One Inch Below The Surface (America, You're Being Punked)
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Artwork: Ilargi for The Automatic Earth We've sort of run out of ways to describe the skewed perceptions and/or skewed realities of the politico-f
[See the full post at: One Inch Below The Surface (America, You're Being Punked)]Why, Ilargi, I think you are becoming a Voluntaryist. A “Free Thinker” as it were.
Got to “cultivate our own gardens.” Anyone who leans toward state solutions, is advocating the use of force to fulfill his own agenda.
https://www.voluntaryist.com/howibecame/alexknight.html#.UOyN62ddATA
The next thing you’ll hear is they’ll mint 1piece One Trillion dollar coin, designed by headless chickens in their lucid dreams phase, and manufactured by Santa’s Elves from the (nowadays) easily accessible material called Handwavium-FinitusEst-ium.
Oh, wait…nevermind…We know that financial institutions have to go, but here’s the big question: should industrial society be thrown into the waste bin? Stoneleigh? Ilargi?
Ken Barrows post=6439 wrote: We know that financial institutions have to go, but here’s the big question: should industrial society be thrown into the waste bin? Stoneleigh? Ilargi?
Not speaking for I&S, but:
1. Financial institutions WILL go, regardless of what they/we want.
2. If someone comes up with a way to continue building The Pyramids (extremely large capital-eating projects) without using slaves or deferring the slaves to a future generation, I’m all ears. And I’m talking strictly pragmatical capital here, not ecology.
Anyone?There is only one answer.
Today, a chocolate bar costs, $1.00.
I remember when that chocolate bar cost $0.05.
Boil baby boil.
(If you don’t understand what I’m saying, read the archives of the AE.)
Glutton: I’d like to order a cake for my birthday.
Baker: I’d be happy to bake one, but you never paid for last year’s cake, or the one before that.
Glutton: Details! Mix that batter before I get angry.
Baker: I couldn’t even if I wanted to. There isn’t enough sugar left in the pantry.
Glutton: Then make it with Splenda and tell me it’s sugar.
Baker: Only if you promise not to burn down my store.
Glutton: I’ll pretend to enjoy it and you pretend we’re even.
Baker: Deal.
“2. If someone comes up with a way to continue building The Pyramids (extremely large capital-eating projects) without using slaves”
I’ll kick that up a notch.
There will be slaves and masters as long as there are governments. The more consent granted by the governed (slaves), the more intense the control over them.
Not to worry, they will provide you with just enough calories to maintain minimum productivity, as long as you cooperate.
Ilargi, we’ll all be terrorists before too long. The right of free speech is the right to be named a thought criminal, a wrecker, and a reactionary. The right to bear arms is the right to be labeled a violent terrorist.
We are all fucked. But the most superficial study of history shows that the gain of the whole world at the price of one’s soul is still a bad bargain. Life is a fleeting shadow, and we all are like grass, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown in the oven. I’ll keep my integrity, thank you very much. The worst that the Statists can do to me is torment me and then kill me. I’ll see them at the judgment seat of God.
Ilargi – “Like, where’s the media attention for the reports about the FBI, Homeland Security, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Domestic Security Alliance Council and the Federal Reserve all teaming up with Wall Street banks to bring down the Occupy movement?”
You make further important points.
Free speech = being a terrorist.
“the state apparatus serves those who hold the power and the money”
CIA nominee John Brennan = Dr. DroneLast fall some local cities wanted to buy armoured vehicles and even paraded them at the last few Occupy rallies. Berkeley voted down armoured vehicles.(Though I expect some city nearby has managed to keep one of the free samples they got from HLS. What are they to do with all the equipment and personel brought home from Iraq?)
I can only hope (hopium?, anyone?) that the Alameda County (Oakland is one of the cities in the county)Board of Supervisors realizes that the Occupy movement is “watching” them back. We are alert to the possiblility that the Sheriff’s Dept wants to divert prisoner re-entry money from community service groups to use to fill the budget gap. Guess what they want to buy? Drones!!!
I went to their meeting yesterday due to an email from one of the Occupy group lists I’m on. Now I’ll be watching them too. I think it can go both ways. I know I’m likely to be on their list of “subversives”, but I cannot quietly ignore the direction they are likely to head. It wouldn’t take too much for a full blown Occupation of the Alameda Co BOS, like we did to the Oakland City BOS. The People will show up again when they try to buy drones. They claim there will be a discussion open to community comments.
Our time will come.
But guns won’t be necessary. Just ask Ghandi.
How does one create alternatives?
It is very difficult,and needs to already be in process.
Going back down the economic ladder, to places where people eat from their gardens and don’t have so live without industrial fuel, food and technology, is the key (I think).
Oh, and you have to be directly useful to the community of resourceful poor people you have gone to join.
Speaking the language helps.Hi Folks,
We’ve sort of run out of ways to describe the skewed perceptions and/or skewed realities of the politico-financial world we inhabit. Metaphors like Bizarro World, Kabuki theater and Theater of the Absurd have come and long gone and are now used only by those who missed out first time around.
If anyone is in any doubt as to just how “skewed” are the realities of economics they should read Steve Keen’s “Debunking Economics”, it shows just how unrealistic and downright delusional the current economic model is based as it is on nonsensical maths, but also shows just how human nature works in terms of supporting these delusional ideas: people believe in these flawed ideas just as they believe any other religious notion. So I guess “first time round” would have to be way back when humans ever started believing made up mythologies as true. The emperor truly does have no clothes… and throughout history never has.
L,
Sid.I hadn’t been here for awhile, but this is an excellent recap of what’s actually going down. During the presidential campaign, I was just thinking about how 6 months can be spent campaigning while never talking about a single relevant issue—-not one single one. I didn’t vote and the way things are set up, most people arrive by design at the voting booth either fearful or angry and that’s wholly a function of media manipulation. I liken the current political/economic situation to a WWF match where either side sees the other one with the brass knuckles hitting their guy when the referee has his head turned. Of course, the press tells you what you’re seeing during the match. The only difference between the WWF and American politics is that observers of the latter don’t realize it’s fake. I do and that’s why I couldn’t vote. We are being given nothing to make real decisions on other than emotions.
I don’t doubt that the level of repression will escalate. OWS was a non-violent movement, but the real issue here is the desire to kill and snuff out ideas; the sort of ideas that raise questions about wealth disparity, undue influence of monied interests and the fact that the political class, having been bought lock, stock and barrel, haven’t represented people for decades. Everywhere one looks, there’s a sense of a information desert and that’s increasingly the case with the internet as well. Yes, we live in a world of lies and half truths.
A review of the news:
California balances its budget and sees a surplus in 2013.
Nikkei 225 index surges ~ 20% in 2 months.
S&P 500 is at 5 year high
Yield on peripheral European debt is low and on a downward trend.
It seems these factors would merit some kind of commentary.
The National Debt Is A Millstone Hung Around Our Neck https://chartistfriendfrompittsburgh.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-national-debt-is-millstone-hung.html
Thanks Ilargi, a great piece of writing! The disconnect between modern man and reality seems complete. We run out of epithets, metaphors fail us, words gasp for air; Orwell would have felt right at home. Fake candidates running for a fake presidency? Philip K Dick is grinning in his grave.
But you’d never know it. Here in Auckland, property prices are flaring like Aussie bush fires, highest prices since 2008… gives me the shivers. Our old friend the Dow Jones is still a thousand points off its pre-crash heights but it’s struggling for a double top. Coyote is on acid, his feet peddling the air, apparently forever – he hasn’t looked down yet. Meanwhile there’s a climate on steroids about to sock a hard ball to Coyote. What we thought of as ‘reality’ is morphing into a B Grade movie.
Tell me straight, Ilargi, how long can this go on? How long can the markets hope to squeeze more money out of what’s left of the public purse by austerity measures, sinking lids, and beating people, and the environment, to pulp? Couldn’t this just keep on going until we have a condition of absolute slavery? Abolishing all wages would give that old market a rocket boost! Then we’d be reloading our metaphors…
Best of the new year to you all at TAE
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