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The Powerful Feast Upon A Global House Divided
The Powerful Feast Upon A Global House Divided
By
Cognitive Dissonance
For several thousand years the rich and powerful have wielded the most effective tool know to man to control their servant populations, that of divide and conquer via mind control and social engineering. This underlying manipulation is always present as an integral part of the financial system and overall social conditioning and it usually expresses itself in the form of personal jealousy, greed and fear among the plebs. However, every three or four generations the big guns are brought to bear by the elite to strip the productive class of nearly all their social and monetary gains.
In the past this has been accomplished through various major and minor “financial panics’ as they were called in the 1800’s and depressions or recessions as they are called today. Or as the elite prefer to call the process, a reallocation and rebalancing of financial assets back to their rightful owners. And when on occasion even this fails to tame the herd or steal all a people’s wealth the rules of the game are changed, usually through massive social disruption caused by widespread and prolonged war. Once we hamsters are thoroughly disenfranchised and reprogrammed, often by fighting among ourselves over any remaining crumbs, we are set back down on our endless exercise wheel of futility to begin the process all over again.
Assuming the average Zero Hedge (ZH) reader truly understands this big picture view of the world, I find it curious that many in the ZH comment section are applauding the Egyptian resistance when they previously denigrated the European protests and rioting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears as if one group of people who have been defrauded, lied to and robbed are more worthy of our support than the other. Ultimately the difference between these two groups is not freedom verses oppression but simply the freedom to choose (or lack thereof) the model and color of our own personal hamster wheel. I sense in some of my fellow ZH plebs a superior attitude and possibly even abject jealousy regarding the actual people participating in one nation’s uprising over another instead of recognizing the similarity of the basic social resistance messages. If we would just step back from our self interested pursuits and naval gazing for a moment we might possibly see this for what it really is, an inalienable truth. We are being divided and turned upon one another and we are helping the powers that be accomplish this. Sadly the methods used are quite transparent and as old as the hills.
Our general support of the poorer Egyptians over the better off Europeans implies that the Egyptian protestors are more pure and genuine and thus worthy of our intellectual benevolence. Of course the overpaid and under worked Europeans are not deserving of the right to protest and push back against their masters. How dare those lazy good for nothing Europeans react angrily to the wholesale theft of their nation’s wealth and the austerity measures slapped in place to pay off the bills the Ponzi masters ran up while engineering financial fraud.
We shouldn’t begrudge our masters for taking their generous cut off the top for decades before the game turned into vapor and the real wealth floated away into numbered bank accounts, QE2++ inflated stock prices, off shore factories and (increasingly) stolen precious metals. After all, they earned it the old fashioned way and the slaves were cut in for a small taste. Since it’s all those generous social benefits that are pushing the financial system into the abyss and not the wholesale global financial fraud, the European slaves have nothing to complain about. Let the masters eat their cake in peace for crying out loud.
It’s almost as if we here on ZH are declaring that toiling away in the service of our various capitalist Gods for fifty or sixty hours a week for ‘real’ slave wages, disappearing fringe benefits in lieu of actual wage increases and with a pittance of vacation time actually taken, is considered the ultimate in piety to our higher powers aka the financial and social elites. Don’t we gloriously ‘free’ Americans just love to proclaim to the world that this is ‘the only way’ to monetary salvation aka consumer nirvana.
And yet somehow we believe that even though the average Egyptian is doing essentially the same thing (only they’re earning actual slave wages) that this alone supposedly endows them (and only them) with the inherent right to attempt to throw off the chains that bind. Alas, if you get past the dramatically different living standards, both Egypt and Europe are protesting the same thing, meaning official complicity in the public financing of governmental and private fraud, theft and corruption.
Pray tell what the attitude will be among us when Americans finally take to the streets. Will we make fun of anyone who shows enough balls to actually gather together and push back against the Ponzi machine? Unfortunately, despite the fact that we claim to be aware of the propaganda and manipulation machine, how we react to the protests often depends upon how the mainstream media frames the protesters combined with our own lovingly nurtured prejudices and biases. The end result of this psychological cocktail often inflames or endears the observer (meaning you and me) to what we’re seeing on the boob tube. How easily controlled and manipulated even the supposedly aware Zero Hedge flock appears to be.
Aside from the geographic location, economic maturity and methods used in The Middle East, The Far East, Asia, Europe, Africa, The Americas etc, I see little difference between the various figure head leaders and their suckling and supportive elites in their effort to rape rob and steal from the masses that populate the countries they rule. Aside from the fairy tale belief that the world’s leaders wish to make life better for the downtrodden and disadvantaged, I find every country’s cabal has a single purpose in life. And that is (for the most part) self enrichment, personal comfort and power exponentially compounded.
That being said, would someone kindly explain to me why we jeer those who fill the streets in Europe yet we cheer the Egyptians for doing precisely the same thing for essentially the same reasons? I guess it’s only OK to revolt from your masters when you’re already groveling in the dirt and live in a terror filled world called the police state. But it’s not OK if you already own a flat screen TV and you presently (but not for long) receive 6 weeks paid vacation, state paid child care and the police state is carefully hidden. It sounds like the better kept house slaves have no right to revolt, but the beaten, exploited and worn down field slaves do. Forgive me if I’m missing something in the translation here, but isn’t the unifying theme and operative word among both classes of people “slave”?
Why is it that we can’t seem to understand that an economic system can be created where everyone doesn’t need to work sixty hours a week in order to survive. We passed the point of increased productivity decades ago where we no longer need to be chained to a desk or assembly line in order to live and live well. The fact that we still are chained speaks volumes to how effectively the system is drained of its fundamental wealth one B(L)S politically expedient lie at a time. We remain chained because it remains the elite’s best method of mind control.
Real wages over the last 30 years have seriously declined while the elite’s wealth has skyrocketed, particularly when you recognize that where one spouse could comfortably provide for the family of four thirty years ago it now takes two wage slaves toiling away to support the same sized family, an often overlooked part of the “real” wage equation. The system is being (and has been) systematically bled, even destroyed, in order to enrich the few. In its place illusionary wealth called ‘credit’ has been extended to keep us deaf, dumb and blind while even more tightly bound to our intellectually customized hamster wheels.
We all seem to be experiencing a massive Cognitive Dissonance of the truly self destructive kind and it’s the most obvious indication yet that we all suffer from a terminal case of Stockholm Syndrome combined with victim-perpetrator bonding similar to battered spouse syndrome or families of the addicted. Our world has been systematically looted by a small cabal of financial and political elites over the last 30 plus years and arguably for millennium. And whether we wish to admit it or not, we haven’t put up much of a stink because we were given a small seat at the table and a few extra servings of moldy bread and watered down rum.
As long as ‘we the abused’ were compensated enough to dull the pain we allowed the abuse to continue. Repeatedly beat me about the head, then give me a dirty rag to stop the bleeding and I’ll kiss the masters feet and be eternally grateful. Now that we the abused are being dealt out of the Ponzi card game, but the abuse itself is being ratcheted up, only now do we cry foul. “Hey, where’s my dirty rag?” Worse, we are increasingly angry with our fellow wage slaves who are relatively better off (those SOB house slaves have two dirty rags, imagine that) but who are finally attacking their abusers while we are not.
Incredibly we claim the rebellious are selfish, lazy and over indulged. We condemn those uppity house (wage) slaves for reaching beyond their station in life because they aren’t satisfied with their more flexible chains and increased beatings. The truly conditioned mind, the mind of the house broken and kept slave, can never see beyond the reach of his or her own chains. The real world ends where potential freedom begins, all because we are too busy tending to our narrow belief system which demarks the extent of our reality and existence.
This is our true hamster wheel within which we are locked into the illusory, but all consuming pursuit of money, itself a state of mind and a symbol of our acceptance of the status quo every time we use it. This tool of enslavement called fiat ‘money’ has been cleverly equated to freedom, but is actually the ultimate form of bondage. I owe, I owe, so off to work I miserably go. The company store is still there, only remodeled and restocked with QE powered iGags dipped in hope and change. Yum, finger licking good!
To gaze upon another placated mind living the better life is infuriating and immediate tension and division is created by our own jealousy and greed. Natural allies are divided by the ruling elite who create intentional shortages and artificial differences. This doesn’t happen by accident or ‘nature’, but by manipulation and conditioning. The global masters have vast experience cultivating their human crop and managing their plantations. Can’t we see that by not supporting our fellow abused when they fight back, regardless of their ideological, financial or physical condition in relation to our own, we are directly supporting our own abusers financially, emotionally and intellectually?
I understand this essay may be considered harsh or even derogatory to some. But to be frank I’m tired of using words that won’t disturb the placated mind. Rarely do we grow when we are not deeply disturbed or strenuously challenged. It’s time to grow up folks. It’s time to recognize that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and that anyone resisting the global financial elite in any country for any reason is fighting our battles for and with us.
Anyone pushing back against tyranny, financial slavery and the process of publically financing and socializing private debt is fighting the same abusive power elite that we should be. Instead of squabbling over the dwindling crumbs on the floor it’s time to pull our head out of our posterior and understand that either we fight the abusers together or we will surely be abused separately.
02-09-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
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It really is a global invention. Many of the derivative and securitization geniuses are in fact concentrated in London.
The main point for to channel through various credit facilities loans to US citizens and the Real Estate market.
Europeans surely helped and performed the trick for themselves but the center and the origin of it all is the US.
Having re-read it several times now, I remain infuriated by its patronizing presumptiveness and terribly constructed prose. It is incredibly hard to parse, almost as though it was written not to be understood. We are not children and have matured far beyond these banal thoughts. This is rhetorical pablum, and bad tasting at that. It is sophistry of the very worst kind. The man who wrote it overthinks the issues and yet lacks any shred of empathy for his audience. He struts and preens, but says nothing we do not already know. It is the result of a great orgy of mental masturbation. I fully suspect him of being a long tenured university professor of some arcane forgotten discipline.
the fact that you ask for a writer to have empathy for his audience is indicative of a mind that has become accustomed to being spoon fed information.
A writer should have mercy on nothing and nobody. Say what you mean and mean what you say. All else is bullshit.
Pure idiocy. Empathy for the reader is a cornerstone of cogent rhetoric.
Chris Hedges fires off a paragraph of this crap every Monday morning before getting down to business. Where's the meat in this sandwich?
Notice the author's complete failure to defend the post. Not even he takes it seriously.
I'm with you! I don't need more fingers pointing out the problems -- better solutions than shooting TPTB need to come forth!
"A writer should have mercy on nothing and nobody" HELL YES! puuhhhleeeze.....cheap ass shyt. stop it alredy ur embarrassing yourself bud.
Speaking of slain, I dispatched your illiterate ass up thread. Don't be an impolite ghost.
blah??
Nice to see a real scrapper back in the junkyard.
I am slain by your handle.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel - really dumb fish, that is.
I used to read the thread fights here with awe. Not so much, anymore.
I liked it. Thanks for sharing Cognitive Dissonance. I'm new to the community, but I'm glad we have opposition and relative insight to anothers point of view. How often we forget that inside our own hampster cages we presume we think outside them.
Thanks again.
Thank you for your feedback and welcome to the community.
Well said. Hard to see beyond the length of our leash unless we first mentally move beyond our own self imposed limits. Beliefs aren't understanding, they are limiting and confining.
Great! So let's all go out and take potshots at our Representatives/Senators -- feel better now? Careful what you wish/agitate for...
no one's said verbatim yet shit head.....still time plenty 'o time to get uncomfortable...and such...
belief is the enemy of reason.
faith is belief in something for which there is no evidence.
hope...is a shitty strategy.
Well, I see your post is now featured at the top of the home page. Congrats. Sad. So many words - so little sense.
Cog Dis ... always like and admire your intent, but like many commenting, I read less than half the essay and then skimmed through the rest to find if there are any key points not previously stated just with slightly different words.
Personally prefer you write long than not write at all.
I was surprised by some of the content. I did not know ZHers were dissing the Euro protests, having vastly slowed down my reading and commenting on ZH due to both the low quality of comments and also censorship of some of my comments. The decline in ZH comments reminded me of what happened on the Yahoo, Goldman Sachs board around the time that Goldman was being "so called" grilled (lol) in the congressional hearings. Apparently some of the congressional staffers had been reading the GS board and came away with too many "radical ideas" and questions to ask. It had to be stopped.
The Yahoo board went into massive lockdown where many posts were deleted, many posters were limited to about 10 posts per day and there were a flood of polarizing and inflammatory religeous posts seemingly designed to mask and discredit the entire board.
ZH comments have been getting shallow, Tyler or whomever is censoring (and seems to have been more heavily since he was gone for a couple of days a few months ago) and it became time for me to explore other more productive areas. I still come back fairly often, but rarely comment. I am sad that I did not pick up on ZH at its foundation. It must have been a great community... will look for the announcement that Tyler sold out to AOL.
Median incomes by country.
http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/13127.php
COGDIS: Same reason there are still idiots who deny immigrants their basic rights and blame them for pretty much everything. Their "legal status" is irrelevant, as those immigration laws are as despicable as the segregation laws that Rosa Parks had the courage to rebel against.
Boundaries are healthy, amigo.
if only amrka would respect other nationstates boundaries, eh.
while personal boundaries can be healthy, national boundaries are fictions manipulated by the elites to gain maximum control over populations.
I disagree. But if you are comfortable with the boundaries you have placed upon yourself, so be it.
So at what population level would you cut off immigration to the usa? 500 million? One billion? Two billion? I like our quality of life here and.dont want to be turned into a crowded.dirty restive and heavily polluted third world for my descendents.
So you must be a native American, huh?
america, is immigrants, and their children, where is your family from?
Idiots like you prove my point exactly.
Blame the immigrants for the decline in "quality of life".
And bend over for the bankers/politicians who are truly responsible for your new third world status.
You cannot have social welfare AND open borders -- pick one.
great article, so true. agree totally. FUCK YOU "STENCH" you lowly, brainless piece of shit. Keep up the great work Cog. Just call me the anarchist......................some scum just need to fucking die.
Another loser with nothing to lose.
ANOTHER COCKSUCKER WITH EVERYTHING TO LOSE.......so saaad....
try agin son ; ) ya, dat'd be you FS...but you knew that already man.
..so damn true. I don't care what color, religion, country or class you are from, this is simply the people of the earth against the elite of the earth. Rage Against the Machine time..
Thank you for the excellent article, C.D.!
Not me. I was cheering for revolution...or at least defiant default in Ireland and Greece too. Egypt is much more exciting since they are our vassal. For them to overthrow our puppet stooge dictator is an embarrassment on the highest level. The fun of it is watching the media squirm as they try to explain this situation to Joe Six Pack. The Pundits tell us yet again that these people are too primitive and to unstable to be left to their own governance-Translation: They will figure out real quickly how bad we were fucking them and will figure out how to negotiate sweeter deals once our influence is severed and their sovereignty is reestablished. Every situation like this becomes and "end of the world" scenario to them which unfortunately means we need to do torture, install dictatorships, and "fix" things by any means possible. The way I see it is that if there are several million people in the street maybe they have a legit beef and maybe the dictator should take a good long look in the mirror. Problem is dictators never give a fuck about anything except their power and money so it's hard for them to objectively evaluate the situation. Sometimes the masses have to persuade dictators the hard way to get them to understand the gravity of the situation.
I also support irish debt repudiation. For an amazing read on why the irish sheeple have quietly accepted the yoke google vanity fair when irish eyes are crying.
tct read the Iceand VS ireland bllomberg article you'll dig it man
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wron...
Read it already! Thanks!
i LIVE for the FUCKING SQUIRM my man.
Ok... you've got our attention.
So what's the #uckin solution and what comes after that?
Sure, we all want to perform unspeakable acts on Wall Street bankers, but we need a path that moves forward.
The only solution that I see is having hyperinflation kick in for approx 18 months. By the time its over, the US debt is worthless.... and a new world order emerges with countries such as the US heading it... but with fiat money tied to PMs. We have social unrest for several years... but it passes. This way, most of the major economies emerge debt free. THEN... THATS THE TIME TO ACT AND MAKE SURE THAT THIS ROT AND FILTH THAT HAS PERMEATED WALL STREET IS DONE AWAY WITH.
solution: mark assets to market. thats it. be a man, take the fucking loss...not u pers....jaime and lloyd.
+1 followed by arbitrary # of 0s
Dangit CD I keep reminding people that trolls have to be registered and certified before trolling here. No amnesty for undocumented trolls!
Overall, the impression I have been getting from ZH is approval for all uprising, wether its in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia or where ever. In fact, I get the feeling a lot of posters and commenters are waiting with bated breath for the riots to start in the US.
I don't really see where CD is coming from saying the European unrest isnt supported on here. The post above is not indicative of the general opinon, IMO.
The opinion on Egypt at ZH seems relatively strong in support, but on the French it is sharply divided. I think his analysis is well grounded in the realities here.
And on the Greeks is was very one sided against. Even the English students protesting the tripling of student fees were ripped a new one.
aye, the "UK student protests" threads were pretty much anger-trolling - the trouble is, most amrkns think the whole world operates in mirror fashion, and many have no idea that different nationstates run the global agenda at different "speeds". . .
I lived in the UK when student grants were awarded to those who qualified academically - they were not loans, but monies given to (barely) cover living expenses, etc.
If a people have in living memory a notion that an education is considered worthy of funding for the benefit of a better future society, then have the tables turned within the lifetime of their children, a WTF moment happens. . .
the UK is relatively new to the "globalised" banking takeover - they were a nation of small shopkeepers, neighbourhoods, public transport, etc. - co-operation was part of the mix, albeit within old social class boundaries.
the student protests over tuition hikes happened mainly because those who roll out the rules did so in such a hurry, they didn't bother to breed the notion into the social fabric. . . hence the unraveling.
(amrkns are well trained in lateral hatred, and use "voting" in the "future" to "solve" their problems. . . the present? we have meds & circus acts for the "present". . .)
I always viewed it in the following manner:
With the European protests, to side with their cause would be to simultaneously admit our own cowardice since they enjoy relatively the same standard of living that we do (with the added benefit of free health care..but that's another story). The Europeans did what we should; stand up to an out of control government controlled by banking interests making themselves richer by stealing from the people of the country...which is exactly what is happening in America..except here, people seem to lack the courage to protest. So people here instead chose to ridicule the Europeans in lieu of admitting their own cowardice.
With Egypt...it was a no brainer to support them. Why? Easy...Americans love to be perceived as "compassionate"...mainly to mask the fact that they're a bunch of spineless fucking cowards.
We Americans love the lies we tell, particularly the ones we tell to ourselves.
I'm surprised you haven't been junked. But you hit it on the head. The Europeans are too much like us for our own comfort. While few would actually admit it, many are deeply embarrassed that some European cities could muster a 15 or 20% population turnout for protests and we can't even get a hundred to march around city hall.
I've been a local activist for nearly a dozen years and the sad fact is that people don't want to "do something" about their problems. They want someone else to do something about their problems.
I suppose you bore the opposition into submission. And I'm the only one getting junked around here, pal.