Surly1
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“Many people who are otherwise extremely pessimistic about the current world-system and its effects on human civilization have found refuge in the idea that we are entering a “New Age” of human existence. It may be initially characterized by pockets of chaos and upheaval, but it will end with a radical spiritual transformation that results from the natural evolution of human consciousness.”
Until such time as we are able to replace the current prevailing cultural narrative (such as the eternal truth that monetary profit is the highest, and best good and the only one worth pursuing) with a new set of stories, then what comes after the collapse is likely to be nasty, brutish, and familiar.
Good that someone with legal training and ability is able to track this case with all of its pernicious potential consequences.
For my money (admittedly not much), these were the most chilling words I’ve read all day:
“. . . decentralization is nothing more than a slogan for radical centralization of wealth/power, and the non-existent rule of law in “civilized” countries such as the U.S. We should not be fooled into thinking that the federal courts, U.S. Congress or the federal executive/administrative agencies are relying on the “historical and true” meaning of the U.S. Constitution in these types of situations. They are simply manipulating the Constitution to achieve their corrupt, short-term goals and combat the storm surge of decentralization.”
We often lose sight of the fact that “reframing” and redefinition of terminology is often the first way that the “slippery slope” gets its grease.
And thus the nut of it:
“Is there really such a distance between the hardcore rap lyrics that incite violence and the entertainment industry that nurtures them? Or between Hollywood violence and extreme violence on the web and in computer games designed along Silicon Valley? What if rage killing were actually an affirmation of – not a ‘rebellion’ against – American culture?”
IN the late 60s, H. Rap Brown was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and for a short time served as Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party. He was best known for saying, “violence is as American as cherry pie,” which outraged– OUTRAGED!!– middle America.
Since we know no history, see no history, and learn no history (Gore Vidal once famously referred to this country as “The United States of Amnesia,” we forget or ignore the fact that the land we walk on, live on and endlessly subdivide for profit was purchased with blood, mostly that of native peoples. To say nothing of the war crimes committed daily against native peoples around the world in defense of the Happy Motoring lifestyle.
Our media culture glorifies violence, and every decade or so, the violence incipient in this culture comes storming home. Note the story management by the MSM to avoid calling the killer a “terrorist.” David Sirota in Salon today:
“Not surprisingly, police and reporters have been quick to tell us the opposite — that the suspected shooter was likely just a ‘lone wolf’ and that ‘this act does not appear to be linked to radical terrorism or anything related to Islamic terrorism,’ as ABC News put it. This newspeak is supposed to reassure us that this is anything but terrorism — that terrorism is something that happens only in faraway places or huge cosmopolitan cities, not in an Anytown, USA, in the American heartland; that terrorism never comes at the hands of a ’24-year-old white American male’ named ‘James Holmes’; it comes only at the hands of dark-skinned “evildoers” with hard-to-pronounce names; that terrorism comes only from calculating operatives who represent organized political interests, not from “crazy” individuals who calculatedly act on their own ideology or psychopathy. In this, we are expected to be sedated by such reassurances, to ignore the ever-growing list of such “lone wolves,” and to reject a much wider definition of terrorism, no matter how much the reality of shooting after shooting after shooting screams at us to accept it.”ashvin post=4285 wrote: [quote=Surly1 post=4281]I do not I’m sure a lot of charismatic leaders will emerge promising exactly those things in upcoming years, and some of them may even scapegoat what seem to be all the “right people”, but we shouldn’t believe any of them. I think those things will only come through the strength of individuals, and whatever communities they can manage to forge and sustain.
We are always well advised to beware “men on horseback” promising easy fixes.
Ashvin: “But regardless of what we choose to call it, we must remember that 99%+ of humanity occupies the same boat here – there is no use trying to scapegoat one segment over another through the political process. // The political machinations of nation-states are all but dead now; only the natural sovereignty of individuals and their local communities remain.”
We already see the “freedom” and “liberty” people trying to set up the phony dualism of “makers” versus “takers.” The next gambit is intergenerational warfare, or “throw granny off the ventilator.”
I do not understand your last statement, though:”The political machinations of nation-states are all but dead now; only the natural sovereignty of individuals and their local communities remain.” The nation-state retains an impressive array of tools to coerce and prod the public. The point of the last graph seems to be that we are all in the same boat, and we shouldn’t blame one another… so what do you mean?
Great rant, and well done. The problem is that those on this board (and others) already know the score, that every public utterance is either marketing or spin. The challenge is, how to create a greater awareness on the part of those beyond this charmed circle?
I am reminded of a quote attributed to Will Rogers, along the lines of “It is hard to get a man to understand something when his living depends on his not understanding it.”
skipbreakfast post=3966 wrote: [quote=Reverse Engineer post=3954]At least over on the Diner we don’t CENSOR posts and BAN members[…]for speaking their minds and asking questions, or even just for being persistently annoying either.
REThe notion that it’s censorship to delete or block comments on a blog is entirely specious. In the democratized landscape of the Internet, one has all the power in the world to take one’s unpopular or downright vile words to a blog all your own. For free. You yourself RE have started your own blog, and it sounds like it’s growing like cancer. That’s the antithesis of censorship, mate.
You are mistaken, skipbreakfast. It is EXACTLY censorship. And “growing like cancer? As Ashvin himself might cite in Matthew 24, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” And by the way, I read the thread, and have failed to find the “downright vile” words you cite. Just an insistent, if off-base question.
You sound like another enforcer of the prevailing groupthink. I have some firsthand experience of my own from being beset by a rabble of brownshirt Republiconfederates on another blog.
skipbreakfast post=3966 wrote: Just take your keyboard somewhere else and say whatever you want and accept the consequences.
In a word, no. And nor should anyone on this board. If you are not in favor of free speech for one, you are really not in favor of free speech for anyone. My own take on this is that the banned poster was banned not so much for this instance, but for her history on this page, her “body of work, ” if you will. She asked a somewhat misguided question, which I thought Stoneleigh answered with great poise and patience. And then, *poof!* Into the gulag.
An action unworthy of this greatly respected and estimable blog, IMO.
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?
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.
To the extent that “a picture is worth ten thousand words” the graphic used to illustrate this post is simply perfect.
pansceptic post=3816 wrote: Jal, I’m currently also thinking along the lines DNA being a big part of humanity’s problems.
This neighbor suggested that Selco join them, saying this would be his golden opportunity to “do what he had always wanted to do”!
//
I would sure support an Orkin Man who could take this segment of the population out of the gene pool; they are the ones who are drawn like moths to positions of economic, political, or religious power so they can do “what they always wanted to do”.
I think my article–not RE’s– points out that is precisely this sort of psychopath who self-anoints as “The Orkin Man.” When law and order break down, you may rest assured it will be the psychopaths, many uniformed police among them, who will terrorize the countryside. Who will stop them? To what extent will we go to stop them?
As to a basic sickness in (American) or western society, I was moved by a reference to “wetiko,” or cannibal culture encountered in Thom Hartmann’s book “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.” The natives watched in wonder as the whites consumed everything they encountered, like so many locusts in a wheat field, or ants stripping a carcass. Ultimately, it is the “unlimited growth” paradigm that is at the heart of the sickness that afflicts our souls. The ability to store surplus starts with agriculture; perhaps Jared Diamond was right.
RE and others mock the Bible and Christian tenets, which is their prerogative. Organized religion makes it easy; barely a week goes by without some loudmouth fundy making mock of what the Prince of Peace actually is attributed to have said. I am reminded of what Gandhi said about Christianity: “I like your Christ very much. Your Christians are not very much like your Christ.” Sez it all. I try to live and make moral choices in some nodding acquaintance with what Jesus said. And he did indeed say, “Give us THIS day our daily bread.”
Flies right in the face of the unlimited growth paradigm, from where I sit.
TheTrivium4TW post=3759 wrote: Hi All, first of all, we *really* need to stop pretending guys like Pol Pot and Mao were doing anything for the “little people” other than dominating them for their own selfish purposes.
“Pol Pot whose efforts to form a Communist peasant farming society…”
Uh, no. Pol Pot wasn’t “Communist” any more than Hitler was “National Socialist.”
Pol Pot set up an authoritarian oligarchical dictatorship that DOMINATED the peasants they didn’t outright murder.
Second, I don’t think this is that complex – just apply the rule of law. Those people who committed fraud… including the people who set up the fraudulent Federal Reserve System societal wealth conveyance fraud…
Uh, not sure what article you were reading, as no one is “pretending” anything; I do not disagree with your conclusion– the Khmer Rouge called themselves “Communist,” a designation which proved to be as meaningful as, say, “Republican” is today. The nomenclature made no difference to those trapped in the Killing Fields.
As for “applying the rule of law,” the “law” has been bent out of shape by obliging, bought-and-paid-for legislators who peddle their souls, as well as the public trust, to the highest bidder, and who cut the legislation to order for their clients. Jail who? For what? On what legal basis? Those who fail to get with the program face limited sources of campaign cash for their re-election campaigns, plus the opprobrium of a handful of oligarchs (think Koch Brothers.)
I am reminded that the Third Reich assumed power perfectly legally as well.
GO, no problem. I go off on impassioned tangents and often bury the lead. And, if I may lapse into seriousness for a moment, leads me to touch on the (probably well-buried) point of my post–
–that we, either ourselves or our children, will be called to answer the question, “Which Side are you On?” for real at some point. Play out RE’s thought experiment, and one finds oneself wading in the blood of innocents on all sides, with no good way to respond, and no clear choice; even pacifism caries enormous, monstrous costs. One’s response is a profoundly ethical question. How will a people long inured to distraction, with little capacity for self-reflection and less moral and ethical grounding, respond in such a case?
I am grateful to Ashvin for his thoughtfulness and courage in allowing this discussion into the “big tent” of TAE. We have a rollicking good time over at the Diner with such discussions, and often employ a sort of verbal shorthand that may easily be misunderstood. Ashvin did yeoman work in attempting to provide a context for this discussion.
Golden Oxen post=3746 wrote: My personal opinion is that RE has gone off the deep end with this one, and both you and Surly, being among the brightest and respected bulbs in our meeting places, have given substance and legitimacy to this Orkin Man madness buy treating it seriously. Cynical, disillusioned with government and all of its institutions, gold hoarding crank that I have become; it is offensive to me to have the US,Europe and it’s citizen and leaders compared to Cambodia and Poll Pot. May I also object to your assertion that the end of a credit cycle and its depressing effect on the world economy, collapse as you call it, leading to this sort of mayhem is in error. The world has survived ups and downs in the business cycle with much hardship regularly, but this sort of madness arising is hardly a given. We face grave problems, no doubt about it; this sort of rhetoric is hardly the answer to them.
GO, several thoughts in response:
The Orkin man is a thought experiment, not a call to action. It is also a thought experiment with real world applications. As I noted in my opinion piece, I have gathered the stories, interviewed participants first-hand, and been impressed by the courage and resolve of the people who were obliged to answer the question, “Which side are you on?” This really happened, in this country, within the memories of people still alive, at least when I was a younger man. To say, in effect, “it can’t happen here” is both naïve and mistaken. It did.The OMMP may not happen on our watch. It may be that the conduits of energy and power will flow untrammeled for the next 50 years, which will surely see most of us out. Yet when I consider the constellation of repressive laws that have been urged on our books, from the ill named Patriot Act, through the more recent NDAA, through the suspension of posse comitatus to the declaration of the “North American battleground,” I become aware, as I noted in my article, that inferring the future from the past may no longer be a viable option. This country currently enjoys a very different legal framework from that in which we grew up. Our society, even our law enforcement agencies, are far more hardened and militarized than they ever have been. Infer from that what you will; I infer potential mischief.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: Google up the number and location of FEMA sites across the country, then construct a theory as to what they are for and how they will be deployed.
Likewise, I cite Pol Pot only as a cautionary tale, to explore the implications of the monomania that, with being the “decider” in an OMMP scenario. Again, this happened within our lifetimes, on our watch, if you will. We limited. The politics so corrosive that a state legislature has taken to outlawing the use of the word “vagina” on its floor, although that will not keep them from legislating on the subject. Are we really to think that “American exceptionalism” will save us from the depredations of some future strongman on a horse? If you believe that, allow me to refer you to an excellent book by Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, “War is a Racket”, and to Howard Zinn’s remarkable “A People’s History of the United States.”
As a self-professed Christian, I tried to apply my understanding of Christianity to my behavior and motives, with varying degrees of success. That doesn’t mean that evil doesn’t exist and isn’t at this moment hard at work while we debate this theoretical. Rust never sleeps.
