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Where Are You Going, America?
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Where are you going, America?
I don’t like to discuss politics too much. There are not enough smart, kind and honest people in politics wherever I look in the world for me to want to have anything to do with that game. I’d just spend all my time wondering what kind of mindset it takes to want to tell other people what to do, and be in control of the millions, billions and trillions of dollars that are taken from these people on a daily, yearly, basis.
Not that all politicians are bad, but those who have genuinely good intentions get drowned out, within seconds, by the ones for whom the need to have power over others is more important than anything else. And as I said, on the whole they’re not very smart. It’s for instance a very bad idea to let your countries’ economic policies be decided by the very people who make the decisions today.
They have no clue what they’re talking about. So they get advisors who they feel do know, and these advisors all come from the same small niche of society that steer everybody’s hard-earned cash towards that same small niche of society. 99% of economists are religious nuts who do even the Roman Catholic church one better because they chart graphs to ‘prove’ their beliefs are true -or even provable.
They adapt the world to their theories, not the other way around, as physicists do. They pretend their field is a science, but, other than the graphs, it has none of the characteristics of a science. Falsifiability is not a term one can let loose on economics; within minutes, there’d be nothing left.
The other advisors politicians have when it comes to economic policies are bankers, who are convinced banks are the most important institutions and edifices in the world, just like priests and vicars would have described their churches and cathedrals not long ago. That is why last week we saw a spending bill being shoved through US Congress and Senate that includes parts openly written by Citigroup lobbyists, and which puts the risk of over $300 trillion in derivatives on American taxpayers’ shoulders.
America is a democracy in name only. And I often ask myself why Americans take that lying down. Why they think they don’t have to fight for their rights and their freedoms the way the founders did. Do they think they’re special, are they so full of themselves, and full of ‘it’, that they think it’s okay to let their rights being taken away from them, and their children, the same rights so many Americans died for in earlier days?
When you try and see things that way, what else do present day US citizens deserve than what’s coming to them? You can’t have freedom, and you can’t have rights, if you’re not willing to fight for them. And that doesn’t mean sending a bunch of your low-down poorest young people to some faraway desert, it means keeping in touch with what’s happening in your own town and county and state and country. And raising your voice if you don’t like what you see.
There’s a Senate report – many years too late – that confirms the CIA and other parties tortured often innocent people in the name of the United States, and that means you, in incredibly cruel ways reminiscent perhaps most of Medieval times or even before that, before man allegedly became civilized, but for which, by the looks of it, nobody will to be prosecuted in the US.
Letting people die of torture, and then afterwards finding out it was just another case of mistaken identity, has become acceptable in America. Congratulations. We’ve come a long way.
There’s the incredible story of the Ukraine, in which the Senate just days ago called for more economic sanctions vs Russia, and full-blown lethal military aid for Ukraine, where US patsies have taken over even more government positions by being handed hundreds of millions of dollars and fresh Kiev passports, and where now Russia will be forced to counteract, against its will.
Why do Americans allow for that to happen in their name? Don’t they care what other people in the world, in which they’re hugely outnumbered, since less than 1 in 20 is American, think about them? Don’t they care about the effect of harassing others incessantly for the purpose of enriching US companies?
Or do Americans think their superior weaponry allows them to do whatever they want to whoever they want to do it to? Somehow, that, too, is reminiscent of the Middle Ages. America hasn’t won an actual war since 1945, because bigger armies don’t win wars anymore. Having the biggest guns doesn’t either. Nuclear weapons are too destructive for that.
Ron Paul seems to be the only US politician who has any idea of what the US should stand for, who understands that empire building is a really bad idea with all the nukes around, and that coalition building and friendship with other peoples and nations is a much better way to keep Americans safe and -relatively – prosperous. And Ron Paul is getting on; who’ll stand up in his place?
But the biggest issues for Americans are not abroad, they’re right at home. As evidenced by Ferguson, by Eric Garner, and by the mass demonstrations in the past days. The problem is, since the 1960s people have turned their focus so much towards money and so far away from their personal rights and freedoms, and those of others, that one or two or ten demonstrations won’t make a difference anymore.
I was watching something on the 1964 Klan killing of three civil rights workers in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi the other day, of Dr. King’s role, of how the entire town knew who was guilty but shut up. And I wondered what exactly America has achieved since then, what has changed and what is better 50 years on.

And sure enough I found my answer, in a graph of all places. It this doesn’t hurt your sense of justice, and your sense of pride to be an American, I don’t know what would. Nor do I understand, if you choose to keep silent, where you think this will lead in the future. What can you possibly say when you let these numbers sink in?
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I heard a psychologist give a brilliant answer once, that applies much more widely than the subject which was at hand. The subject was serial killers.
"Why," the interviewer asked, "do people decide to become serial killers?"
"Because it's fun."
Why do politicians sell out ? Why was ron Paul the only consistent one? Most pols are willing to give in, compromise, or bend a little in order to sway the majority of people, but RP wasn't. That's why he had and still has such a loyal(albeit small) constituent that supports him with such devolution. Now, as to why they sell out , look no further than his son, rand. Rand wants to be president a lot more than his dad did. While I believe that in his heart of hearts, rand probably thinks along very similar lines as his father , he is willing to say otherwise in order to appeal to a larger. % of the population. He thinks this will allow him to win the republican nomination without alienating his fathers support base. He is wrong. People sell out because their personal ambitions become more important than their personal convictions. Once they lose those convictions, all they become is ambition.
Is that what the Fed does, devolution? Sounds fitting.
As folks who campaigned hard (delegates) for RP in 2008, then less hard in 2012 (writing on the wall), we can say with certainty that no politician, individual, political party, greenpeace, or homo mafia hit-man is coming to save you. Yes, you are going to have to get up off the couch and stand your ground. Can you feel it?
i think you and I have had this discussion before(I think it was angry for some reason, dont remember why). I am not looking for anyone to come and save me, nor to fight for me. I appreciate what you did as a delegate. I gave him money, only politician i have ever given money to, cant see ever giving to another one. I am not looking for anyone to do all the fighting for me, i am simply pointing out how easily people sell out, and let ambtion replace principles. There are so many examples of seemingly well intentioned people selling out. Although, it would probably be entertaining as hell if a homo mafia hit-man really did come to save me. Just thinking of all the hilarious stereotypes that could encompass is mind-blowing....
Love ya, Carl. We were speaking to the universal "all". We are the ones we have been waiting for.
"I am not looking for anyone to do all the fighting for me, i am simply pointing out how easily people sell out, and let ambtion replace principles. There are so many examples of seemingly well intentioned people selling out."
Yes, kinda like the leftwing faux anarchist who exclaims to all "Don't vote, it doesn't count!" as he slides around the corner to the polling place.
As if, a true anarchist could ever be stained by voting against the very thing he abhors most, moar government.
Render unto me the incessant Diebold quack so that I might slay him ;-)
"Because it's fun."
A country where someone is approved for saying killing for the hell of it "is fun" is dead.
Keep in mind, when you hear economists speak, that you are listening to professionals who regularly and routinely use terminology such as "animal spirits" and "invisible hands" while describing their so-called "science." Sort of like listening to an electrical engineer discuss the "St. Elmo's fire" being used to somehow magically make a motor work.
Oh, wait, that's right... engineers understand enough about electricity that they actually have useful terminology such as "amperes" and "watts" and "farads" and "ohms" and "hertz" and the like, which they can then use to intelligently design and construct useful machines and circuits and such. Meanwhile, economists fumble around with the same concepts and terminology first used by Adam Smith back in 1776.
Maybe someday we will see the modern day equivalent of an Ampere, Watt, Faraday or Ohm appear in the field of economics. When that happy day finally comes along then perhaps the field of economics can be elevated to the realm of an actual science. What it is now, unfortunately, is really much more akin to a priesthood than any actual intellectual discipline.
Economists get their clue from theoretical physicists, who, when their theories on everything don't work, simply add another universe (without any evidence such a universe exists) out of thin air in the hope that it will resolve their problem. In the case of economists, they print money out of thin air.
Same principle. The difference, of course, is that it costs nothing to create a new universe.
The difference is, any physicist knows that, in order to have any hope of being taken seriously, even his wildest predictions and models need to be falsifiable -- that is, there has to be an experiment whose outcome is capable of disproving the theory. Read Karl Popper (who, by the way, came up with the example of the single black swan which disproves the "All swans are white" hypothesis).
Not too many economic theories meet this strict standard -- though I would have hoped that by now we should have falsified at least a few: socialism, Keynes's deficits, and so on.
You mean like measuring economic output in units of gold? Fucking madness!
Well, you referenced Ron Paul, so you should know the answer to all of these wealth inequality and poverty statistics conundrums. End the fed, end the war on drugs.
And while we're at it, end Medicare, end Social Security, end welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, end Homeland Security, the NSA, FEMA, HHS, HUD, ED, the EPA, and 99 percent of the rest of the D.C. aphabet soup. And oh yeah, of course, end the Fed too. Do it all, and practically overnight, we'd see the greatest flowering of prosperty in the history of the planet.
i agree 100%, all those things need to go away. But without the fed monetizing so much govt debt, and making servicing the debt so cheap, the govt would not be allowed to be so large in the first place, and all the rest of it would cease to exist
That would be a good start but the professional busybodies will never allow it. We are going to wind doing a hard restart.
can you point me to a society with legalized drugs that isn't 3rd world?
can you point me to a society that has tried to regulate, tax, and print its way to prosperity and hasnt gone bankrupt?
End of an era for the West
The support of neo-nazis in Ukraine destroys the last pretexts and wakes up nightmares of the past
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/03/end-of-era-for-west.html
Astrophysicists modify their "models" to match newly observed behavior just like mainstream economists.
Same as it ever was?
Astrophysisists use data not behavior, there is a difference.
Unfortunately, Astrophysicists modify their "models" to try to justify their legacy theories that observations don't match. Example, they add 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' to their theories to prop up the failed idea that 'red shift' means distance when Halton Arp long ago proved that idea was somewhat faulty. Of course he was bannished and Ron Pauled by his peers but his observations still remain viable.
Halton Arp is a thief and a plagarist. I know that from experience. (I still have the copy of the correspondence which I sent him in 1978 which he declared was invalid. Then my idea was published.)
It was a very rude awakening into the corruption of academia. He did not view M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, in DEPTH. He, as most people, have a difficult time discerning depth perception in 2D images. The "connecting arm" is illusory and that is why the Island Galaxy has a different Redshift than the Main Galaxy.
If you are seeking out the "Ron Paul" of Astrophysics you need look no further than to Immanuel Velikovsky. He was destroyed by "the Dean", Harlow Shapley of Harvard. Now I do not believe that Venus is a comet...but there is something very wrong with Angular Momentum conservation in our Solar System. Just how in God's Heavens does Venus rotate retrograde. There must have been a terrific torque exerted upon that Planet to turn it upside down. What flipped Uranus on its side?
So I am pleased that Shapley was made out to be a fool by Anthony Curtiss of Cal-Tech using Edward Hubble's observations of Cepheid Variables in M31 which demonstrated the Andromeda Galaxy was outside of the Milky Way and DISTANT. Shapley was an arrogant prick.
AS for Redshifting I am well aware that there are other causal factors.
People CON-FUSE images and objects. A single image is just that. It can be a phantom and is no more real than that image which appears in a mirror reflection. That reflection does not create another object, does it? While an object produces IMAGES the images can be reflections with a loss of energy associated with each reflection.
The Loss of Energy with each reflection causes Reddening as the Peak Radiation on the Planck Black Body Curve shifts to the red corresponding to the Energy loss. Instead of Echoes of sound where the loss is heard as a lower pitch as the noise goes to extinction, the light behaves in the same manner with every reflection as a Redshift.
"where r u goin america..."
straight to fucking hell...
next question?
The same stupid delusions have existed for thousands of years. We're special and/or chosen by a god or destiny to have more and rule others. We'll trust our king/priests or our elected/economists/bankers to think for us, because our god or destiny will protect us from their malfeasance.
Trust in leaders because we're chosen always ends badly.
You have to rationalize the immoral consequences of ingroup morality somehow.
You lost me at "America is a democracy in name only", you sir, are an idiot if you don't know that America is a Constitutional Republic (mind you, i am not saying the constitution is still followed). Given that, you must be one of the idiots you are talking about, go back to American Civics 101.
"....You sir, are an idiot if you don't know that America is a Constitutional Republic........" Indeed......
Of course it was been postulated as a constitutional republic, but given the fact that the government and any agent thereof can and will ignore the constitution with zero consequence for him or the government, yet great consequence for the plebe whose rights he violates ...
"A republic is a form of government in which power resides in the people, and the government is ruled by elected leaders run according to law"
...the USA neither constitutional, nor a republic.
I'd like to challenge anyone to prove its not a fascist plutocracy.
Carlos Slim (a Hispanic of any race, according to Peeeuw) must be laughing his ass off at you Raul.
Yes, and we always take the outlier (in this case 2007 bubble top) as a graph starting point to prove something!
"...where you think this will lead in the future."
It leads to socialism.
We need a virus that only kills politicians & banksters.
America is NOT a democracy because elections are fundamentally fraudulent and invalid because
1 the earnings of a MINORITY of the electorate are being confiscated by the unconstitutional corrupt regime
2 to buy the votes of a MAJORITY of the electorate with entitlement programs.
There is NO moral or constitutional "right" to someone else's earnings.
America became a socialist autocracy when the entitlement programs and discriminatory income taxes were imposed.
"Where Are You Going, America?"
To Hell. On the winding path mind you, but Hell nonetheless.
ALL Politicians ARE bad. No exceptions.
Raul Ilargi Meijer, thank you for this article. I am so moved by it. You have a heart and a conscience. Your views on torture and how ashamed we Americans should feel about it. I wish every American could read your thoughts here. Maybe it would wake the nation up. I hate to say it, but people seem so hardened these days, like they have ice water flowing through veins.
1972 was a very important year in American history. Richard Nixon won his re-election by the widest margin in the history of the United States Presidential elections. Yet, the Democratic Party didn't accept his victory as a vindication for the American resolve to fight the communists wherever and for as long as it took to defeat them.
They were stunned: all the news stories, all the folk songs, all the movies and media stars, all the demonstrations, and even all the accounts of strategic defeats could not turn the majority of Americans from their resolve to fight communism.
They didn't understand that the most popular song in 1968 was "The Ballad of the Green Berets" (the top country song was "Proud to be an Okie from Miskogee"), nor that Nixon could get more votes than any other candidate. They couldn't accept that the supporters of George Wallace and Richard Nixon combined accounted for almost 60% of the voting public.
The Civil Rights Movement + the Anti-War movement couldn't translate to enough votes to win the presidency.
What to do? The Democrats had to forge a new majority if they would ever take control of the country. So, in 1973 they came up with the brilliant idea to forge a "majority" by defining women as a minority group, and came up with a political agenda that would make women a political voting bloc. Attached to this block, they added Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Lesbians and Gays, Jews and immigrants, just so that this mass of narcissists could look like a legitimate political movement.
But this political movement had nothing to do with "Freedom". It had more to do with"Protection and Preference". The Rainbow Majority had only one unifying theme: take money, power and status from white men and distribute it among themselves. All of America's traditions and traditional values had been forged largely by white men. Therefore, anything put together by white men had to be de-constructed and replaced with "protections" for minority "rights", while the role of white men in the development of this country had to be disparaged.
Democracy, you see, is a government of the people, and by the people. In a democracy, overtime, political decisions will be made and laws will be written with the intent to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. A balance would be achieved between the rights of the individual and the will of the majority. But if the white (male) majority were allowed to vote its way, then minorities (women) could lose their protections (preferences). So laws were passed and court decisions institutionalized them, so that we became a nation of Minorities (special interests,) each with the ability to cancel out any national movement, regardless of how much the nation wanted it. Our "common bonds" were diminished in favor of our differences.
And so, we have the inertia and the pettiness that is our government today.
1968 and 1972 was also a rejection of the Great Society, Welfarism, and the democrat Vietnam War.
HelioKeynesianism. The world revolves around Keynesian economics, even as we know that it does not.
Why is it that Asians are always excluded from "Race and Ethnicity" wealth diagrams? What are you trying to hide? Will it disrupt your white-guilt trip?
This article has no credibility.
Why is it that Asians are always excluded from "Race and Ethnicity" wealth diagrams? What are you trying to hide? Will it disrupt your white-guilt trip?
This article has no credibility.
"Why do Americans allow for that to happen in their name? "
you answered your own question, foolish person that you are. LMAO
"I don’t like to discuss politics too much. There are not enough smart, kind and honest people in politics wherever I look in the world for me to want to have anything to do with that game. "
You say: "99% of economists are religious nuts..." You don't know what you're talking about. Trying to persuade those whom you think are in the choir, with such obvious falsehoods comes off as silly demagoguery. Next...
Americans are too drunk on Exceptional-ism, they see everybody else as sub-American so inherently inferior despite ALL and ANY evidence to the contrary, this is what usually happens when a Peoples adopt a philosophy of being "Chosen", "Exceptional", "Superior" especially when it ties in with a Religion or a State sponsored Cult.
"And I often ask myself why Americans take that lying down. Why they think they don’t have to fight for their rights and their freedoms the way the founders did. Do they think they’re special, are they so full of themselves, and full of ‘it’, that they think it’s okay to let their rights being taken away from them, and their children, the same rights so many Americans died for in earlier days?"
Because the government has armed itself with the tools neccessary to crush rebelion. Remember the Occupy movement?
Here's the problem with the last chart -- it omits Asians. Once you include them, you see that they have a median wealth even higher than Whites, which puts the lie to the entire chart.
With regards to your graphic that breaks down wealth by race and presumably attempts to make some broader accusation against American society using that information, keep in mind that blacks in America are *poorer* today after 50 years of leftist progressivism than they were in the 60s. If anything this is an indictment of the welfare state, not of America.
With regards to our foreign adventures, I agree that it is well past time for our bases in Korea and Europe to be shut down. These parts of the world need to pay for their own defense. It is silly to pay for the defense of a nation and then compete with its industries on the global stage. As for Islam, America had nothing to do with the attack on the Bali nightclub, the school in Beslan, or the recnt car bombs in Sweden. Such things predate the formation of America by over a millenia and will only stop when Muslims stop their millenium and a half long tantrum of theologically motivated violence against all their neighbors...or the rest of the world finally has enough and bands together to kill all of them.
Switzerland is a democracy. America is not a democracy. It was never intended to be a democracy. It is a representative republic.