Why We Are Where We Are, and What Might We
Do About It?
I hate to be the one to have to say it, yet again, but endless sparring with militant morons makes for very dull, ultimately pointless conversation.
HOWEVER, we must give credit where credit is due. One of the latest comments by a certain self-styled Chronic-Irritant-in-Residence, who shall in the interests of concord remain nameless, said something profound and definitely worth serious consideration at Who’s Your Daddy, yesterday:
HOWEVER, we must give credit where credit is due. One of the latest comments by a certain self-styled Chronic-Irritant-in-Residence, who shall in the interests of concord remain nameless, said something profound and definitely worth serious consideration at Who’s Your Daddy, yesterday:
"Let me know when you actually find real honest conservatives [who] believe in balancing the budget, reducing the federal debt, curtailing the MIC (military industrial complex), supporting an infrastructure that benefits all Americans, not just the oligarchs, plutocrats, and the very wealthy (you know by keeping good paying jobs in the USA rather than outsourcing and offshoring) and I'll help you put them in office."
The question lurking BEHIND and BENEATH these generally correct assertions is not IF, but WHY Big Business has moved in this regrettable direction?
Other questions we need at least to attempt to answer intelligently:
1. Who are The Oligarchs?
2. What forces brought to bear on Business and the Economy in the past century helped create them and put them so firmly in place?
3. Why do The Oligarchs seem to have abandoned all loyalty to the USA or any other nation in particular?
4. Has anyone seen NETWORK with Peter Finch and Bill Holden lately? It's hardly "mere entertainment." NETWORK graphically raises questions and gives plausible answers as to the true nature of the forces that REALLY shape govern us. It's brutal cynicism –– like that of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops (1909) and Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949) –– seems chillingly justified.
5. If the dystopian fantasies of Forster, Huxley, Orwell and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale - 1985) and the film NEWORK have, indeed, proved poignantly prophetic, which seems the case on the face of it, what do YOU think might be done to undo the great harm various forces have done to Western Civilization and the ideals of our Founding Fathers?
6. If The Oligarchs exist, (as so many who aid, abet and draw sustenance form them would insist they do not), and their influence is, indeed, real, that means the traditional wrestling match between Left and Right no longer matters. Why? Because The Oligarchs, apparently, have succeeded in USING BOTH camps to further the ends of The Oligarchs. How? By cynically exploiting and exacerbating divisions, encouraging enmity and promoting ENDLESS WAR these few "titans" have us all at each other's throats, or don’t you agree? And if not, why?
WHY would they want to do that?
What could be gained? Who would gain?
How would they gain?
If we put our heads together and at least TRY to answer some of these questions, we MIGHT start to move in a productive, agreeable direction one again.
What we ARE doing, instead, with the relentless, daily exchange of insults, accusations and bitter recriminations is getting us nowhere fast.
Flinging Poo Poo all over the place may be fun, and give a momentary release from tension, but it’s childish and irresponsible. Besides, what does it produce other than a stinking mess no one in his right mind would want to live with, and no one wants to accept responsibility for cleaning up?
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| I can all but guarantee HE will not bring us Salvation, and just who do you think HE might be? |
Amen my good man, we are indeed dealing with children who have yet to grow up. Thus is the description of the Leftist, commenting crowd.
ReplyDeleteLed by the bobsy twins Ducky, and RN.
Who are the oligarchs? Don't you attend Davos and the WEF annually?
ReplyDeleteThey are no longer APS members.
?What forces brought to bear on Business and the Economy in the past century helped create them and put them so firmly in place?
ReplyDeleteUmmmm....
"The ascendancy of capitalist production relations extends its area more and more with the steady improvement of technology, which, by enhancing the economic importance of the large enterprises, tends to eliminate the small independent producers, converting some of them into proletarians and narrowing the role of others in the social and economic sphere, and in some places making them more or less completely, more or less obviously, more or less painfully dependent on capital".
ReplyDelete- VI Lenin, "Collected Works"
3. Why do The Oligarchs seem to have abandoned all loyalty to the USA or any other nation in particular?
ReplyDeleteThe tax code makes shifting profits and taxes around internationally the "Shell Game Extraordinaire" of the modern Davos Man.
what do YOU think might be done to undo the great harm various forces have done to Western Civilization and the ideals of our Founding Fathers?
ReplyDeleteForce Corporations to pay the shareholders "Dividends", restrict their "Charters", and eliminate their tax preferences (rates) /loopholes.
WHY would they want to do that?
ReplyDeleteWhat could be gained? Who would gain?
How would they gain?
Power. Control. Enormous Wealth. The ability to help "friends" and punish "enemies".
ps - Any attempt to change or limit corporate prerogatives will be CRUSHED. The game-makers have decreed it. There will be no Jonathan.
ReplyDeleteHow do we know that the "game" is rigged?
ReplyDeleteLehman Bros., AIG, TARP.
Main Street bails out Wall Street.
The extreme left is "channeled" into the streets to work out its' "interpassive"-activism frustrations, the extreme "tea Party" right to the polls, where they are outspent 10-1 by "establishment" Republicans.
ReplyDeletewhat do YOU think might be done to undo the great harm various forces have done to Western Civilization and the ideals of our Founding Fathers?
ReplyDelete"We" can do nothing effective because "we" are not enough in number -- as far as I can tell, anyway.
This morning, I stumbled across the essay "What conservatives must learn from socialists", with some ideas worth considering. Excerpt:
And so, instead of meeting Obozo-socialism with right-wing crudity, he takes a dialectical approach. While taking a quick tour of socialist thought in Europe and Britain, Scruton affirms the socialist truth found in a society where "[t]he way in which our activities are woven together, binding the destiny of each of us to that of strangers whom we shall never know, is so complex that we could never unravel it."
However, we seem to have reached a terrible point in the 21st Century: so many people are not interested in ideas. Ideas are the foundation of a civilization and ultimately determine that civilization's preservation or collapse.
Irishman, I love your insignia-logo-avatar, and appreciate your good wishes, but in future PLEASE refrain from referring to other blog personalities by name. It tends to produce a series of unpleasant distractions from the point of the post -- whatever it may be.
ReplyDeleteALSO, a new wrinkle has recently been introduced to the "game" I have no desire to play. Certain blog forces, who WILL remain nameless, have decided that any blog publisher who permits rude, pointedly unflattering, derisive remarks or unproved allegations against These Certain Bloggers Who Shall Remain Nameless to stand may be subject to -- now get this -- CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
I, personally, think this is ridiculous, and don't appreciate being told that either I must CENSOR my blog or face possible investigation by the FBI, criminal prosecution and maybe even JAIL TIME.
I believe such bullying tactics are not only unconscionable but unconstitutional, and fundamentally anti-American. Heaven knows the Funders were no above outrageous denigration of one another in PRINT when political battles became heated. None other than Jefferson and Adams were among the most notorious in this regard. but today's People of the Left have little respect for or Founders, and even less for the documents they produced that formed the basis of the government we enjoyed until the Progressives took over approximately 100 years ago. Since then leftists have have gotten away with writing many laws that subvert, hamper and even abolish many of our God-given, constitutionally guaranteed liberties.
I am not AFRAID of these people in the least, but I don't like all the name-calling, catcalling, rude, lewd insults, baiting, and idle threats ANYWAY -- not because it "offends" me, but because it is a WASTE of time -- SO I'm going to have to insist we stop the junior high level insults and barroom brawling. As Lucianne Goldberg says of her own website, "This is a SALON not a SALOON. Please act accordingly."
I hope you -- and everyone else who stops by -- understands, and will cooperate.
THANKS,
The lefties are so predictable as to the nature of the result of a culture that more and more values Affirmative Action over substance, and “Free Stuff” over working hard.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if the political system wasn't sold to the lowest denominator and the most UN-informed bidder, we might actually get a President who is qualified and has a brain on his shoulders.
What if anything will change in 2016? I tend to think that absolutely nothing will change, which is why Hilary might win the election.
Being President is not about being a popular, and nice guy, that’s for Baseball players and Hollywood Movie Stars, it is about being a leader. When it comes to leadership skills that were effective there is FDR, TRUMAN, JFK, and Reagan.. Each of them had a vision, and were respected, and communicated it effectively with the people and then followed through and got it done. Not at all with what we have today!
I did know about DAVOS, Thersites, but don't the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the International Order of Freemasons, Skull & Bones, the Bohemian Grove, and possibly AIPAC form a de facto loose-jointed federation of exceedingly powerful individuals and the interests they represent and control?
ReplyDeleteKnowledge of this sort is usually dismissed with a great wave of the hand as “conspiracy theory,” and those who offer it are rudely told to get back in their padded cells, where they belong, put on their tin foil hats and shut up.
Entrenched Power blocs becomes intensely clannish, and do not LIKE to be subjected to probing examination that might possibly lea to having their secrets divulged. They also -- quite like like the Jews -- appreciate even less being subjected to critical analysis.
Is it any wonder that extremely powerful individuals tuned to use their influence o CRIMINALIZE any activity that might possibly lead to a weakening of their grip on the Perquisites of Privilege and unaccountable Power?
”I, personally, think this is ridiculous, and don't appreciate being told that either I must CENSOR my blog or face possible investigation by the FBI, criminal prosecution and maybe even JAIL TIME.”
ReplyDeleteMore evidence that the Lefties, Liberals, or Progressives, are really Black Shirts! The left is wholeheartedly embracing race-baiting tactics:
The Leftist, Socialists, otherwise know as the Obama supporters are ostensibly funded by the notorious Marxist hypocrites, as well as the Black organizations.
Frankly, I’M SICK OF THE BULLSHIT FROM CERTAIN SEGMENTS OF THE LEFT! Instead of a productive discussion on how to get this country of this ditch that we have been put into by Obama, many of you are acting like a bunch of know-it-all asshats, and telling us who have our own opinions that it’s not our turn to speak up and speak out, because your man is in office now.
If some of you would pull your heads out of your asses for just a minute, you might stop buying into the “Obama BS” which is being pushed by so many pundits and bloggers, and you might realize that you’re being played like a Stradivarius.
I cannot understand how so many people who knew so little about this man, and when they found out the facts about his background, they choose to ignore his anti-American influences, his checkered past, his hidden records, and his lack of any accomplishment and vote for him anyway! . And then they went and elected him again.
Or, if you might prefer, to continue your death march off the Cliffs of Insanity, and continue to vote for these Socialists like Obama and Hillary (what’s her name?). It’s up to you.
Thank you for posting this . It continues to amaze me why so many on the progressive side of the aisle spend so much time focusing their anger and bitter criticism. on people like the Tea-Party members who only want the best for our countries interest, or Fox News, rather than on the Progressives, the Black Panthers, the Illegal aliens, the anti American Muslims, and the ACLU, who pose real threats to our nation’s economic and national security.
You are so right Me. Free, lets call a spade a spade and call it as it is, he was not elected , he was bought , by George Soros and Buffet and the likes of them , then the corrupt acorn and black panthers helped to steal the election , if we had a real attorney general instead of the racist pig holder he would have investigated obama and found out he was not eligible to be president. 6 years and no one still know where the knee gore was born.
ReplyDeleteAmerica’s tragic mistake was in electing this current crop of Progressive, Democrats,. And Socialists and letting these leftists, and their fellow THUGS, take our country away.
If he gets his way, every illegal aliens, from every country in the world like Mexico, Pakistan, etc who don’t even like us at all will be living next door to us and sponging off our Government.
More "Rigging the Game", well into the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteTISA, which is a real, honest-to-God phenomenon not a fantastic paranoid delusion, certainly sounds like a quasi or de facto CONSPIRACY to me, or don't you agree, Thersites?
ReplyDeleteBeen in the works for a hundred years at least. The Oligarchs have been scheming since the earliest days of Progressivism to undo the good work of our Founding Fathers in order to create One World Government –– aka The New World Order.
Why else a 5 year "Secrecy" provision, my good friend?
ReplyDeleteFT: I know which leftwing mini-Mao you are referring to:
ReplyDeleteThe tendentiously tentacled twit whose testicles must be the size of dust motes for all the pithering and shrieking he does about the horrible crimes againt humanity committed every second of the day by those despised rightwingers.
If that nattering hermaphrodite had his way, everyone to the right of Chairman Obamao would be marched off to reeducation camps.
Leftwing progressives are dangerous creatures, especially the shrieking passive aggressive ones.
ALSO, a new wrinkle has recently been introduced to the "game" I have no desire to play. Certain blog forces, who WILL remain nameless, have decided that any blog publisher who permits rude, pointedly unflattering, derisive remarks or unproved allegations against These Certain Bloggers Who Shall Remain Nameless to stand may be subject to -- now get this -- CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
ReplyDelete-----
So this is the ultimate end of "Progressive mentality"—the bully-boy tactics of Bolshevism full blown across the internet, forcing conformation to the "diktats" laid down by those that are incapable of tolerating another point of view outside their stinking orthodoxy.
And it was the Bolsheviks themselves that made "anti-Semitism" a crime. and the crime of being caught in possession of the publication "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was to be shot on the spot, decreed by the first name in "progress", V.I. Lenin.
Is that where the progress of the "progressives" is heading, at last?
DEDICATED to the MEMORY of a PERSISTENT TROLL
ReplyDelete__ A Poor Creature Who Appears Schizophrenic __
He preached upon “Breadth” till it argued him narrow —
The broad are too broad to define:
And of “Truth” until it proclaimed him a Liar —
The Truth never flaunted a sign.
Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As gold the pyrites would shun.
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a man!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
I find it disgusting that the President is still devoting more time to political fund raising than attending to his responsibility of protecting this nation.
ReplyDeleteThanks, AOW, for the article you linked, which I wish everyone would read. It gives a clear and fairly convincing diagnosis of what ails us in the realm of political discourse.
ReplyDeleteI found it a bit infuriating, because we know POSITIVELY that Socialism per se is a seductive, corruptive, delusive, impracticable masterpiece of sophistry and guile that cannot help but lead to mutual impoverishment, but I do see very clearly that this Scruton fellow is taking a meaningful step towards breaking the logjam that now makes honest, potentially profitable political discourse all-but impossible.
My problem with Scruton's thesis lives in my conviction that if you truly believe your adversary is satanic, how could you reasonably allow yourself to compromise with him?
Spot On your closing paragraph is.
ReplyDeleteFT,
ReplyDeleteI would not compromise with a satanic adversary. But outsmart him? It can be done -- but not without a cool head.
Are you trying to frighten everybody, FT? The questions you've asked deserve an answer, but the images you've published are depressing and unsettling at best, frightening at worst. Truly the stuff ot nightmares. I think I understand the first two. They are graphic visions of where industrialization and technology are leading us, namely a world so dominated by hideous, intimidating, terrifyingly complicated machinery and toxic waste that our lives will be all but unbearable. Is that it?
ReplyDeleteBut what could you have meant by posting that monstrous looking creature? I hope you're not suggesting we might evolve into something as godawful as that because of the way things are going? I have to admit the imagine haunts and sickens me with a vague feeling of dread. I can't get it out of my mind. I wonder if that's why everyone so far have chosen to ignore it? I pride myself on not being squeamish, but I rather wish you hadn't published that evil looking thing. I don't like it.
----------> Katharine Heartburn
Some of the best information that comes to us is from disgruntled "insiders" that leak items that alert the world to the inner workings of those groups. The video clip of Dick Cheney released several years ago showing his smug delivery on the podium of the CFR asserting that he was a long time member of the CFR, but In a speech which he delivered before the CFR on 15 February 2002, Cheney admitted that he avoided mentioning his CFR ties to his Wyoming voters, saying:
ReplyDelete“...it’s good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. As Pete mentioned, I have been a member for a long time, and was actually Director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming.”
—is one such example, I believe.
A second from the same CFR shows David Rockefeller with microphone in hand asking a question of the speaker, Dick Cheney, apparently recorded by someone attending and not likely for public release.
So what are the connections of those two individuals to the constrained world we live in today? If you accept that a giant leap was made by the events of September 11, 2001, toward the end game envisioned by the globalist rulers, ten those would be two individuals that should be thoroughly investigated and exposed. Of course, there are plenty of others but for starters I'd name those two demonic bastards.
There are many organizations acting as strong advocates for globalism including those mentioned above in the main article as well as in the comments. One that isn't is the Club of Rome which has been around since 1968. That is the origin of the idea that human life on Earth should be held up as guilty of destroying the planet. Over the intervening years they have been successful in attracting a gaggle of robotic followers inflamed with the notions implanted in their robotic skulls by the genius of the elite manipulators who came up with the idea decades ago that humanity itself must be held up as guilty and would therefore be accountable for the punishment to be meted out by the wielders of the power of the global state for this sin against their new god—Gaia.
And this neo-eco-religion has of course evolved replacing the Ark of the Covenant with The Ark of Hope, a cheap wooden imitation of the original. A fitting image for the fraudulent creation that invented and intended to impose on the "others" of the planet.
The Anonymouse above provides one more striking piece of evidence that liberalism is a mental disorder.
ReplyDeleteEric Holder is a race hustling criminal who ran a criminal enterprise unprecedented even for DC.
If there were any justice left in this country, he, Lois Lerner and many more of Obama's merry band of progressive pranksters would be frog marched off to prison.
..WHAT???? Are you kidding Major Peckerhead? what are you talking about, are you sick or on something?
ReplyDeleteLike schoolyard bullies with nothing left to lose - repubs lash out at those better than themselves. Hopefully, someday, they'll disappear as slavery did after the American Civil War and we'll look back on the GOP era as the blight on humanity that it is.
I guess you've been living in a dreamland for the past 8 yrs of George Bush!
Maybe I wouldn't go so far as to say ISIS wouldn't exist if we didn't invade Iraq, but it's here and we have to deal with it. Thankgod we have a president who thinks with his brains not his ass. Iraq was all about money, all about those “F”s Cheney and the billions he made! And you can and Linda Graham and Cranky McCain, and the rest of those GOP warmongers to the problems that we have today!
Your people on the left have been in office for 6 years now and accomplished NOTHING positive. Hillary left the Middle-East in flames, Iran on the brink of obtaining Nuclear Weapons, and North Korea as belligerent as ever. Oh, and four dead Americans we know about and probably concocted the lie about the video causing it all. She deserves a jail cell. As for your Great leader, he all but destroying this country and left us out in the cold with no one that cares about what the hell happens to us. Great Britain hates us Israel hates us, the whole Mid east hates us, who the hell is left? Africa? Year Right, we really need them... don’t we!
ReplyDeleteONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS ...
ReplyDeleteWe welcome conversation
But without vituperation.
If your aim is vilification ––
Other forms of denigration ––
Alienation with self-justification ––
We WILL use Comment Moderation.
ALSO, comments showing little or no sign of responding directly to the content of our offerings, whatever they may be, will very likely be eradicated, unless Mr. FreeThinke, himself, finds them unexpectedly enlightening, amusing, encouraging, cheering or of an otherwise compelling special interest.
Thersites,
ReplyDeleteWithdrawal from the American Philosophical Society is deeply regrettable. The exquisite Georgian architecture of their historic buildings alone beautifully represent the spirit, the integrity -- and the cultural aesthetic -- of our Founding Fathers so well that to abandon that august organization and its venerable ideals surely constitutes a form of treason.
The likes of Hubbard, Wright, Gropius, Van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, et al may represent a reaction to the excesses and grotesque distortions of the gloomy, oppressive Victorian architecture that blighted the landscape and the interiors of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, but those harbingers of sterile, functional modernism did nothing to compensate for the loss of the Wrennish, Palladian-Georgian-Graeco-Roman ideals since the mid-twentieth century.
As to interior design:
Queen Anne and Chippendale
Hepplewhite, Sheraton,
Once graced our mansions
With elegant life.
Then came John Belter,
And Eastlake -- and Morris.
How I wish it had ended
With young Duncan Phyfe!
~ FreeThinke - Adventures in Antiquing
PS: I've left the last Anonymous comment in place only as an example of the distorted logic and demented passion that has overtaken entirely too much of the electorate who favor the Left.
ReplyDeleteSuch excesses are equally objectionable when they come from the Right, however. -- Even more so, perhaps, because they misrepresent and reflect poorly on the views of thoughtful, intelligent, RESPONSIBLE individuals who do their best to be fair-minded.
APS is an "invitation only" Society. They Founders didn't "leave" the APS so much as as the APA's"monied" mebers bought America and turned the citizenry AWAY from its' "natural" and "original" leaders.
ReplyDeleteA random haiku from the internet...
ReplyDeleteThe screaming of trees
silenced by wail of chain saws.
Fuck you IKEA.
I hate to say it,, but it gets both boring, and tiresome fighting with those leftist morons who make the most pointless, and vulgar, arguments, along with their name calling. lying, and arguing to make their little meaningless points just to impose their will on other people,.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for Libertarianism who are neither left nor righties, they are just as bad, and at times, even worse.
Anyone seriously claiming to be either “left nor right” but a “Libertarian” should be treated as a mentally sick person.
Memo to Anonymouse and others defending the DC criminal gang known as the Obama Administration:
ReplyDeletePull your had out of your ass. You are ate up with dumbass.
Obama is dropping bombs and it's not working.
Why is he half-assed fighting a war he knows will not defeat ISIS?
Why does he not give a good Gaia Damn about Ebola and the polio virus he invited into our country?
Why does Professor Obumbles reserve his worst rhetoric and most severe punishments for his most dreaded enemies, the tea party, the GOP and the fine upstanding citizens the left has targeted as rightwing Christians?
The only difference between Obama and Chairman Mao is that Obama does not speak Chinese.
...we must have only those who salivate over tea?
ReplyDeleteNope. Only those who would be willing to chuck it all into the harbor, and switch to coffee.
Old New Orleans' streets ––
ReplyDeleteDecorously decadent ––
Haggard –– over-wrought!
Philistines at work:
Morbid –– dull –– stupefying ––
Insignificant.
Petty, spiteful trolls
Searching for identity
Fail to fill that Void.
Bilious rhetoric ––
Uncontrolled inanity ––
Make poor use of time.
Writing formal verse
Obviates the seething soul's
Craving for revenge.
~ FreeThinke - New Haiku 10/12/14
Hey FT, Is that picture at the bottom supposed to be the troll who keeps stalking you?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Katharine; it's a horrible sight, and I wish you hadn't posted it.
+++++ Hedda Hayer +++++
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHey, where'd my comment about that passive aggressive harpy go? LOL!
ReplyDeleteJMJ
You're on the wrong thread, Jersey. Try Peggy Noonan's piece above. I left it there, although I wish you hadn't stooped so low as to insult my favorite columnist on whom I've had a crush since sh wrote speeches for President Reagan.
ReplyDelete