Timely Remarks On The State Of The State

Before I get to my next post where I'll talk about China, the U.S. and trade, just a few remarks of the insanity of this world.  The world certainly is a profoundly interesting place right now.  Not in a good way, either. And, so are the political wranglings in Washington. It appears FBI Director McCabe was investigating the United States Attorney General before he was fired. It appears this may have come at the request of some in Congress but to be honest, I have no idea what the law is around this.I'd imagine the answers can be found online if I really wanted to find out. But, can a few congresspeople seek an investigation of the attorney general and use the FBI? Or, does this need to be voted on by one or both houses of Congress?  Or, what is required to direct the FBI to investigate the AG, whom the FBI reports to?  I don't know off of the top of my head. But, I doubt anyone else does either. That's how bizarre this world is. 

One has to be a very specialized attorney or an expert on esoteric law to know that answer off the top of their head. This is far from over per my last post. We'll just have to see where this ends. I discount almost anything in the news that can be politicized (just about every aspect of society given the grip the state has on our existence) but you may have seen some insiders in the last few days stating this current mess is going to be a disaster that could lead to a potential crisis in government. A disaster for whom simply depends on if that insider is a Democrat or Republican. Most likely a disaster for the state. (class & hierarchy) Regardless, it's sickening.

As I've remarked time and again, politics is a relic of the past and will some day fade from our memories. If one actually ponders reality, what person would ever outsource their thinking and decision making about their lives, both economic and rights as sentient beings, to a group of people in a far off land who will do anything, say anything and promise anything to get elected to a position that has said dominion over your fate? ie, Politicians, standing armies, corporate executives and any non-democratic hierarchical position of authority.

We don't need politicians in a democracy. The ancient Athenians didn't have them. That we do is a sign of the corruption and rot of democracy. We need citizen government. And, to be specific, local citizen government. We need something akin to the Articles of Confederation in our interpretation of the Constitution or the enforcement of enumerated constitutional powers that limits what Washington can be involved in.  (And, since our slavery and the subversion of our human rights is economic, we need an economic constitution or something akin to that.)  Then, we need to replace a system of Washington politicians with democracy's citizens and remove the root of all evil, money, from Washington's very clearly-defined, limited decisions. 

Self-rule at the local level is the only way society, or for that matter, humanity will recover from this global system of rot. If it is up to the status quo, they will never relinquish their pathological grip on your life.  The good news is that institutions of the ego aka control, always fail for this very reason.

Remember, in 1789 most Washington congressional representation was around 5,000 voters. They represented a small number of people in a reasonably small geography who likely had similar interests to some degree. Especially, because our economy was almost all agrarian and all voters were male landholders who were probably using land within any specific geography for similar economic benefit.  Today congresspeople represent millions of people. When they pass more and more legislation, none of which is noble due to the monetary corruption by corporations and the economic aristocracy, they are more likely harming democracy, communities and individuals than helping them. There is no true democratic representation when you represent millions of people.

The Athenians segmented local democracy decision-making down to the neighborhood. What if 90% of the economic power was in your neighborhood and what was best for you and your neighbors rather than 90% of the power in some far off land where the rulers don't know you or are driven by their own insatiable drive for power and money? And, that means 90% of the money is controlled by you and your neighbors. You decide what to invest in. You decide how it is spent. You decide how to educate your children. You decide if everyone gets to own a piece of property. You decide what kind of health care is necessary for your family and your community. You decide what kind of businesses would benefit your community. Not a corporation. Not a politician who doesn't know you, doesn't care to know you and views you as someone to exploit for their own ego's purposes.

Washington is never going to solve anything. Those who are hopeful that Trump is going to save the day have absolutely zero grounds to stand on. They don't yet understand what is happening either.  Donald Trump is the same immoral person as those who run Hollywood, who enslave you to debt and rent-seeking behavior of corporations, who has sent tens of millions of your jobs to communist and corrupt nations around the world who sell out their citizens for a seat at the table of self-interest, and the tyrants who involve us in endless wars.  As I noted around the election of Trump, he has the exact same archetype as Hitler.  That strong-man persona is on display every day.  You can see Trump is clearly an entitled capitalist who is used to his anti-democratic, authoritarian edicts that corporate executives enslave you to every day.  When he doesn't get his way through intimidation or being able to control people to do his bidding without question, he fires them. Actually, it's a sign of a very low emotional intelligence and nonexistent self-awareness.  But, don't kid yourself. He's no different than any of the others in Washington or corporate boardrooms or in the military-industrial complex. Others simply present better.  They are more capable of manipulating us through their contrived, inauthentic behavior.  They know how to inauthentically present well.  I think they call that polished which is another word for deceitful and contrived.  Telling people what they want to hear than what you are actually thinking. Obama was a master at this. That's why so many people distrusted him. He lived in his head rather than his heart. And, that means we never really knew authentically who he was.

That Trump is a strong-man personality gives some people confidence he knows what he is doing.  People want to follow people who appear to know how to solve their problems. (Your problems need to be solved by you or through the help of others, which is essentially by you asking for help.)  Hitler, Mussolini and other strong men convinced those who were morally-weak and seeking to emotionally-abandon themselves that they too knew what they were doing.  And, much of society followed them right over the cliff.  Trump doesn't have a clue in the daily operations of the economy. Nor does anyone working with him.  No politician does. Nor does any capitalist.  Nor the Federal Reserve or any other centralized bureaucracy.  The economy has trillions upon trillions upon trillions of moving parts and the only thing that keeps it going is endless money printing that has had the effect of papering over it's greater and greater dysfunction over the last 50 years.  We are all following politicians and corporate masters off the cliff.  We too have had decisions made on our behalf that we follow without question.  As I've noted many times, the U.S. economy peaked around 1980.  I'll share that very clear and easy-to-understand reality but it's really not hard to see reality if you open your eyes.  The vast majority of this country looks like it's straight out of the third world where corruption and rot reign supreme.  Most of our country has been hollowed out for decades upon decades. Most people don't have a pot to piss in. And, hidden behind the moats and gates of our dukes, kings, princes, lords, barons and the like are massive castles built on the backs of our slavery and the theft of democracy's wealth. 

"To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.

I've noted on here that we are in the midst of unprecedented evil in this world. The ego may have a hard time seeing that through its endless delusions and selfishness but it is clearly true. I plan to discuss this in specific detail at some point but to pull from past posts on spiritual, emotional, social and physical violence, the state realizes people cannot be turned into productive, exploitable assets under the endless duress of physical violence. So, humanity in some way has to be convinced of its own slavery. To willfully accept it.  The state has accomplished this through various forms of emotional, social and spiritual violence or unseen violence. But, it's everywhere.  As I noted years ago, this time could be characterized as peak state.  Or the peak power of the state.  Never in human history has the state held so much power over the entire human race.  Most people lived outside of state control up until the last one hundred years.  Even through much of the early twentieth century people in most parts of the world lived unfettered existences.  In the U.S., we had many people who were some degree of self-reliant through a generally agrarian existence.  But, in the second half of the twentieth century the state has consolidated its power. This has happened through the bastardization of property rights and the continued advancement of technology, the state (class & hierarchy) now controls nearly every aspect of the human experience regardless of what continent.  Forced corporate work, (generally meaningless work that serves no value to humanity or the natural world) endless regulations and controls on your experience, denial of access to capital/property/money, etc for the vast majority of humanity, a meaningless subsistence of economic servitude and slavery, forced conformity in every aspect of your existence, etc. 

It's amazing how Jefferson's quote from two hundred years ago so aptly describes today. But rather than it being Europe as the tyrant from 1823, it is the United States today. There is an old saying from thousands of years ago that "what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.". While it seems most people I talk to don't understand emotional, spiritual and social violence, a system of class only exists through violence. Corporate capitalism is a system of class. It only exists through violence. In our nation, outright physical violence is nearly impossible due to the Constitution and the rule of law. But, emotional, social and spiritual violence are greater in this nation and around the globe than at any time in history. And that violence is general perpetrated economically. The prime mechanism is corporate capitalism and forcing humanity to endlessly grub for money.  The brainwashing runs deep so it's going to take some time for many who are the most successful in our society, who are also the most ignorant, to wake up. They may never wake up until it's foisted upon them.

The human spirit is under greater attack than at any time in humanity's existence. And, in ways we don't understand, I suspect the universe, consciousness, the Divine or the forces beyond our understanding are responding in kind.  That is behind the cycle of volatility so often discussed on here.  And, while systems of state theft and control like communism steal your will, capitalism steals your spirit. To be successful in this system, you have to sell your soul. Grubbing for money, especially just to survive or having it foisted upon you as a control system, is the most heinous, Godless act imaginable.  Or, as noted by prescient voices long ago, money is the root of all evil.

"I used to think when I was a child, that Christ might have been exaggerating when he warned about the dangers of wealth. Today I know better. I know how very hard it is to be rich and still keep the milk of human kindness. Money has a dangerous way of putting scales on one’s eyes, a dangerous way of freezing people’s hands, eyes, lips and hearts." – Archbishop Dom Helder Camara

That politicians and corporate executives are so involved in creating and controlling any complex system such as a massive, centrally-planned economy as ours is, is a sign of impending doom.  Their intent in doing so is not virtuous.  It's driven by the ego's primary intent of control. And that intent of control is to ensure that class & hierarchy maintains its death grip on democracy and on your forced servitude.  I've talked about this time and again. Each time a new economic bill is passed, each time a lobbyist changes the rules by essentially bribing our government, each time corporations jab their blood-sucking funnel into U.S. economic policy, they simply add more internal contradictions to corporate capitalism. The same internal contradictions that will create its demise, just as happened with communism.  It's just a matter of when those contradictions resolve themselves.  Or, as noted leading up to the 2008 collapse, a matter of when they unwind. 

By the way, I have focused on religion and virtue quite a bit on here over the last five or so years. The hierarchical aspects of religion are as toxic as the hierarchical aspects of corporate capitalism, standing armies, politics, etc. But the local and unorganized aspect of religion is recognized by anthropology as one of the original forms of community. Acceptance, virtue, kindness, compassion, dignity, equality and the like are timeless human values. They are the tenets of all great religions around the world. It's when class and hierarchy thieve it that it becomes cruel and Godless.  Regardless, this is consistent with an overarching theme on here that we are in the midst of a new age of enlightenment.  It's amazing that enlightenment if associated with reason. That is complete horseshit. Enlightenment has absolutely nothing to do with reason. And, neither did the Age of Enlightenment.

Enlightenment is internal journey of self-discovery where one eschews social norms, social values and all of the nonsensical belief systems society places in your mind. One eschews them because they gain greater understanding of ones own ignorance. Enlightenment is a metaphysical and moral awakening. Morality does not come from a place of reason inside of you. It comes from your highest good.  It is a place beyond the self and all of its foibles. Hitler's actions were very reasoned.  And, they also came from the self as opposed to the selflessness of our highest good.  Our country was founded on a wholesale moral awakening of varying degrees. It was not founded on reason. The king of England's actions were based on reason. His reason was very well accepted by the economic and political aristocracy of the day. It was that certain people were chosen by God to have special privileges and rights and to rule. In fact, this is how pathology has often controlled society. First the rulers told the masses they were gods, then they were anointed by God or gods to rule, then they were smarter than you so they should rule, then they were superior to you because they were willing to smash your face in, (social Darwinism) and now they have really been exposed as some of the most vile creatures on our planet.  I'd say the state (class & hierarchy) has no more compelling reasons to convince humanity of their privilege.  That's why they want to take your guns. That's why we have so many people in prison. That's why our peace officers are now weaponized by the military-industrial complex. They are there to protect those who have stolen everything including humanity's worth and dignity.

"We may have a democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both." - Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice leading into the Great Depression. (A period of time marked by massive wealth inequality. He was also a rabid opponent to corporate power that was concentrated into the hands of the few at that time. Noted on here many times was how the massive corporations created the Great Depression similar to the depression we have been in for decades.)

Nothing new is under the sun. Just as in the Age of Enlightenment, people are starting to awaken to some modicum of morality in their decision-making. It's opaque and not always well-thought-out but they realize how morally bankrupt the ruling economic class is around the world.  And, that we are all worthy of dignity.  This is what is happening again today. People are reconnecting with their divinity and awakening from the brainwashed image of lies and deceit and the moral turpitude of state actors around the globe. Some people are farther on that path of relinquishing ignorance, some people are not.  Some people never will be. Fear keeps us from awakening and trusting our internal guidance system.  Fear is enforced through state control.  But this system, and the state in general, exists substantially because it's a confidence game. As long as the masses are taken care of, there is deference to what happens in halls of power regardless of how evil that power is. Those days are over. Now, without any real hope for the masses, and a system of incredible immorality, how does the system maintain itself? The lies and deceit are front and center for everyone to see. So, now, how do you force people into a system which lacks dignity, compassion, kindness, justice, and the like?  You can't promise them a job paying a living wage as Hitler did. Or, the land of opportunity where everyone can become rich as the United States used to do. 

People want to know how to get involved. How to change the system. How to march on Washington or whatnot. You don't need to do anything other than sit back and watch. The state has collapsed around the world since time immemorial.  And, that has often happened as easily as the masses simply blowing their breath against it because it's only really held together with confidence.  The confidence is gone, the system no longer functions.  The contradictions of this system will create its own outcome. We are exactly where we are supposed to be as a nation and as a species.  Our past decisions created this environment today just for us. This is our moment. We either continue down the rabbit hole as we rationalize and bargain with a system of rot or we wake up, stand to account and create a new world.  The choice is ours. 

I'm confident that humanity will rise again to re-establish human values and ideals. We already see some of this in the fact that 90% of Americans have no confidence in Congress and haven't for nearly thirty years.  As Martin Luther King noted, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.  The establishment won't wake up or experience some epiphany of morality.  Nor the state.  But, the masses of humanity that Jefferson saw as a bulwark against the tyranny of elites and the state, they will. Those who are exploited by the state, they will and are waking up.

"I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit." -- Martin Luther King