostly Illuminati who end up dead (by percentage, not absolute numbers of course since they represent only .01% of the total population). In the IMP, mostly J6Ps end up dead. Given the Morton’s Fork choice here that it is going to go one way or the other, Sherlock here picks the OMMP.

    I thought the whole point of this “thought experiment” of yours was to see what types of economic and sociopolitical dynamics will realistically happen in upcoming years? We would all choose OMMP if we knew how to do it in a perfect way and one that is in harmony with our personal beliefs/values. But, REALISTICALLY, we know that there are a dime a dozen problematic issues wrapped up in this thing, and I am just pointing out to you one of the major ones that I see. And I know I’m not the only one, because other people have mentioned how it could be co-opted by the Illuminati and what not. I am simply taking that logic a step further and positing that it may already be a part of THEIR master plan to deceive the masses (as always) and warm them up to their faux Orkin Man. If that is true (and I maintain that it is a much more likely outcome than your OMMP with truly righteous intentions), then we are simply playing into their hands when we advocate for it. We are helping to sow and water the psychological seeds that they would like to see fully grown.

    #4203

    ashvin post=3838 wrote:

    I thought the whole point of this “thought experiment” of yours was to see what types of economic and sociopolitical dynamics will realistically happen in upcoming years?

    No, if you read what Surly has written in this thread and I write all the time, the purpose of the Thought Experiment is to SAVE AS MANY AS YOU CAN.

    The principle is thus: We are faced with a Die Off of astounding proportions, at LEAST 50% of the population is going to the Great Beyond here no matter WHAT we do. As I work it out in the TE, if we do not get rid of the vermin running this show, this Die Off is going to be 90% and quite possibly 100%, aka an EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT. Bold and Caps together doesn’t emphasize this enough. We are at serious risk of the END of Human Sentience. If you value Biblical Morality more than that maybe you risk this, but I do not so highly value morality which makes little sense in this world. “Go Forth and Multiply?” WTF? That is the LAST thing we need to do these days. My moral principle here is to Save as Many as I Can.

    We would all choose OMMP if we knew how to do it in a perfect way and one that is in harmony with our personal beliefs/values. But, REALISTICALLY, we know that there are a dime a dozen problematic issues wrapped up in this thing, and I am just pointing out to you one of the major ones that I see. And I know I’m not the only one, because other people have mentioned how it could be co-opted by the Illuminati and what not. I am simply taking that logic a step further and positing that it may already be a part of THEIR master plan to deceive the masses (as always) and warm them up to their faux Orkin Man. If that is true (and I maintain that it is a much more likely outcome than your OMMP with truly righteous intentions), then we are simply playing into their hands when we advocate for it. We are helping to sow and water the psychological seeds that they would like to see fully grown.

    Clearly not everyone would choose the OMMP no matter what, that is what you yourself argue all the time. You argue that some principles are so inviolable that in fact it might be better to let ourselves go EXTINCT than to violate them.

    I am fully aware of all the risks involved here in any kind of Plan to Manage Death, either Illuminati generated in an IMP or J6P generated in an OMMP. What I am quite certain of now though is that SOMEBODY is going to be managing this Death and the battle before us is all about WHO gets to do the managing here. Most often through history the Illuminati have been the Managers, but not 100% of the time. Evidence of that is in the Reign of Terror of Robespierre and the fact Nicholas and Alexandra Romanoff were filled full of LEAD in a Ruskie Basement and Marie Antoinette’s HEAD went rolling down the Champs d’Elysee like a Bowling Ball. The Elite do not manage the death so well 100% of the time, and occassionally they DO get the short end of the stick here. This is one of those times we have to make sure J6P runs the Death Show, not the Illuminati. In fact there is probably no time in all of recorded history when this was more important, because never before has the risk on the other side been the complete and total anhilliation of the human species, along with probably all other life forms above the level of the Tardigrades.

    If we do NOT step up to the plate here and take control of this, then we are in fact going to be responsible for our own extinction. I for one am not in favor of that, so I run my TEs to find a WAY OUT. I don’t like what I see as the only road out here anymore than you do Ashvin, but it is a Morton’s Fork. The signpost up ahead says Mass Death to the left and Extinction to the right. I will go left here.

    I don’t think there’s much left to debate down this spiritual road. You are convinced that spiritual truths have zero application to human dynamics in the “real world”, and you are unwilling to do any research about the spiritual perspectives and principles that you casually dismiss.

    All of the evil you see happening now and in the future is exactly the same evils that those of faith see, but they have fundamentally different explanations for why it is here and therefore fundamentally different views on what we can do about it.

    You and I will say that we knew all this stuff was coming down the pipeline for years, and they will say “oh really? well half this crap was prophesied in the Bible 2000 years ago, and in some cases even earlier…” Even you like to quote Revelation 18 as being relevant to how monetary collapse would go down today.

    If you still can’t understand why their faith is critical to what they think is an acceptable course of action and also what they believe will happen in the future, both to them personally and the world as a whole, then there’s nothing more I can say to make you understand that.

    You think they’re wrong, they think they’re right, and I think they are a lot more right than you are. That’s all there is to it.

    No, that is NOT all there is to it.

    I understand well enough why people have faiths of varying sorts, and I understand also well enough IMHO the Christian Faith also.

    The problem with about all of these faiths in a world of serious overshoot is they have limited applicability if you want to Save as Many as You Can. I don’t think all those folks who generated up these Faiths were “wrong” in their assumptions when the world was new and resources seemed limitless. Conditions have changed here now though, and for much the same reason that the monetary system we run based on growth will not work, so also the “truths” many hold near and dear to their moral center ALSO will not work.

    People do not let go of truths they think are universal very easily, only really when personal survival becomes the name of the game are such truths really tested vor veracity. A few souls will hold onto their truths right to the bitter end, and get Nailed to a Cross for it. The fact they will do that is quite remarkable, but it doesn’t make them Right all the time either.

    RE

    #4206
    scandia
    Participant

    These days to oppose government by corporation is to be labelled a terrorist. Bt not opposing the pillage, the torture,the mercanaries,the environmental degradation,the confiscation of national treasures/assets one could be labelled a collaborator.
    As I read of the growing hunger and homelessness in many parts of the world I think of the intentional policies of both Russia and Germany to eliminate millions by starvation.
    Deciding where I stand is not easy when the enemy is now within.There is blood on my hands if I resist, there is blood on my hands if I comply.

    #4207
    Surly1
    Member

    scandia post=3842 wrote: These days to oppose government by corporation is to be labelled a terrorist. Bt not opposing the pillage, the torture,the mercanaries,the environmental degradation,the confiscation of national treasures/assets one could be labelled a collaborator.
    As I read of the growing hunger and homelessness in many parts of the world I think of the intentional policies of both Russia and Germany to eliminate millions by starvation.
    Deciding where I stand is not easy when the enemy is now within.There is blood on my hands if I resist, there is blood on my hands if I comply.

    Precisely the point I hoped to address by what I wrote in the article above, now obscured by the haze of battle between Ashvin and RE:

    “There is a reason that we are taught from a very early age, ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord, ‘ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and other Biblical admonishments against the taking of life.

    It could be that this ancient wisdom recalls that wielding the tools of vengeance is simply above the pay grade of us mere mortals. On the other hand, psychopaths recognize no such compunction. But the question remains: what do we do, what action should we take at a time when psychopaths have commandeered the engines of government and commerce, economic or rate with complete impunity and beyond the reach of such justice as still remains?

    We are thus faced with an untenable situation: if any one of us were to put on the Pol Pot T shirt, we would find ourselves in a similar situation, fraught with awful decisions and tinged by paranoia, regions of the mind visited by Joseph Conrad.”

    And if we fail to act, we are collaborators. Thus the question, “Which Side Are You On” becomes fraught with existential angst.

    IN preparing my essay, I overlooked the recent Rwanda genocide, an “Orkin Man” episode if ever there were one. Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days. Most of the dead were Tutsis – and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus.

    An African example of the “ethnic cleansing” card, also recently played in Serbia and Kosovo upon the breakup of Yugoslavia. Even for Rwanda, the scale and speed of the slaughter left its people reeling. Here is hoping that none of us have to answer the question or the call, “Are you for us or against us?” when the Orkin Man comes to call.

    #4208
    ashvin
    Participant

    Reverse Engineer post=3839 wrote:
    We are at serious risk of the END of Human Sentience. If you value Biblical Morality more than that maybe you risk this, but I do not so highly value morality which makes little sense in this world. “Go Forth and Multiply?” WTF? That is the LAST thing we need to do these days. My moral principle here is to Save as Many as I Can.

    You really need to stop quoting everything from the Bible completely out of context as if that has any meaning. Who does that? No one ever does that for any written or oral statement they are trying to attack, EXCEPT if it is found within a spiritual text. I am going to do it to you now just to show you how ridiculous it is:

    RE wrote:
    The collateral damage here is going to be ENORMOUS, beyond any scale ever in all of Recorded History.

    This is one of those times we have to make sure J6P runs the Death Show…

    I’ll put my kids up against these folks anytime. No more pussy footing around with this stuff.

    Bring ’em on TAE, I will take them ALL on.

    Damn, RE, sounds like you really want to start some kind of Fourth Reich here and exterminate ALL of us… and you’re gonna make your kids do the dirty work!! What kind of maniac are you??

    Clearly not everyone would choose the OMMP no matter what, that is what you yourself argue all the time. You argue that some principles are so inviolable that in fact it might be better to let ourselves go EXTINCT than to violate them.

    The key words in that statement were… “if we knew how to do it in a perfect way and one that is in harmony with our personal beliefs/values

    No, that is NOT all there is to it.

    I understand well enough why people have faiths of varying sorts, and I understand also well enough IMHO the Christian Faith also.

    The problem with about all of these faiths in a world of serious overshoot is they have limited applicability if you want to Save as Many as You Can. I don’t think all those folks who generated up these Faiths were “wrong” in their assumptions when the world was new and resources seemed limitless. Conditions have changed here now though, and for much the same reason that the monetary system we run based on growth will not work, so also the “truths” many hold near and dear to their moral center ALSO will not work.

    People do not let go of truths they think are universal very easily, only really when personal survival becomes the name of the game are such truths really tested vor veracity. A few souls will hold onto their truths right to the bitter end, and get Nailed to a Cross for it. The fact they will do that is quite remarkable, but it doesn’t make them Right all the time either.

    You may think you understand WHY people have various faiths and what exactly those faiths entail, but I don’t think you really do, based on your numerous misrepresentations of the most popularized (and bastardized) one in Western culture – the Christian faith. Here’s an example of quoting something in context from the Bible:

    Mathew6.5-15 wrote: And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

    7But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

    9After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

    10Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

    11Give us this day our daily bread.

    12And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

    13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: 15But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

    Right, Jesus recognized all of these things before you and I ever did – that many people would begin practicing the faith as hypocrites and throw out trite nuggets of His wisdom from time to time. But He told His true believers not to do that, and to always remember when they pray in solace – “Our Father which art in heaven… Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven” and “…if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”.

    Do you not see how this prayer informs all aspects of a true believer’s thoughts and actions in this world? What they believe can be accomplished through their faith? Why would they go against what is told to them by someone who they believe to be the Messiah prophesied in the OT, not necessarily without good reason, and give all that up for the OMMP? Your very premise that humanity faces inevitable extinction without the OMMP is ridiculous in their minds, and, no, they are not ignoring the evidence that you are considering. Like I said before, they realize all the evil being perpetrated today, and the various economic, social, environmental and militaristic calamities we face across the world. That actually gives them even MORE confidence in their faith.

    But this is why I think the spiritual thing is a dead end with you, because you refuse to research their views and accurately portray their beliefs, and THEN take them to task for what you think they got wrong. And I don’t really expect you to take a bunch of time out of your life to do something like that, but I do expect you to acknowledge that there are well-established perspectives out there that will arrive at completely different conclusions about what we need to do when faced with all the current Evil that we are faced with.

    #4209
    ashvin
    Participant

    Surly1 post=3843 wrote: [quote=scandia post=3842]There is blood on my hands if I resist, there is blood on my hands if I comply.

    Precisely the point I hoped to address by what I wrote in the article above, now obscured by the haze of battle between Ashvin and RE:

    I apologize for that haze, because I do agree with your guys’ underlying point that most people are facing very tough choices here either way. Although, that does remind me of something a very good poker player taught me (paraphrased) – “The best players aren’t great because they make lot of tough choices correctly when playing their hands, but rather because they play their hands in ways that allow them to avoid making tough choices down the line”.

    That may not make a lot of sense if you are unfamiliar with poker, but it really applies to life in general. The whole point of this debate for me is really to analytically flesh out the issues involved in these tough scenarios, so we may be fortunate enough to figure out exactly what “side we are on” and why BEFORE those tough choices actually present themselves. Then, the choices won’t be so tough anymore.

    #4210
    Surly1
    Member

    ashvin post=3845 wrote: [quote=Surly1 post=3843][quote=scandia post=3842]There is blood on my hands if I resist, there is blood on my hands if I comply.

    Precisely the point I hoped to address by what I wrote in the article above, now obscured by the haze of battle between Ashvin and RE:

    I apologize for that haze, because I do agree with your guys’ underlying point that most people are facing very tough choices here either way. Although, that does remind me of something a very good poker player taught me (paraphrased) – “The best players aren’t great because they make lot of tough choices correctly when playing their hands, but rather because they play their hands in ways that allow them to avoid making tough choices down the line”.

    That may not make a lot of sense if you are unfamiliar with poker, but it really applies to life in general. The whole point of this debate for me is really to analytically flesh out the issues involved in these tough scenarios, so we may be fortunate enough to figure out exactly what “side we are on” and why BEFORE those tough choices actually present themselves. Then, the choices won’t be so tough anymore.

    Apologize for nothing, Ashvin. The discussion between you and RE (accompanied as it is by the smell of cordite– or is that brimstone?) carries as much light as heat, particularly towards exploring the dark corners of these issues. And for those of us inclined to follow it, here and at the Diner, it pays provocative and useful dividends. Considerations like OMMP don’t cross the minds of most people; yet OMMP is a thought experiment that causes us to question our (generally unexamined) personal ethics.

    What concerns me is that in a time where people have little faith in authority and existing institutions (churches being characterized by fundamentalist megachurch overreach or by pederasts in clerical collars, universities by the Jerry Sanduskys of the world, and government a gaggle of bought-and-paid-for fellators of the corporate state), we are ethically/morally unprepared and have no where to turn for guidance. Save for the ethics of the corporate state, which IMHO, are indistinguishable from those of Satan: make more, spend less, devil take the hindmost. Very much unlike what we find in Matthew.

    Difficult to imagine a OMMP that doesn’t unfold like Kosovo or Rwanda, where one’s choice is framed by The Other: “Join us, or Oppose Us.” I sincerely believe that it is a very thin veneer of civilization that holds society in place, and absent the grid and/or the rule of law, it’s “Lord of the Flies” time.

    Your point about poker is well made. My poker playing skills are such that, when I sit down to a game, I may as well hand my wallet to my fellow players. To follow your analogy, playing your cards well early to avoid tough choices involves knowing the odds. Not sure the odds are knowable at this time. Collapse is coming; do we play for an intermediate term, or go all in now?

    #4211
    ashvin
    Participant

    Surly1 post=3846 wrote: Your point about poker is well made. My poker playing skills are such that, when I sit down to a game, I may as well hand my wallet to my fellow players. To follow your analogy, playing your cards well early to avoid tough choices involves knowing the odds. Not sure the odds are knowable at this time. Collapse is coming; do we play for an intermediate term, or go all in now?

    Well that’s kind of the point of everything we discuss on these forums, right? To figure out the “odds” of how this particular collapse will play out. That’s exactly what you do in a poker game, except it’s obviously much easier in comparison. Here’s an example:

    A player raises 4x the big blind in early position, and you have AT (ace-ten) on the button. So now you are faced with a decision – fold, call, or raise. To make the best decision here, you must figure out the “odds” involved. That’s not as easy as it sounds, though. It involves a lot of factors, such as what kind of hands the other player is capable of raising with (and that depends on his playing style, his betting patterns, recent action at the table, etc.), who else is in the pot, what kind of equity your AT has against the range of hands the raiser has, what the effective stack sizes are, and a couple other more minor variables. And of all that is just to make a decision before the next betting round – you have to do the same thing on every betting round. BUT, making good decisions on the first betting round could make your decisions on the later ones much easier (although that fact alone is not what makes the first decision good)

    So going back to the issue at hand, let’s say that the strains of thought in every comment within this debate represent a betting round. That means we have thousands and thousands more betting rounds to play before the game totally collapses. One of our goals, then, is to choose the strains of thoughts we engage wisely right now so that we may have easier decisions later. Some strains of thought need to be folded right now out of the gate, while others can be entertained to varying degrees.

    Using this analogy, I would say the spiritual strain of thought is really the one that makes our decisions the easiest later. It’s almost analogous to folding every hand on the first betting round, i.e. there are essentially NO tough decisions to be made later. We already know how we will deal with every choice we are presented with in the future, at least in theory. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right move to make, though, based on the all of the complex factors involved. Sometimes leaving yourself with only easy decisions isn’t the best way to play your hands… it all depends.

    #4212

    ashvin post=3844 wrote:
    You really need to stop quoting everything from the Bible completely out of context as if that has any meaning.

    I see. If I pull a quote from the Bible, it is out of context. If you pull a quote from the Bible it is in context.

    Damn, RE, sounds like you really want to start some kind of Fourth Reich here and exterminate ALL of us.

    No, just Pigmen. 🙂

    You may think you understand WHY people have various faiths and what exactly those faiths entail, but I don’t think you really do, based on your numerous misrepresentations of the most popularized (and bastardized) one in Western culture – the Christian faith.

    JYHO.

    Right, Jesus recognized all of these things before you and I ever did – that many people would begin practicing the faith as hypocrites and throw out trite nuggets of His wisdom from time to time. But He told His true believers not to do that, and to always remember when they pray in solace – “Our Father which art in heaven… Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven” and “…if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”.

    The Lord’s Prayer! In context by the world renowned expert on Christian belief structure, Dr. Watson! Gimmee a break.

    Your very premise that humanity faces inevitable extinction without the OMMP is ridiculous in their minds, and, no, they are not ignoring the evidence that you are considering. Like I said before, they realize all the evil being perpetrated today, and the various economic, social, environmental and militaristic calamities we face across the world. That actually gives them even MORE confidence in their faith.

    If you don’t accept the premise, you have a lot more room for maneuvering.

    RE

    #4213

    Surly1 post=3846 wrote: Your point about poker is well made. My poker playing skills are such that, when I sit down to a game, I may as well hand my wallet to my fellow players. To follow your analogy, playing your cards well early to avoid tough choices involves knowing the odds. Not sure the odds are knowable at this time. Collapse is coming; do we play for an intermediate term, or go all in now?

    I will run the Chess analogy on this one later tonight. No time now to flesh that one out.

    Suffice it to say here that Poker always has the element of Chance involved, whereas Chess never does.

    RE

    #4216
    ashvin
    Participant

    Reverse Engineer post=3849 wrote: [quote=ashvin post=3844]
    I see. If I pull a quote from the Bible, it is out of context. If you pull a quote from the Bible it is in context.

    Well, seeing as how I provided you with the book, chapter and all the surrounding verses of the relevant statements… yeah, a lot more context was provided than “go forth and multiply”. Believe it or not, context is absolutely critical for determining the meaning conveyed by anything communicated in any form.

    “Be fruitful and multiply” or some version of that appears several places in the Bible. The first instance is in Genesis 1 after Adam and Eve were created:

    26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

    Hmmm, so let’s see… God creates two human beings on Earth and then tells them to multiply so they can populate it and govern over it in His name. Sounds pretty logical to me. Either way, it has absolutely nothing to do with our current issues of over-population thousands of years later. God didn’t tell them to keep multiplying forever until there were no resources left to sustain the human population. You can easily go through every instance that phrase is used in the Bible with online software and figure out what the context is, and therefore the actual meaning/message conveyed in that context…

    Of course, sometimes to determine the meaning you will have to compare one part of the Bible [or any written document] with another part that is similar or being referenced, or understand the historical time period in which something is being said or taking place, or the beliefs structures that were in place, or the literary device that is being employed, or how certain spelling/grammar is used in the relevant language, or…

    I think you get the idea.

    If you don’t accept the premise, you have a lot more room for maneuvering.

    RE

    Uh, yeah. If we DO accept the premise that No OMMP as laid out by RE = automatic extinction, then… it’s kind of difficult to argue against it. Not impossible, as I have shown with the afterlife/reincarnation arguments, but difficult. Fortunately for us, though, the premise that no OMMP equals auto extinction can be placed somewhere on a scale from ridiculous to absolutely insane.

    #4218
    steve from virginia
    Participant

    How silly,

    nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, in the long run we are all dead.

    That’s the hated Keynes, you know.

    Getting from where we are to where it is we need to go isn’t going to be easy, but if we can put a man on the Moon …

    Easier and more effective to start getting rid of the consumer goods in your lives: cars, tvs, gadgets, ‘life savers’, RVs, vacation homes, and the debts that go with these things. People believe they can solve problems by going to the store and buying something, what is needed in this world is all the things that cannot be found in any store: character, discipline, restraint, humility.

    As for solving anything by ‘direct action’. Not likely to be effective but certainly will cause a lot of unnecessary suffering to third parties. Better to address economic problems with better economics, social problems with better social policies and more justice rather than arbitrary reaction.

    Direct action is just another bailout …

    #4219
    Patrick
    Member

    I haven’t yet finished reading the comments but when I do I’ll post my own–which will, of course, settle everything. (do I need to add a smiley face?)

    But I have a question for everyone. Do you believe there is an actual “Illuminati” or some such organization of elites? Personally, I tend not to, although I’m sure that groups of the elite do get together to advance their interests. Followup question: could it be possible that TPTB, for want of a better term, would like to organize a die–off of the great mass of people to obtain a world where the scarce resources will last much longer with just them and a small percentage of professionals they require to use them? Again, I don’t believe that, or more accurately, I have no evidence for that but I can’t help but wonder sometimes if a bunch of the 1% are planning just that.

    #4220

    Watson often likes to use metaphors from Poker when analysing the collapse dynamic, since Poker is his Game. Simlarly, I like to use Chess metaphors, since Chess is my game. So I will explore this a bit with this post.

    In some regards Poker might be considered the better metaphor, if you accept that there is an element of chance involved in all the decisions being made along the way in the game. If you take into account such things as Natural Disasters like the Sendai Quake or Katrina, you can make the case that some aspects of the collapse are governed by chance.

    However, on the Financial level and structural societal level of building an Industrial Culture, no chance was ever involved in that. A series of Moves were made early on in the game to gain a much stronger position for Black here, Black being a representation for the Illuminati/Elite of society. White representing J6P is very much backed into a corner here now and Black controls most of the board.

    Conventional tactics can no longer play a Winning Game for White. However, White still does have a few Pieces in play like the OWS Castle, the Boys in Black Pajamas (Anarchists) Knights, and Bishop Bloggers, handling the Keyboard is Mightier than the AR-15 aspect of the Propaganda battle. White also has many more Pawns on the board than Black does, and remember in this Chess game you aren’t limited to 64 Squares and only 8 Pawns. Much bigger Numbers we are dealing with here, but still it is not a random game of Chance, rather a game of Strategy and Position.

    What is White to do here? Given the Numbers differential, Sacrificing a few Pawns likely can recapture a portion of the Board. this can give the Castle of OWS room to maneuver, and give the Boys in Black Pajamas Anarchist Knights cover from which to operate. Together, they can hopefully open a Column to Advance a Pawn to the 8th Rank and Queen that Pawn.

    Once White has a new Queen on the Board, the advantage that Black has here is substantially reduced. Again though, since we are working with much greater numbers and a Global chessboard, you are really talking about many Pawns being Sacrificed in order for a few Queens to be made in the game.

    In Chess or in Poker, there is only one Goal, which is to WIN. No concern in either game about Ethics, Morals or an Afterlife. If you clutter up your betting in a Poker game with thoughts about the fact if you Bankrupt one of the other players his kids might go Hungry, its going to affect your betting. You can’t do that if you want to Win the Game. Simlarly in Chess, if you feel sorry for the other player because he is a bit dimwitted and makes some stupid moves, if you let him go and don’t capitalize on those errors, you also don’t win. You see an Error, BAM you hit him with everything you got and capitalize on the error.

    This debate here is of course cluttered up with many arguments about morality and ethics, and because of that developing a Winning Strategy for the Game here, Poker or Chess is quite impossible. Neither game takes morals and ethics into consideration, so they are not good metaphors to use as long as that is part of the argument.

    In the final analysis here for me though, because of the nature of the collapse, morals and ethics are becoming ever less a part of the game we play on the World Stage. Clearly, the Illuminati are not sticking to any Code of Law here, so if J6P continues to stick to some abstract set of principles that the Illuminati are NOT sticking to, he is going to lose this battle.

    In the creation of a new society and a Better tomorrow, having Good Ethics and a solid Moral Structure is important for the health of the society. Perhaps the biggest problem we have now is that pretty much since Ag became the social meme, we have not had either good ethics or good morality. Unfortunately here, to establish better ones, we first have to Win this Game as it stands, and only unconventional tactics can do that now.

    Play to Win.

    RE
    https://www.doomsteaddiner.org

    #4223

    Over in the Parallel Thread on the Diner, in response to my Holmes & Watson article, Watson dropped on a clip from the film Se7en. In it, Watson identifies my character as Brad Pitt, his as Morgan Freeman, and the Illuminati as Kevin Spacey.

    I’m going to paste across this aspect of the debate from the Diner. Pain in the ass reformatting all of it, but worthwhile in this case I think.

    First from Watson, responding to the Holmes & Watson article.

    RE wrote:
    I turned this one into a Feature Article on the Blog, Holmes and Watson. Added a fairly lengthy Intro to it as well to explain the dynamic I see going down here between Ashvin and myself.

    Ash, you are Watson now forever more on the pages of DD. 😉

    RE

    That works. But if we want to get QUITE specific with our cinematic references here, given the deep strains of Christian spirituality running through our debate, we’d have to go with the movie Se7en. Remember the box scene?? You are Brad Pitt, and I am Morgan Freeman (Kevin Spacey is the Illuminati, i.e. Satan). Give me the gun, RE, give me the gun…

    Spoiler alert for those who missed it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1giVzxyoclE&feature=player_embedded

    Response to this from Holmes:

    Ashvin wrote:

    That works. But if we want to get QUITE specific with our cinematic references here, given the deep strains of Christian spirituality running through our debate, we’d have to go with the movie Se7en. Remember the box scene?? You are Brad Pitt, and I am Morgan Freeman (Kevin Spacey is the Illuminati, i.e. Satan). Give me the gun, RE, give me the gun…

    Good scene selection there Watson. You should drop it in the Favorite Film clips archive also.

    Thing is here, Brad Pitt seems to have a lot of moral anguish over pumping Kevin Spacey full of lead. Why? I gather from the clip (I did not see the movie) that Spacey Decapitated Pitt’s wife and killed the unborn baby at the same time. Seems to me like that warrants a lead injection.

    Far as Morgan is concerned, what is his motivation here? To keep Brad from going to Jail for killing Kevin? The idea here being we should wait for the “Law”, aka Da Goobermint to punish Kevin? What if the “Law” isn’t doing that? Are we supposed to wait for God to drop down here and administer Justice? What?

    RE

    Watson replies with this:

    RE wrote:
    Good scene selection there Watson. You should drop it in the Favorite Film clips archive also.

    Thing is here, Brad Pitt seems to have a lot of moral anguish over pumping Kevin Spacey full of lead. Why? I gather from the clip (I did not see the movie) that Spacey Decapitated Pitt’s wife and killed the unborn baby at the same time. Seems to me like that warrants a lead injection.

    Far as Morgan is concerned, what is his motivation here? To keep Brad from going to Jail for killing Kevin? The idea here being we should wait for the “Law”, aka Da Goobermint to punish Kevin? What if the “Law” isn’t doing that? Are we supposed to wait for God to drop down here and administer Justice? What?

    Basically, Spacey was going around killing people who committed one of the “seven deadly sins” (which are really just a fiction of the Catholic Church in terms of a separate category of sins). In that way, he was kind of like an Orkin Man himself, allegedly doing God’s work against these sinners. But it becomes clear that he’s actually a lot more like Satan… trying to convince others that he IS God, and trying to undermine God’s word by testing the Faith of Brad Pitt. He is a very clever and deceptive character.

    In my view, Morgan is concerned with the fact that, if Pitt executes Spacey right there, then the Devil has won by definition. Pitt would have abandoned God to satisfy his need for vengeance for his wife and unborn child (which, ironically, is a deadly sin). Now that I think about it, I’m not sure who fits the Orkin Man role better here, Pitt or Spacey. Pitt is only killing one truly evil person who has killed others (or perhaps one person who was inhabited by an evil spirit), but the Devil in Spacey kills a bunch of innocent people who have only committed what he considers to be sins worthy of capital punishment, as well as the wife and child just to accomplish his ultimate goal…

    I don’t know, tough call.

    Holmes pulls out the Heavy Artillery: And Justice for All

    Ashvin wrote:
    In my view, Morgan is concerned with the fact that, if Pitt executes Spacey right there, then the Devil has won by definition. Pitt would have abandoned God to satisfy his need for vengeance for his wife and unborn child (which, ironically, is a deadly sin). Now that I think about it, I’m not sure who fits the Orkin Man role better here, Pitt or Spacey. Pitt is only killing one truly evil person who has killed others (or perhaps one person who was inhabited by an evil spirit), but the Devil in Spacey kills a bunch of innocent people who have only committed what he considers to be sins worthy of capital punishment, as well as the wife and child just to accomplish his ultimate goal…

    I don’t know, tough call.

    Tough Call? OMFG. Its this kind of insane logic that got us into this mess.

    Spacey doesn’t “Win” when Pitt fills him full of Lead, he LOSES. He’s DEAD. Dead=Lose here.

    Imagine if Brad hands over the Gun to Morgan, and they cuff Kevin and take him off to the Courthouse. If this is today’s world, Kevin hires the best lawyers and Walks, just like all the Banksters do. This is Justice? This is a good result for Brad, who had the opportunity before he foolishly hands his weapon over to asshole Morgan to send Spacey straight to fucking HELL where he belongs?

    THIS is why Banksters and CEOs can go around killing not just a few folks like Kevin did, but MILLIONS of them. They know they can GET AWAY with it because jackasses like Morgan are too namby pamby to hand out a worthwhile Punishment that fits the Crime. The worst thing the Bankster faces is maybe a few years in a cushy Federal Pen for White Collar Scumbags.

    You gotta get your head screwed on straight here Ashvin. Kevin is a SCUMBAG who DESERVES TO DIE. Brad did not Lose when he filled Kevin full of Lead, he WON. It would have been a better Win if he found Kevin BEFORE his wife got decapitated, but this was the next best thing afterward. Letting that scumbag LIVE is LOSING.

    If I was St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and Brad had let Kevin live, I would slam the doors shut on him. He does not deserve Everlasting Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven. He had the CHANCE to Exterminate some Evil and passed it up. This is not Everlasting Glory meritable.

    Reminds me of the closing scene in “And Justice For All”. Classic Pacino.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0oo-gF3bwFI

    So where do YOU stand on this one? Should Brad(RE/Holmes) have handed his Gun over to Morgan (Asvin/Watson) and let Kevin (Illuminati/Bankster) live?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    RE

    #4226
    ashvin
    Participant

    Reverse Engineer post=3861 wrote:
    Tough Call? OMFG. Its this kind of insane logic that got us into this mess.

    Spacey doesn’t “Win” when Pitt fills him full of Lead, he LOSES. He’s DEAD. Dead=Lose here.

    Sorry, RE, but you totally missed the point of the reference here (perhaps because you have not even seen the movie). I specifically chose Se7en because of the obvious themes of Christian faith running through it. Kevin Spacy represents the Devil, and is possessed by one of his demonic spirits. When Pitt ends the life of Spacey, the spirit WINS… and then it simply moves on to seek another physical body in which it can undermine God. That is how it works in Judeo-Christian theology. I would not have chosen that reference if I knew we were just going to skip that plainly obvious aspect of it altogether and focus on the American legal system…

    If I was St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and Brad had let Kevin live, I would slam the doors shut on him. He does not deserve Everlasting Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven. He had the CHANCE to Exterminate some Evil and passed it up. This is not Everlasting Glory meritable.

    In actuality, sticking to the spirit of the reference here, God would look at Pitt and say something like… “you were tempted by the Devil to commit sin, just like Eve in the Garden, and you failed the test, just like she did. You spent an entire lifetime searching for Me and let all the fruits of your hard work slip away in that one moment of rage. Therefore, you never knew me and you must depart”

    If YOU were the Ultimate Decider in Heaven, then the Judeo-Christian faith and God’s plan for humanity would be rendered meaningless…. But, hey, at least people would get to play out their revenge fantasies on Earth without any spiritual consequences.

    #4227
    Patrick
    Member

    RE there’s a problem when you argue by metaphor or analogy in that, in this case, neither poker nor chess are an exact fit for our situation. And it is around the edges that the analogy falls down. The problem with arguing that morality must be put aside in order to win and then be picked up once the battle’s over is that, once discarded, morality and ethics are rarely if ever picked up again.

    Having said that I do believe lopping off the head of the monster’s quite justified. The problem is identifying the monster.

    #4231

    Patrick post=3866 wrote: RE there’s a problem when you argue by metaphor or analogy in that, in this case, neither poker nor chess are an exact fit for our situation. And it is around the edges that the analogy falls down. The problem with arguing that morality must be put aside in order to win and then be picked up once the battle’s over is that, once discarded, morality and ethics are rarely if ever picked up again.

    I pointed out this problem in my commentary:

    RE wrote: This debate here is of course cluttered up with many arguments about morality and ethics, and because of that developing a Winning Strategy for the Game here, Poker or Chess is quite impossible. Neither game takes morals and ethics into consideration, so they are not good metaphors to use as long as that is part of the argument.

    Far as the difficulty of Rebooting a Moral Structure once the old one goes Blue Screen of Death, agreed that is not an easy task and doesn’t happen overnight either. The issue here with current morality is it has ALREADY been put aside by Black. They are not playing by the Rules. Their Knights aren’t limited to 2 squares up 1 square over, anytime they like they can go 2 squares up and 2 over or 3:1 or in fact whatever the fuck they want to do. Given this FACT, you gotta pitch out your rules also.

    Having said that I do believe lopping off the head of the monster’s quite justified. The problem is identifying the monster.

    See the “And Justice for All” clip. I don’t think it is all that hard to identify the monster here.

    “The Son of a Bitch is GUILTY and should go STRAIGHT to Fucking Jail! He RAPED her and he’d like to do it again! He TOLD me so!”

    The TEPCO and BP Executives tell you this every day. And they’ll keep right on Raping Mother Earth until SOMEBODY gets REALLY FUCKING PISSED OFF here.

    RE

    #4235
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Wow!

    Seriously, I’m blown away by this article as it hits the nail on the head HARD. Simply a great, great read that I’m grateful for.

    It’s a damn tough call what to do when pushed in a corner. “Peace, love, dope” sounds Hunky Dory until you start starving. Or even before that with the thrilling, delicious thoughts of stringing up banksters, lawyers & politicians. Yummmmmm….oh boy.

    Again, I really enjoyed it and most sincere thanks to all involved.

    #4241

    bshirt post=3876 wrote: Wow!

    Seriously, I’m blown away by this article as it hits the nail on the head HARD. Simply a great, great read that I’m grateful for.

    It’s a damn tough call what to do when pushed in a corner. “Peace, love, dope” sounds Hunky Dory until you start starving. Or even before that with the thrilling, delicious thoughts of stringing up banksters, lawyers & politicians. Yummmmmm….oh boy.

    Again, I really enjoyed it and most sincere thanks to all involved.

    From my end of the debate, thanks BS.

    Also, this post now brings posting in the thread here to Triple digits!

    There is even more and continuing apace over on the Doomstead Diner

    RE

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