Cognitive Dissonance's blog

A popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Is the solution as simple as changing our methods or does insanity beget more insanity? This 5 part series is an examination of our collective and individual insanity. Hop aboard the crazy train express and let’s see if there’s a way out.

Now that we’re all honorary members of the “Halfway To Hell Club”, a group of nineteen men who seemingly fell to their deaths while constructing the Golden Gate Bridge only to be saved by a crude and rudimentary net halfway down, I present this entirely fictional account of last Thursday’s market crash. Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.

Society doesn’t self organize for the benefit of the many but rather society is organized for the benefit of the few as the most effective way to rape, rob and pillage the many. Who needs war when the process of abuse can be institutionalized and glorified?

While there’s a general consensus among the Zero Hedge community that the big boys are manipulating the various markets to maintain and even accelerate the Ponzi, this still requires a great deal of conscious participation by those lower down the ladder. While many of us are calling for the hangman’s noose around Blankfein or Bernanke’s neck, shouldn’t we also being stringing up your next door neighbor or that self righteous prick of a brother-in-law or maybe even you?

Never be satisfied with the gruel we are handed, take anything offered and everything demanded. Rather than complain that the gruel doesn’t fill, think like Oliver Twist and declare you want more swill. Be the voracious mindless consumer that the Ponzi claims they don’t forbid. Become a blood sucking vampire and plunge into the blood funnel of your favorite giant squid.

For a few months now, I've been sensing a shifting vibration in the comment section of ZH and it’s something I wanted to talk about. There’s a growing undercurrent of inevitable defeat and resignation in the air and if nothing else, we need to be aware of and acknowledge it.

During the critical first moments of a budding populist movement, it's not the leader who's most crucial but the first follower, who validates the leader, and the second follower, who validates the first. Herd mentality can work both ways.

To be fair, this article could just as easily have been called “Waking a Zombie World”. While various people and governments point to the USA as the bad actor in this mess, in fact it has taken dozens of nations to form this conga line to hell and the rest of the world is far from blameless. Nor is America the sole residence of the world’s zombie population.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”...ourselves. With apologies to Sir Walter Scott.