Totalitarianism

I just finished #666666; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.78333282470703px;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568586434/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=prophet-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1568586434" target="_blank">Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by #666666; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.78333282470703px;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges" target="_blank">Chris Hedges and #666666; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.78333282470703px;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco" target="_blank">Joe Sacco. It is superb, and I've spent a fair amount of time typing in passages from the book below in order to capture some of its theme.

In a recent BBC News article, philosopher John Gray asks the quaint but otherwise vain question of what would John Maynard Keynes do in today’s economic slump.  We call the question vain because practically every Western government has followed Keynes’ prescribed remedy for the so-called Great Recession.  Following the financial crisis of 2008, governments around the world engaged in deficit spending while central banks pushed interest rates to unprecedented lows.  Nearly four years later, unemployment remains stubbornly high in most major countries. Even now in the face of the come-down that inevitably follows any stimulus-induced feelings of euphoria, certain central banks have taken to further monetary easing. The question of interest shouldn’t be “what would Keynes do” but rather “why even listen to someone so pompous and nihilistic to begin with?”  Just as Keynes missed the Great Depression, modern day Keynesians missed the housing bubble and financial crash.  From his contempt for moral principles to his enthusiastic support for eugenics, Keynes saw the world as something separate from the bubble of his fellow elitists. Outside of that we guess he was a great guy!

Katrina is still the best argument for self-reliance. Oh, no! Here comes FEMA.

The ideological brand of so-called progress that we call “collectivism” relies heavily on the notion that the values of the past are inadequate to the requirements of the future.  We are taught by the peddlers of collectivist propaganda that our beliefs and our principles must evolve along with the perceived growth of our species as a whole.  They see themselves as visionaries and prophets foretelling a grand reinvention of the world that we laymen are unequipped to imagine or understand.  We cling to the old ways because we are “afraid of change”, or too ignorant to fathom the beauty of their Utopian beyond… Pretentious bile?  Absolutely.  However, within the rhetoric and strategies of the collectivist agenda there are treasures to behold; reoccurring themes and indicators that can be found in nearly every modern tyranny and most ancient tyrannies that have ever existed.  Words and actions that warn us of the true intent of the elite.  The fact is, collectivists drive so hard to admonish respect for the past because every lie they tell us now has been told before a thousand times, to build a thousand gruesome empires.   

I’ll be the first to admit the incredible aggravation I feel whenever liberty is trampled upon by the state’s obedient minions.  Everywhere you look, government has its gun cocked back and ready to fire at any deviation from its violently imposed rules of order.  A four year old can’t even open a lemonade stand without first bowing down and receiving a permit from bureaucrats obsessed with micromanaging private life.  The state’s stranglehold on freedom is as horrendous as it is disheartening. The worst part is that the trend shows no signs of slowing down, let alone reversing.  Politicians are always developing some harebrained scheme to mold society in such a way to circumvent the individual in favor of total dictation.  If it isn’t politicians, then it’s an army of unelected bureaucrats acting as mini-dictators.

I won a bet today.

A few weeks ago I wagered with a coworker that the United States Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare.  He reasoned that the federal government has no authority under the Constitution to force an individual to purchase a product from a private company.  My reasoning was much simpler.  Because the Supreme Court is a functioning arm of the state, it will do nothing to stunt Leviathan’s growth.  The fact that the Court declared no federal law unconstitutional from 1937 to 1995—from the tail end of the New Deal through Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society—should have been proof enough.  He naively believed in the impartialness of politically-appointed judges.  For the first time he saw that those nine individuals are nothing more than politicians with an allegiance to state supremacy.

It was a tough but valuable lesson to learn.

Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next.  The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator.  For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing consider.  

Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us… 

Despite already being engaged in drone wars in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and still occupying Afghanistan, the U.S. is being duped into yet another war based on shaky evidence and at the behest of deep-pocketed special interests.  This is coming even while a secretive cyber war already being waged to damage Iran’s nuclear capability.  According to the Pentagon, “computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war.”  Not only that, but the draconian sanctions thus far placed on Iran are doing enormous harm to the citizens who hardly have a say in what their government does.  The Belgium-based SWIFT payment system that facilitates most international payments has already denied service to many Iranian banks.  With the imposing of an oil embargo from the European Union just around the corner (July 1^st) that will all but make it impossible for oil tankers to be insured by Lloyd’s of London, an actual naval blockade is being floated by U.S. lawmakers.  Much like the Antebellum South and Japan, Iran too is being pushed into a corner.... Then and now, wealthy special interests are a driving force behind American imperialism.  Lies will be spun till they are seen as facts.  When the truth comes out, the irreparable damage will already be done.  Like anything the state lays its filthy hands on, war is a racket.  The beneficiaries of the ruling class’s gleeful foray into mass murder are few in number.  The masses, still brainwashed into feverish nationalism, end up paying the costs with their pilfered income, eroded liberty, and, ultimately, their own lives.

If you cannot read the writing on the wall then allow me to read it for you. The European Union has abrogated the Rule of Law for the good of the State. This is the second such abrogation with the first being the exemption of certain European institutions and the IMF from the Private Sector Involvement of Greece. Greece may be a one-off exemption as they claim but we now have a second instance where jurisprudence has been overturned for the good of the nations of Europe. This is not Socialism or Capitalism but rather some sort of Fascist governance which I publically decry as the echo of the jackboots sounds across the Continent once again. The precedents have now been set and the future is clearly marked by a return to the totalitarianism of a politically controlled State. My advice is therefore succinct:

RUN!

Imagine, if you will, a fantastic near future in which the United States is facing an unmitigated economic implosion.  Not just a mere market crash, or a stint of high unemployment, but a full spectrum collapse driven by unsustainable debt spending and hyperinflationary printing.  The American people witness multiple credit downgrades of U.S. Treasury mechanisms, the dollar loses its reserve status, devaluation of the currency runs rampant, and the prices of commodities and imported goods immediately skyrocket.   In the background of this disaster, a group of financial elite with dreams of a new centralized economic and political system use the chaos to encourage a removal of long held civil liberties; displacing Constitutional protections they deem “outdated” and no longer “practical” in the midst of our modern day troubles.  This group then institutes draconian policies through the executive orders of a puppet president, including indefinite detention, assassination, and even martial law against citizens... With modern computer driven weaponry at their fingertips, any resistance appears futile.  Some Americans, though, do their homework, and discover that most successful revolutions against better equipped opponents utilize low tech methods in highly intelligent ways.  They study the inherent weaknesses of the enemy weapons platforms using readily available online manuals and scientific journals.  They realize that these pieces of equipment costing millions of dollars each can be defeated using methods that cost little more than pocket change.  A war of economic attrition ensues.

The dollar was a median step towards a newer and more corrupt ideal.  Its time is nearly over.  This is open, it is admitted, and it is being activated as you read this.  The speed at which this disaster occurs is really dependent on the speed at which our government along with our central bank decides to expedite doubt.  Doubt in a currency is a furious omen, costing not just investors, but an entire society.  America is at the very edge of such a moment.  The naysayers can scratch and bark all they like, but the financial life of a country serves no person’s emphatic hope.  It burns like a fire.  Left unwatched and unchecked, it grows uncontrollable and wild, until finally, there is nothing left to fuel its hunger, and it finally chokes in a haze of confusion and dread…

Today it was widely reported that the CIA thwarted a “plot by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb.”  This bomb, which was to be concealed in a pair of underwear, was designed as an improvement over what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to use to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day of 2009.  This bomb was upgraded and designed to specifically avoid metal detectors. At first glance it would appear to be a job well done by the world’s leading domestic affairs meddlers. The truth was finally revealed as the would-be bomber was, in fact, a double agent of the CIA. When considering the nature of the state, this new instance of government supported terrorism is unsurprisingly comparable to previous cases. The alleged Yemen “underwear” bomber was just another fabricated spook in the long line of mounting justifications to keep the war on terror and its profiteers going; no matter the cost.  As long as the American people are still easily whipped into a frenzy over forged menaces from afar, their blood and treasure will go on to be squandered on military boondoggles and redundant intelligence agencies.  War and fear end up becoming a way of life.  And so does the state’s command over what could be a life of peace and tranquility for the nation it supposedly protects. This isn’t conspiracy theory; just a recognition of the various hobgoblins, as H.L. Mencken described them, invented to justify encroaching totalitarianism.

There are some people who also believe that the private Federal Reserve with the Treasury in tow has the ability to prolong the worst symptoms of the collapse indefinitely, or at least, until they have long since kicked the bucket and don’t have to worry about it anymore (the ‘pay-it forward to our grandkids’ crowd) .  I can say with 100% certainty that most of us will live to see the climax of the breakdown, and that this breakdown is about to enter a more precarious state before the end of this year.  You can only stretch a sun-boiled rubber band so far before it snaps completely, and America’s financial elasticity has long been melted away.  A pummeling hailstorm of news items and international developments have made the first half of 2012 almost impossible to track and analyze.  The frequency at which negative information has surfaced is almost dizzying.  However, a pattern and a recognizable motion are beginning to take shape, and, I believe, a loose timeline is beginning to form. 

Hayek, while a brilliant mind, was not right on everything.  He saw the welfare state is legitimate, a need for regulation into private industries such as education and food, and the necessity of the state in providing for individual and national defense.  Yet even he was able to distinguish how political power attracts those who will use in the worst manner. The Secret Service agents who procured prostitutes may be relieved of their duty but it will only serve as a cautionary tale for the rest to keep their off-duty exploits better concealed in the future.  The waste and graft will go on despite a pledge from Obama for a “rigorous” probe and his potential successor’s promise to “clean house.”  These promises are just political theater used to conceal the playground like mentality which possesses the attitudes of all those who wield the guns of the state.

In the initial stages of nearly every recorded tyranny, the saucer eyed dumbstruck masses exhibit astonishing and masterful skill when denying reality.  The facts behind their dire circumstances and of their antagonistic government become a source of cynical psychological gameplay rather than a source of legitimate concern.  Their desperate need to maintain their normalcy bias creates a memory and observation vacuum in which all that runs counter to their false assumptions and preconceptions disappears forever.  It is as if they truly cannot see the color of the sky, or the boot on their face.  The concrete world of truth becomes a dream, an illusion that can be heeded or completely ignored depending on one’s mood.  For them, life is a constant struggle of dissociation, where the tangible is NOT welcome… This is the problem that we in the Liberty Movement deal with most often in our writings and films.  Our confrontation with willful ignorance has been epic, even by far reaching historical standards.  The gains in social awareness have been substantial, and yet the obstacles are incredible.  Unprecedented.  As an activist trend, we have an almost obsessive drive to draw back the curtain so that the public has at least the opportunity to see what is on the other side.  Unfortunately, there is another danger that must be taken into account…