State of the Disunion Address by Dennis Leahy

[Dennis Leahy]

The state of the disunion of the USA, Inc., February 9, 2020.

Note: I am not a billionaire or a millionaire, nor a mouthpiece for oligarchs, so some of you with a Pavlovian response to the oligarchic narrative will not be interested in what I have to say. Save yourself from a furrowed brow and close this thread quickly.

For others, well, I am a human, I am a US citizen, I have opinions that are based on my honest attempts at discovering and espousing the truth. I have no agenda to get into your wallet, your pants, or to manipulate you into supporting me in any way. If nothing else, see me as the "fool on the hill." What follows, in bullet-point format, is my honest assessment of the actual current state of the disunion of the USA (as overtly managed by oligarchic representatives of the USA, Inc.)


● The USA, Inc. is a corporate entity. 99.9999% of the citizens contained within the confines of the USA, Inc. have no stock in this corporate entity, and no influence on the workings of this corporate entity.


● The USA, Inc. is not a constitutional republic other than "on paper", and never has been.


● The USA, Inc. is, and has always been, owned and controlled by unelected oligarchs. Synonyms for the "oligarchs" are "the shadow government", "the unelected government", the "permanent government", and "the deep state."


● An orchestrated ruse used by the oligarchs is the pretense of any semblance of democracy, the pretense of free and fair elections, and the pretense that elected officials represent citizens.


● All elected officials solely represent the oligarchs.


● The USA, Inc. election ruse is orchestrated using two corporate entities (DNC and RNC), while providing the appearance of (a binary) electoral choice by citizens.


● The RNC and DNC corporations are the public relations face of the oligarchs, perpetuating the notion that US citizens have governmental representation.


● The RNC and DNC corporations run the USA, Inc.'s "elections", in effect, hiring their own replacements (from the DNC and RNC pool.)


● The RNC and DNC corporations are controlled by oligarchs, and willingly serve oligarchs.


● The RNC and DNC corporations and their politicians - like Mobster Families - really do fight each other for a chance to enrich themselves as faux public servants, knowing full well that they only serve oligarchs. This fight for a very lucrative share of the oligarch's crumbs is cast as a difference of political/governance ideals as part of the control narrative.


● The oligarchs do not really care whether the major politicians that are "elected" are branded as "Democrats" or "Republicans", because all major decisions and the underlying agenda are controlled by the oligarchs and are served equally by both of the faux-political parties.


● The oligarchs own and control all major media.


● All major media is dedicated to oligarchic narrative control, propagandizing citizens relentlessly from birth to death to accept the oligarchic narrative as if it was the truth.


● There may or may not be various, distinct "shadow" groups within the oligarchy, but there is only one global network of corporations that all oligarchs are connected to and interconnected with as a feeding tube. Individual oligarchs own and control the major corporations within the global network, and are interconnected with all of the other corporate entities.


● Every major politician, globally, is fed by the same global network of corporations - even the ones who profess to oppose the oligarchs (like Sanders.)


● The agenda of the oligarchs is to own and control every "resource" on planet Earth. Humans are simply seen as a disposable "resource" by oligarchs.


● No major USA, Inc. politician cares about you or your family in any way, nor do they care about the environment, nor do they care about any other living entities on Earth. Sociopathy is a required trait for major politicians in the USA, Inc.


● Current oligarchic agenda includes the destruction of the democratically elected governments of Venezuela, Syria, and quasi-theocratic Iran, the elimination of Palestine, and continued imperial expansion into African nations. Regardless which Democrat or Republican sits in the Big Chair in the White House, regardless whether the US Senate and House of "Representatives" have a Democrat or Republican majority, the agenda of the oligarchs will be followed (as should be obvious to anyone geopolitically savvy over the past decades when it became so amazingly overt that the agenda was consistent regardless of the dominant political faction.)


● A favored ruse within the narrative control in the USA, Inc. is to pretend to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It should be overtly obvious - even hilarious - to any actual follower of the "Prince of Peace", whose major message can be summed up with the phrase, "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself" that the purportedly Christian politicians represent the exact opposite of Christ's teachings.


● "Q"/qanon is a messenger of the oligarchs.


● The most frightening concepts to the oligarchs are sharing and cooperation, because the oligarchic agenda is ownership and competition. This is why any world government with a degree of actual socialism (which is actually sharing among the people rather than ownership by the oligarchs) is targeted for destruction.


● Oligarchs do fight among themselves for expansion of their control and ownership of the whole. They are not one big happy family that shares the Earth's "resources" among themselves. This is not to be confused as weakness or vulnerability - their inter-fights are merely chess matches.


● The US-based/American Empire-centric corporatists have dismantled most of the manufacturing capabilities that had existed in the US, off-shoring manufacturing to wherever the labor is cheap, humans are expendable, and the environment isn't even a consideration. What does remain (and has grown exponentially over the decades) are military industrial corporations. The USA, Inc. economy is now based primarily (2/3rd of the federal budget, plus unknown billions in black budget, plus billions in ancillary goods and services supporting the military) on the production of war. This is sanctioned and embraced by both pseudo-parties (which are inexorably tied to the GCN and its subset, the MIC), who have absolutely no clue of how to change this reality, which is why all candidates for high office support the ever-expansion of the MIC and military - under the pretense of "freedom", "security", and "global peacekeeping."


● No one, human or alien, is going to rescue humanity from the oligarchs. The only slight possibility that I can see would be for the citizens of the most egregious countries (the US being the alpha) to break the oligarch's control over their country's government by uniting and taking over the election system, citizens rewriting all election laws to end political parties and make a requirement for running for elected office that the candidate must not be connected to the global network of corporations. Otherwise, oligarch representatives (every politician you can name) will retain oligarchic control.

[waves]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)
[SIZE=3]
..... No one, human or alien, is going to rescue humanity from the oligarchs. The only slight possibility that I can see would be for the citizens of the most egregtious countries (the US being the alpha) to break the oligarch's control over their country's government by uniting and taking over the election system, citizens rewriting all election laws to end political parties and make a requirement for running for elected office that the candidate must not be connected to the global network of corporations. Otherwise, oligarch representatives (every politician you can name) will retain oligarchic control.

My only disagreement is this last statement both for it's oversimplification and for the inherent lack of control any 'new' elected anybody would have. Just getting elected doesn't break the massive firewalls in place everywhere to stop momentum, and if any were gained the oligarchs have zero conscience about any final solutions if necessary.

I think the most important factor to any hope of tide turning is breaking the stranglehold on the news media - no large enough unification can get organized like the past because of the current stranglehold on the means of mass organization and communication necessary.

Right now one inhumane parasitic and psychopathic nationality representing the oligarchs, big pharma, big ag, banks/wall street, energy, military, black ops owns control/censorship control of all internet, print, TV/cable, entertainment, AI data keeping, name it... - therefore all means of communication and the ability to kill any momentum spreading they don't like.

The little pockets of truthers communicating like here at Avalon are not hope, we serve their need to keep track of who's onto what, anything bigger is killed.

Taking back the mass media is the only hope of breaking the spell.

[Mike]

Denno!...I share your rage about many of the bullet points listed here.

My ideas are always in flux, it seems. There is so much I don't know that I have a hard time concluding anything too firmly these days, except the most obvious

An example of opinions in flux, for me, would be Socialism. Have you ever heard of the Pareto distribution phenomena? I'm just learning about it myself. It doesn't just apply to money, it applies to everything that is produced creatively, from music records made to goals scored in a soccer game to books sold by a particular author to the population of cities to the mass of stars. And it explains, even mathematically, why there is such an uneven distribution of things in our world..and it apparently has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or whatever (or maybe even oligarchs)

The issue with redistribution, as I understand it, is that the money that is shoveled downstream to the poorest of us will almost always find its way back to the wealthy.

We could say that's because the system is rigged, and it certainly is in many ways. But it can also be explained by competence hierarchies and the Pareto principle. The most competent among us will always be the most wealthy, and the least competent the most poor..for obvious reasons. Then the "Matthew Principle" kicks in (those that have more get more, and those that have less get less...because as you are succeeding people give you more and more opportunities, and as you are failing you get less and less). And that usually results in a Pareto type phenomena. Here are two very short 5 minute videos explaining the Pareto distribution thing:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TcEWRykSgwE

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=U4GMUamUjT8

I'm not saying we shouldn't do something about extreme inequality, but what I am saying is that we don't really know what to do about it. We don't really know how much inequality must exist for things to function efficiently. History, particularly Soviet history, tells us that attempts at Socialism as a means of tinkering with this imbalance is an example of the "cure" being much worse than the malady.

Anyway, it would have been boring had I just explained why I agree with mostly everything you wrote. So there ya go

[onawah]

I think the underlying problem is that most people simply don't understand the nature of evil.
The reason that most find it so difficult is that they don't understand the difference between a human being and a being that is in a human body, but does not have a human soul.
The possibility that there are negatively oriented ET souls and other kinds of non-human beings inhabiting human bodies, impersonating human beings but with no affinity for humanity or human values is very hard to accept.
In general, the average human heart, which I believe is by nature essentially "good", sees evil, but "comprehends it not".
Religions will describe such negative beings as "demons", "archons", "fallen angels", etc. and those labels may help some to wrap their heads around the problem at hand to some extent, but also tends to obfuscate the real, on-the- ground problem, instead relegating it to an abstract dimension for which there are only abstract solutions.
The rulership of negatively oriented beings will end when more of humanity graduates from that level of naive immaturity.

And Mike, I think there is a huge difference between competence and the desire to control and rule over others, another thing that most have great difficulty in differentiating.
Apparently even Jordan Peterson has not been able to make that leap.
There seems to be a great, inherent reluctance to face the problem of evil head- on and deal with it, but a great willingness to go into avoidance and make excuses for it.

[Mike]

Hi Nat, Peterson would acknowledge that there is indeed tyranny in many of our hierarchies, but he would then say that nevertheless most are based on competence, and not power.

And then he might talk about Pareto distributions...(check out the videos for a much more coherent explanation than mine above)

I'm simply not informed or intelligent enough to know how right or wrong or accurate his diagnosis is. just thought I'd introduce it here for a little discussion

[AutumnW]

Posted by Mike (here)
Hi Nat, Peterson would acknowledge that there is indeed tyranny in many of our hierarchies, but he would then say that nevertheless most are based on competence, and not power.

And then he might talk about Pareto distributions...(check out the videos for a much more coherent explanation than mine above)

I'm simply not informed or intelligent enough to know how right or wrong or accurate his diagnosis is. just thought I'd introduce it here for a little discussion

Hi Mike,

Peterson is a brilliant guy who makes remarkable observations. Capitalist meritocracies
are the most vital and efficient form of economy, true. They have their place and more than that...they have their time..because they are subject to boom and then bust.

They don't have built in homeostasis. A meritocracy is subject to a distortion of its own values, as well --as capitalism encourages gaining a competetive edge through any and all means.

Highly 'competent' corporations create barriers through unequal access to and control of regulatory bodies that erect high barriers to entry. For example, it was the large refiners in California who pushed the strictest environmental regulations on gasoline to edge out small refiners.

There is competency in any field of endeavor and then there is 'competency' in the realm of the shrewd , clever and unethical. Without making these kinds of distinctions, Peterson doesn't make a full bodied case for the 'cream rising to the top.' He is ignoring or dismissing the ruthless and the oligarchic components that Dennis has laid out.

There Man, I said it...

[Mike]

hey Autumn well said there, as always!

of course there will be some degree of tyranny in any and all things. Indisputable. Peterson freely acknowledges that.

As far as the competition that exists in capitalism and it's sometimes unethical results, he would likely say that the game is worth the candle. Removing the competition, despite it's obvious demerits, would be far worse than no competition at all. Tyranny and questionable practices would exist in Socialism as well, along with the shrewd and clever and unethical. Pyramidal structures are inevitable, no matter what "ism" in place, in my mostly uninformed opinion. Socialism may seem more ethical on paper, but it would inevitably be run by the same type of lunatics/sociopaths that exist in the current capitalist system. I'm just not convinced Socialism would eradicate oligarchs. I just think things would morph into a kind of oligarchical socialism.

Christ, I dunno. I feel like tomorrow morning I might wake up and return to this post in horror at how dumb it is. But that's my current understanding anyway. Best I can do. But it might be useful for you and everyone else reading this to know that I have no f#cking clue what I'm talking about. That's my little disclaimer

[AutumnW]

Oh Mike. You're funny. The people I take the most seriously are the ones who are as mentally flexible as you are. I think, economically, I am a 'situationist'. Sometimes the situation calls for one type of system and at other times the situation requires a completely different system. For Russians starving under the czar, communism had some positives. For Scandinavians, socialism works because they seem to be almost genetically and culturally predisposed to it.

Currently I am politically an independent who would like to see economic (not political) Communism, or something kind of like that. You could opt in or out at will though. I highly value freedom and attach the concept of freedom to having a basic income and roof over head. At the same time any kind of Communism that turns you into an ant or a bee in a hive, is a turn off. I might read this tomorrow and go "Accchhhh!" You're not the only one.

[Iloveyou]

Dennis Leahy,

the number of thanks you get should be in the high three digit range. Who would not agree!? Ah, yes, I know . . .

I only would want to add: Also the NATO-block is part of this corporate entity, as an appandage, an outpost, an army of minions, a ‚reserve arsenal‘, used as chess piece for clever moves. Just in this game it‘s only the operators who know the rules.

(Sorry, poor choice of words).

[Mike]

Posted by AutumnW (here)
Oh Mike. You're funny. The people I take the most seriously are the ones who are as mentally flexible as you are. I think, economically, I am a 'situationist'. Sometimes the situation calls for one type of system and at other times the situation requires a completely different system. For Russians starving under the czar, communism had some positives. For Scandinavians, socialism works because they seem to be almost genetically and culturally predisposed to it.

Currently I am politically an independent who would like to see economic (not political) Communism, or something kind of like that. You could opt in or out at will though. I highly value freedom and attach the concept of freedom to having a basic income and roof over head. At the same time any kind of Communism that turns you into an ant or a bee in a hive, is a turn off. I might read this tomorrow and go "Accchhhh!" You're not the only one.

I think you clearly have a better understanding of all this than me, despite how horrified you think you may be in the morning lol. You can weave in and out of these larger concepts with grace and nuance whereas I am mostly just repeating what I've heard and am deciding whether or not I agree with it even as I'm writing.

But I guess that's what these types of discussions are for. To learn. Id rather be a flexible and ever learning fool than a wanna be know it all I guess....tho my ego is fighting me on that even as I'm typing this.

My main fear with socialism, in general, is that it flattens out hierarchies. It might eradicate the more corrupt and sinister hierarchies, but it would also do the same for the largely competent ones. Wouldn't it? And without our best and brightest and most competent running things, stuff could fall apart pretty quickly. Right? I don't know for sure...just thinking out loud here. Open to correction, of course.

6am here. The real question is, what the hell am I still doing up? Gonna be a long day at work tomorrow, that's for sure. Damn you Dennis Leahy

[Sunny-side-up]

● The USA, Inc. is a corporate entity. 99.9999% of the citizens contained within the confines of the USA, Inc. have no stock in this corporate entity, and no influence on the workings of this corporate entity.

99.9999% of the citizens contained within the confines of the USA are just stock in a business called the "USA".
Call your self a USA citizen and you pledge your life as a commodity.

I see the USA is a front for war mongering profit and testing/development on all levels.

Now in "America" you will find the real people and true citizens
Call your self an American and you are a person living.

[araucaria]

Anyone interested in where we might go with the Pareto principle may find food for thought in some of my posts from a while back. Also on the related topic of “ubiquity”.

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post874226
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post879403
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1048600

On Mark Buchanan’s Ubiquity, The Science of History… or Why the World is Simpler Than We Think :

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1001620
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1072702

[WhiteFeather]

I think you're on to something Dennis. Hopefully we can educate the sheep.

This bullet point was splendid.
No major USA, Inc. politician cares about you or your family in any way, nor do they care about the environment, nor do they care about any other living entities on Earth. Sociopathy is a required trait for major politicians in the USA, Inc.

[Baby Steps]

Kudos to you Dennis

On the upside we are seeing certain talking points becoming more mainstream and possibly policy changes could eventually follow

Universal basic income
Single payer health care
Getting money out of politics

Inequality is ok, people are still motivated to work if the ubi is on the low side. Some people like Bernie use these points, and are vilified . Will people see it- hopefully eventually

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by waves (here)

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)
..... No one, human or alien, is going to rescue humanity from the oligarchs. The only slight possibility that I can see would be for the citizens of the most egregious countries (the US being the alpha) to break the oligarch's control over their country's government by uniting and taking over the election system, citizens rewriting all election laws to end political parties and make a requirement for running for elected office that the candidate must not be connected to the global network of corporations. Otherwise, oligarch representatives (every politician you can name) will retain oligarchic control.

My only disagreement is this last statement both for it's oversimplification and for the inherent lack of control any 'new' elected anybody would have. Just getting elected doesn't break the massive firewalls in place everywhere to stop momentum, and if any were gained the oligarchs have zero conscience about any final solutions if necessary.

I think the most important factor to any hope of tide turning is breaking the stranglehold on the news media - no large enough unification can get organized like the past because of the current stranglehold on the means of mass organization and communication necessary.

Right now one inhumane parasitic and psychopathic nationality representing the oligarchs, big pharma, big ag, banks/wall street, energy, military, black ops owns control/censorship control of all internet, print, TV/cable, entertainment, AI data keeping, name it... - therefore all means of communication and the ability to kill any momentum spreading they don't like.

The little pockets of truthers communicating like here at Avalon are not hope, we serve their need to keep track of who's onto what, anything bigger is killed.

Taking back the mass media is the only hope of breaking the spell.

Caitlin Johnstone also articulates that the mass media propaganda is the major tool of the oligarghs to control the populace: narrative control - and she's correct.

It's sort of the "chicken and the egg": can citizens gain the understanding necessary to revolt and take over the election system while the mass media continues to pump the oligarch's narrative, or, does the mass media need to be dismantled first, ending the narrative control? I would say the former has a sliver of a chance, while the latter does not. 80% of "news" read by the talking heads with the shiny teeth is prepared by the US federal government and corporate entities, and is simply read verbatim from the teleprompter. There are no investigative reporters left in mainstream media (by oligarchic design), only "news" (propaganda) readers. Michael Hastings pops to mind (like the JFK hit, the hit could have been accomplished off camera and quietly, but was deliberately a spectacle: warning sent.)

I just can't see any vector to "take back" mass media from the 5 corporate entities that own all of it. Occupy Wall Street happened without the people controlling mass media - an indication that word of mouth (primarily via Internet), the viral spread of ideas, can sneak around mass media. There have also been several studies done that show that 5% (one study) or 10% (another study) of the population accepting an idea will result in the general acceptance of the idea by the population. In my thoughts on citizens re-writing all election laws, I'd include mandating no election influence by mass media (with outrageously high fines for offenders - even the possibility of losing their FCC license) and banning political advertising by anyone - corporate entity and candidates alike. A new system of exposing (in writing) candidates views on citizen-authored topics would replace the corporate media circus and force all candidates to take a stand on each of the issues presented by citizens. That stand, in writing, would then become the metric by which the newly elected candidates are judged - and removed from office if the constituency assesses that the elected official has drastically deviated from their written words.

[This is brief, touching on only a couple of major points, but again, citizens would need to rewrite all election laws and take complete control of elections from candidacy to vote counting, and the pool of candidates could not include individuals with corporate ties (corporate stock, a corporate management position, or a corporate board seat) either currently or in the previous 5 years. Elected officials would also be prevented from having any of the same ties while in office, and for 5 years after their (single) term in office ended. Single terms for all elected and appointed positions would remove one of the most powerful pathways that the oligarchs currently use to corrupt and reward corruption. The fact that the candidates/elected officials could not be tied to the Global Corporate Network to even have candidacy would mean individuals in office would not be beholden to that global corporate entity - the exact opposite of the current, oligarch-controlled election system. Perfect? Unassailable? No, but immeasurably better than allowing oligarchs to retain the current system of putting only corporate controlled/corporate tied individuals in all positions of high office.]

[edina]

Posted by Baby Steps (here)
Kudos to you Dennis

On the upside we are seeing certain talking points becoming more mainstream and possibly policy changes could eventually follow

Universal basic income
Single payer health care
Getting money out of politics

Inequality is ok, people are still motivated to work if the ubi is on the low side. Some people like Bernie use these points, and are vilified . Will people see it- hopefully eventually

I agree getting money out of politics is important.

As is discerning how corruption has been jilting humanity; the various ways it's been done, ie through USAID, Trade programs, MIC, Big Pharma / Medical Industrial Complex, back doors into our banks, ect....

I also think almost everyone would like UBI and SPHC.

However, I get concerned that in our zeal, we may grab for those rings at the cost of our freedom.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to clean house, and to ensure we're not entrapped by these promises.

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Mike (here)
Denno!...I share your rage about many of the bullet points listed here.

My ideas are always in flux, it seems. There is so much I don't know that I have a hard time concluding anything too firmly these days, except the most obvious

An example of opinions in flux, for me, would be Socialism. Have you ever heard of the Pareto distribution phenomena?...

I knew that the word "socialism" would create tension, but don't have a better single word to use as a synonym. The oligarchs agenda is ownership of everything, and renting the world back to the other 8 billion. What's the opposite of that called?

The oligarchs are not the most creative, greatest producers - they are leeches. Even if they were the most brilliant among us all, why would the rest of us allow them to reward themselves with literally everything?

Pareto production vs. pareto distribution: I realize that Peterson is speaking of distribution of net production, not distribution of goods, but using the word "distribution" is misleading. Calling pareto distribution a natural law is absurd because species would go extinct if, for example, only the alpha female lion in a pride ate the kill that she produced. Peterson's historical example of early 1900's Russian farmers varying greatly in output can and should be read as a lack of cooperation and information sharing among the farmers, and variances in soil composition and weather factors. 80% of Russian farmers were not lazy or lacking in the will to produce bountifully, and that is the message that Peterson is insinuating. It is also the cornerstone of the logic that the highest producers in a society deserve not just a little more, but all.

The "breadwinner"/primary producer in a family does not horde the spoils of his/her labor - they are shared among the family. Expand the boundary of "family" to be all inclusive, and that is the basic "socialism" that I espouse.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs attended a showing of a Xerox machine that used icons rather than text, and with that stolen/borrowed/shared information, became billionaires. They were "clever" enough to steal the idea, but not clever enough to have come up with the idea themselves - yet were rewarded for it. The oligarchs that own and control the world are not the most productive or the greatest asset to humanity, (they are parasites, with fortunes born of exploitation and inherited exploited spoils), so pareto distribution is not the reason for nor justification of global ownership and control.

On Gilligan's Island, there was just one (supposedly) brilliant, clever mind: the professor. If there are 7 ripe coconuts on the island and 7 castaways, the most clever or productive (say, in harvesting technique) individual shouldn't get to own all the coconuts, hoard them, and use them to pay for sex with Maryann while the other castaways (including high-maintenance Ginger) starve.

Equitable ownership/control/distribution of fundamental resources is the "socialism" I support, not a Marxist takeover of corporate entities by the public, nor any of the examples of countries (like the USSR) that touted socialism for all yet practiced some quasi-socialism only on the peasantry.

[araucaria]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)
I knew that the word "socialism" would create tension, but don't have a better single word to use as a synonym.

Another word you might use would be 'altruism': see this post

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by edina (here)
I agree getting money out of politics is important.

As is discerning how corruption has been jilting humanity; the various ways it's been done, ie through USAID, Trade programs, MIC, Big Pharma / Medical Industrial Complex, back doors into our banks, ect....

I also think almost everyone would like UBI and SPHC.

However, I get concerned that in our zeal, we may grab for those rings at the cost of our freedom.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to clean house, and to ensure we're not entrapped by these promises.

..."at the cost of our freedom" is a programmed, nebulous, fear-based meme. You have fallen for propaganda. We don't gain our freedom by perpetuating the oligarch's system. Allowing oligarchs to continue to own and control the world and all of the rest of us is not "freedom" in any sense - it is a cage, invisible to some. You may have been speaking directly to UBI and SPHC with your comment, but neither of those (and I have arguments in favor and against both) would impact our freedom.

A group of cockroaches currently overrunning the house fighting another group of cockroaches in the house is not "cleaning house." Throwing a handful of Democrat operatives (laughingly touted as the "deep state") in jail, or impeaching Trump for that matter, is a ridiculous pretense of ousting the oligarch's representatives from public office. It's like removing one toothpick from a tornado touchdown zone and calling that a clean-up.

[Kotch]

[QUOTE=Dennis Leahy;1335294]

Posted by edina (here)

..."at the cost of our freedom" is a programmed, nebulous, fear-based meme. You have fallen for propaganda. We don't gain our freedom by perpetuating the oligarch's system. Allowing oligarchs to continue to own and control the world and all of the rest of us is not "freedom" in any sense - it is a cage, invisible to some. You may have been speaking directly to UBI and SPHC with your comment, but neither of those (and I have arguments in favor and against both) would impact our freedom.

A group of cockroaches currently overrunning the house fighting another group of cockroaches in the house is not "cleaning house." Throwing a handful of Democrat operatives (laughingly touted as the "deep state") in jail, or impeaching Trump for that matter, is a ridiculous pretense of ousting the oligarch's representatives from public office. It's like removing one toothpick from a tornado touchdown zone and calling that a clean-up.

Dennis,

Many thanks for this post. You have laid out my feelings with far more clarity and thought than I could probably have done.

One thing I would like to echo - when Americans use the word 'Freedom' I rarely know what exactly they mean. I think it's one of those words like 'love' that is so overused as to have become almost meaningless.

I'm waiting for the next new age guru to spend a bit of time defining what it means and how it is that most people understand it .

My current favourite thinker is Yuval Noah Harari. I was stunned by his sit down chat with Satan (sorry - Zuckerberg). I think he would agree (probably in slightly more diplomatic words) with pretty much everything you said.

Cheers & thanks again!!

Kotch