State of the Disunion Address by Dennis Leahy

[edina]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

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.

My comments were made in context of Baby Steps previous comment.

I don't feel fearful. I feel quite optimistic.

In the end it's about people becoming increasingly aware of and discerning of the larger landscape of how things were working. Have been working for millennia, and hopefully are shifting now.

On many levels, from consciousness to culture.

Discernment of this is a counterbalance to deception.

Edgar Cayce often said we are here to learn patience, but I think we are also here to refine our capacity for discernment.

Those who would like to keep us entrapped in their system, are masters at deception.
(Humanity has been tricked before.)

And to pull off some of what I think you are trying to describe here, that awareness is helpful.

As is people standing up in their own power. Becoming leaders, becoming self-response-able.
Which is what I have often thought of as personal sovereignty.

It is a process. And everyone is at their own unique place within this larger process.

Dennis, I consider you to be a natural leader.

I read what you write with an interest in how your ideas can be implemented.

[edina]

Posted by Kotch (here)

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.

You raise an interesting point.
I've met many people from other countries who also value freedom.
Every person probably has their own interpretations of what it means.

I'll think on this some and see if I can add some clarity from my own point of view, if you're interested.

Posted by Kotch (here)
My current favourite thinker is Yuval Noah Harari.

Kotch

He's written about a lot of topics. Which ones are you referring to? And what appeals to you most about his thinking?

[Caliban]

A huge step forward would be when a large part of the population totally disavows the major media streams, on TV and elsewhere. With the advent of the internet I thought we might see that happen.

It has happened. But only to a very small percentage of people. The others go on taking in what MSNBC/CNN and the others tell them. With all the in your face evidence about 911, 98% (okay, I'll be generous, 90%) of the population will NOT face it. What more do they need?

They need Rachel Maddow or some blonde on Fox to tell them that their eyes are not lying to them. We don't need control, initially of those networks of information. We need people ready to make the break. And as it is, there aren't that many of us. Rather than being, ultimately, about "them," it's really about Us.

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Mike (here)
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

Mikey!

Capitalism and socialism are not opposites and can and do coexist. The degree of socialism in the US has steadily declined in our lifetimes (and the spoils into the hands of oligarchs.) For example, when you were a kid (hahahaha, OK, wait, bad lead-in), when you were a child, you used to be part-owner (socialism) of US ports infrastructure and interstate highways/toll roads, which have now been privatized and sold (capitalism) to foreign corporations and foreign governments.

Innovation occurs without competition, in fact, competition has absolutely nothing to do with innovation. Creative minds are creative even under tyranny and imprisonment. Competition causing innovation/creativity is a false meme, given legs by repetition, that doesn't stand up under scrutiny. I have numerous creative friends (musicians, artists, luthiers, etc.) and the only way to end their creativity would be to kill them.

However, force creative people to perform non-creative tasks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, in order to survive, and you will drastically limit their innovative/creative output compared to their potential.

"of course there will be some degree of tyranny in any and all things." Again, a meme, projected upon us to frighten us into sticking with the oligarchic status quo. It's like the people who insist that every human is corruptible, and that regardless of who attains high office, they will fall victim to systemic corruption. My answer to that is, well, if you want to guarantee that elected officials are all corrupt and corruptible, then make sure to have a couple of thoroughly corrupt corporate mobster gangs (political parties) create the pool of acceptable candidates and run the elections.

[Wind]

Thanks for speaking the truth and sharing some common sense again, Dennis.

Is the system in the US working? Well, yes it is for the rich!

When we Europeans look at the services in your country we are just horrified by how inhumane it seems.

I think many Americans have been brainwashed to fear the word "socialism" and they don't really understand it's full implications.

Social democracy is the best system on the planet and that too is far from perfect, but at least there is some humanity in it.

I'll just leave this here as a reminder.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_7U5JVk_y7U

[Ernie Nemeth]

This world is now almost entirely recipe-based. Almost every activity has a set of steps already demarcated and accounted for. The freedoms we have these days is merely window-dressing. It is a ruse of the highest order. From infancy to old age almost every moment is relegated to a series of automatic responses writ into the social fabric of our lives.

What we are to think, what we are to do next, what profession we have aptitude for, what sexual orientation we can assume, what entertainment will suit us, what hobby we might take on, even how high we might rise on the ladder of success, all are part and parcel of what bureaucrats have decided to add to the list of sanctioned activities and the right way to go about achieving them.

The army of bureaucrats that we train in school have to have jobs. And so we get them to write more laws and civil codes and ensure that everyone has to jump through hoops in order to move forward. The piece of paper with a seal on it, giving authoritative credence to one's skill, is more important than the skill itself. Without that piece of paper, skilled individuals with experience cannot rise up the ladder regardless of merit.

But the worst is the New World Order threat of the corporate take-over of planet Earth. The public trust is being privatized at a rapid rate. Our social victories are being eradicated by the selling of our infrastructure and public institutions to private interests. And with the current PC culture, it is impossible to get a serious debate going regarding these very serious issues without someone taking umbrage. Every debate becomes a side-show circus and devolves into mud-slinging and virtue signalling.

And now with our lives being over-run by new immigrants, and having to foot the bill for their assimilation into our society, including increased costs for essentials like homes, food, insurance, gas, and education our cost of living is increasing precipitously.

No one wants to take a back seat but there are only so many front seats. Because of this, it is imperative to seat the best and most effective people in those few front seats. These are rarely the most well-liked or the richest or have powerful friends. These are usually just competent people with low-key lives. In our current world those sort of people have virtually no chance at all.

Finally, there is no historical context or precedent to follow because even our history has been altered to suit the ruling elite. So we cannot even draw parallels and learn from previous mistakes - but at least we'd know it had been done before. But these megalomaniacs have taken even that from our store of public lore.

So we have no precedent for another way of life to draw on - even though the evidence is there that there was a time long ago when we acted more like civilized humans than we do today.

We are on our own, I'm sorry to say. And the minds of our young have been perverted by technology designed for just that purpose.

Most of humanity has been reduced to a rag-tag bunch of meme-spewing automatons with no grasp of the social engineering ongoing in today's world. Most have embraced it, shed their humanity, and taken on a role as one of the designated and accepted cookie-cutter robot lives.

It could just as easily be played on a computer sort of like farmville 101 for human opt-out.

Log in, start game, tune out.

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Mike (here)
...
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

So sorry to have destroyed your productivity at work today, Slave #8325348036. Give me your boss's phone number, and I will call and explain the situation, and get you a 3 hour siesta at work today.

Not picking on you, but I feel compelled to address this: "without our best and brightest and most competent running things, stuff could fall apart pretty quickly."
Point 1: Ah, the illusion that these greedy conmen, agents of the oligarchs, are among the best and brightest. In no way is this true. False meme. They are groomed and hand-picked for compliance with oligarchs. They do seem to need to be proficient at bald-face lying, so that is evidently another required skill for the job of oligarch's representative.

Point 2: Specifically what function within "governance" would actually require that the office-holder was among the best and brightest? Every non-governmental aspect of life is run by us ordinary people, (including the workers in corporations that actually do the work), and we do just fine. Just how bright does someone have to be to send out the Social Security checks from our own pool of money? How bright do they need to be to hire experts (non-governmental) to examine our infrastructure, and other experts (non-governmental) to repair it? How bright does someone have to be to perform the day to day duties of governance? This false meme that elected officials can't be ordinary but must be "special" has all high office positions stacked with clever, oligarch-connected people, and a Congress full of clever lawyers that work for the oligarchs.

[waves]

Thinking just as big as the system we're up against, what is a truly practical approach?

In terms of anything truly mass scale practical that would be necessary to break the incredibly tightly woven web of roadblocks protecting the oligarch stranglehold - Dennis, I think you are right that we have no practical way to take back media as I say is required for mass enough momentum and unification, and I am right that it will take far more than changed election laws or any sprinkling of honest elected people to break the backs of the oligarch system.

There are gatekeepers, laws, infiltrators and killers now in place monitoring every bubble of momentum against the beast - I think big enough scale changed elections laws has no chance of happening in practicality. But elections laws STILL wouldn't break the system anyway. ALL elected are still crippled ants up against a system of a million unified beasts.

So with that in mind, what could really happen and matter on a mass scale and how? What really are any practical, workable, probably ideas to break the unified beasts stranglehold on every aspect of our lives, keeping in mind that we couldn't even get the whole of Avalon to unify on any one platform of objective and procedure.

I wonder if the worst cleverness of the stranglehold is that the biggest problem is not the perpetrators, it's rising above the mass of vehemently closed minded people with Stockholm Syndrome defending their abusers.

[shaberon]

Posted by onawah (here)
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.

I think the loss of soul is true in extreme cases.

Still, an ordinarily ensouled being is evil; we/I are.

The political problems are largely true, but, they are conditions only of the outer or physical person. They don't really affect "me", as in the person trying to become aware of how they themselves are evil and re-work it. So the narrative, propaganda, etc., is irrelevant, having no effect. I have to deal with the "imposed conditions", that's it. My personal process, "becoming the real person in the heart", is supposed to become iron clad, even in hell.

In U. S., citizenship is surrender to the entity. To rebuke the invader, one terminates the agreement. If this was done, collectively, the thing would disintegrate almost immediately. If one were to salvage the framework at all, it would have to be entirely purged, re-written from the beginning. For example, our original, "unprotected" corporations were mostly only used for big infrastructure like bridges and canals. They were limited to a twenty-year charter, and were routinely broken up for any kind of corruption or grafting. Now they are basically immortal and win in court. Physical slavery--"a person is property"--was just about directly traded to this form of bondage--"property is a person". So from that view, there definitely was a period of fifty years or so when U. S. A. was not "Inc."

[Kotch]

Posted by edina (here)

Posted by Kotch (here)
My current favourite thinker is Yuval Noah Harari.

Kotch

He's written about a lot of topics. Which ones are you referring to? And what appeals to you most about his thinking?

He seems to me to be the most realistic and far reaching thinker in terms of how our future could play out. Like many he identifies the threats of Nuclear conflict and Climate Change, but he adds the very real and imminent threat of complete lack of privacy via Social Networks. For example, could you imagine if Hitler or Stalin had access to the amount and depth of personal information that exists TODAY in the databases of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and the like? The ability to control not only the news but also individual perceptions makes our present notions of freedom laughable.

In terms of a more precise definition of freedom, I do have some (completely uninformed) thoughts...

Freedom To...
Freedom From...

At what point does your freedom to do as you wish infringe on my (or my descendants') ability to enjoy the planet?

It seems to me that a lot of US based doctrine uses the word very freely (sorry) and plays on all sorts of paranoid fears and resentment.

My base reality is that I MUST be prepared to share this planet with 7.5 Billion others many of whom I have little in common with. That in itself dictates that I have to limit my range of activities to that which will not diminish the freedom of those others. I have to trust that they feel the same way. (I'm not naiive enough to believe that they will, but I believe in personal responsibility over freedom.

Was it Simone deBeauviour who said something like 'There are no rights; simply the responsibilities of social organizations to provide for their members' (I probably mangled this, but perhaps you get the point...)

Hope this helps...

BTW - Loving this thread!!!!

Cheers,

Kotch

[Marta]

As I see it, the main problem here is excluding the population using sutile and subconscious methods. Like a very formal language empty of real meaning, so they will never understand what’s the point being discussed and they will never participate actively. Another subconscious trick to prevent people for reclaiming their power and rights is speaking about theories. “Socialism”, “capitalism”, etc. The more abstract the term is, the further the discussion will be from the real life, the touchable problems we have to face every day. Losing the mind of people all the time in useless words which mean nothing to them is very effective to keep them apart. Only listening, only reading, but never spreading what they really think inside.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by onawah (here)
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.

Still, an ordinarily ensouled being is evil; we/I are.

Unfortunately this is too true.

There is a war on against the truth - and it is winning. The reason it is winning is because we have sided with the enemy. We are all liable and we are all at fault. It is this statement that causes all the uproar because most do not want to do battle with their own psyches. Ordinary American citizens have failed the constitution. They dropped the ball, opting for business as usual as opposed to upholding and defending the bill of rights. It would have cost too much in terms of wealth, time, energy and convenience. So the elite took that wealth, that time, that energy and that convenience to steal the very earth from under our feet.

[heretogrow]

I tend to paint my own little world to keep optimistic and I don't know how well I will be received, but listen, what do we have left when they manipulate and take everything away. We have hearts and feelings, and compassion, and empathy and sparks of ideas that can kindle great movements. They want us divided and spend endless time concocting ways to keep us so. And right now the world seems divided. It also has. Somehow I think that there is some innate, intuitive, undescribable essence inside of us that we haven't yet named that will have more impact on the quality of our lives than they ever will. We are still here! We are waking up to the charade and individually we are deciding we aren't going to take it anymore. We don't buy it.

My cousin once said something so interesting that stuck with me all these years. I was complaining about the times we are living in and trying to find answers. He said, "do you realize if we all just said, NO MORE, all at once, the world would change in an instant. "
I said change to what? We can't agree on what would be best for everyone. He told me that each person would hold in their own mind what seemed right for them. And then he told me to pray for evil. Include them in my prayers and forget that they are even labeled evil. Give them no more negative energy.

When we talked about this, I thought it was either the most the most profound thought, or the most naive.

Right now my family is at a crossroads. We have lost more than three-fourths of our income do to the largest plant closing in our area. We are at risk, real risk of losing our home, and it will be sad, because my man built it with his own two hands. But I will miss the land the most. The forest, the river, the garden, the trees that were planted. You might think I would be miserable and I can't say I won't be someday when it is all gone. I know we will find some place else to live. Until then I don't plan to just make due.

I have too many things to be grateful for. Even now when it seems like we are on the precipice of a downhill tumble, I try to give what we have away. I try to make a tiny difference in this world. I take my grandbaby outside and let him feel the rain instead of looking at the dark cloud overhead. I want to live and embrace this life without worrying about what is next. The only way I know how to do that is to count my blessings and look for the silver lining. I have to do this. The rest of my family is falling apart. I'll be damned if I will let us throw this good life away and live in misery.

Much of our personal problems, here in my family revolve around wants versus need. In truth we had lots of things we thought we wanted, but didn't really need. We still have much to give. I hope I can get through to them and make them see that if it gets worse and worse we still have each other. I am ashamed we were mass consumers and bought into the whole system. Now we have paired down to what we need and it feels a little like freedom.

I can't say any of this is relevant to this thread. When I started to type it seemed so, but now it seems kind of selfish talking about my life. I guess in a nutshell good humans are all over the world are probably not that different. We probably all want the same freedoms to carve out a happy and productive life. We don't need to buy their baubles and shiny things. Success can come from being a discerning and genuine person just trying to figure things out. I think we have that capability even when the cards are stacked against us. When one door closes, another one opens. We all need to slam this door of inequality in all of its forms, all of us, together, at the same time. Who knows what we could achieve.

I am alone a lot, and I try to fill my heart and minds with things I can be thankful for. I am not saying we cannot come up with great plans to get a movement going. But what I am suggesting is that we don't give into the negative division at all. In our minds and hearts we create a place of equality where we can all thrive. Most everyone I have met on here is creative, passionate and has very strong feelings. That's power baby! Power in a good way. Let's not waste it!

I envision a movement and shift in mentality where we are slaves no more! I can taste it!
Julia

[Mike]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Mike (here)
...
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

So sorry to have destroyed your productivity at work today, Slave #8325348036. Give me your boss's phone number, and I will call and explain the situation, and get you a 3 hour siesta at work today.

Not picking on you, but I feel compelled to address this: "without our best and brightest and most competent running things, stuff could fall apart pretty quickly."
Point 1: Ah, the illusion that these greedy conmen, agents of the oligarchs, are among the best and brightest. In no way is this true. False meme. They are groomed and hand-picked for compliance with oligarchs. They do seem to need to be proficient at bald-face lying, so that is evidently another required skill for the job of oligarch's representative.

Point 2: Specifically what function within "governance" would actually require that the office-holder was among the best and brightest? Every non-governmental aspect of life is run by us ordinary people, (including the workers in corporations that actually do the work), and we do just fine. Just how bright does someone have to be to send out the Social Security checks from our own pool of money? How bright do they need to be to hire experts (non-governmental) to examine our infrastructure, and other experts (non-governmental) to repair it? How bright does someone have to be to perform the day to day duties of governance? This false meme that elected officials can't be ordinary but must be "special" has all high office positions stacked with clever, oligarch-connected people, and a Congress full of clever lawyers that work for the oligarchs.

How do you know my slave number??? Now I'm paranoid. Look out for my next thread titled, "Dennis Leahy is a Deep State Insider"...

I guess I just don't subscribe to the notion that they're all greedy conmen. Institutions and hierarchies can be inherently rotten, but it's not always so when it comes to individuals comprising it. For example, we can all agree that big pharma is corrupt, but I've met many well meaning and honest doctors. In politics you're much more likely to find seedy characters, I'll grant you that.

There are many leaders in industry that have earned their stripes. To say that they're all greedy and corrupt, and that's the only reason they've achieved what they've achieved seems like a pretty simple approach. Many many people have earned what they've gotten thru good ol blood sweat and tears. Even (gulp) some politicians .

The Pareto thing states that in any given domain, the square root of the number of people operating in that domain do half the productive work. If you have 10 employees, 3 do half the work. If you have 100, 10 do half the work. 1000, and 30 do half the work. And so on. Its a pretty ironclad rule and it applies across many dimensions, capitalism and socialism and whatever other ism you can think of. It also explains the 1%. I'm not saying that corruption and tyranny and downright evil haven't played a role in their rise to the top, and i'm not saying they're maintaining their control thru moral means.....but I am saying that if we all started at zero tomorrow, those same oligarchs would become oligarchs all over again eventually . Not just because they're shrewd and clever and evil, but also because they're highly competent. I'm not debating their moral character with you, but I am suggesting that competence has much more to do with wealth and positions of power than we think. Much more so than tyranny, in my view.

We need to know who the best are. Not so much as it applies to your musician buddies, but certainly as it applies to brain surgeons, dentists, and plumbers. If I'm getting brain surgery, I want the best surgeon. When hierarchies flatten out, we no longer know who the best is.

And I'm not sure how we could equally distribute resources without a Marxist takeover of the corporations. The corporations own and direct the resources.

Look, I've made arguments for socialism in the past. If someone offered me a living wage tomorrow and lowered my rent, id offer my allegiance and loyalty immediately. At the moment, I'm not so much arguing for capitalism or socialism or for the oligarchs, I'm simply offering up ideas that are popping into my feeble mind as I'm reading along here, and trying to learn as i go. Plus, Bill has offered me 20 dollars for every post i make that will likely annoy you.

[Antagenet]

I don't really believe that it is the system of rules or type of government that is most important. If emotionally mature, unselfish, loving people were at the helm, they would direct the culture and laws to benefit as many people as possible. All systems have altruistic ideals, but none live up to them.
The problem is the evil ones, the immature ones, or the nonhumans (whatever your preferred semantics is for them) somehow seems to always grab the power.

WHY?

Is it because they are the smartest and the smart ones are always bad?

Is it because the loving ones are too busy helping everyone around them
and become exhausted, and also have no need for wealth or power?

Is it because those without a conscience have an upper hand and can outmaneuver the decent people because they understand us but we cant really understand or even admit they exist?

When people start talking this or that system is better or worse, I feel myself rolling my eyes in boredom and it just makes me wonder... when are human beings going to really mature. Without our spiritual and emotional maturity the greedy satanic sociopaths will always have their way.

This begs the question. How many people are really capable of emotional maturity? My best psychologist told me that a mere 20% of humans are capable of it, and since the culture (USA) doesn't encourage it, many of these fail due to faulty role models and lack of direction.

So there is a need for spiritual and emotionally mature leaders, and a seeming lack of people to step up and lead.

There have been so many disappointing leaders that even the whole idea of leadership is questioned, and every leader is grilled to the bone to reveal everything
about themselves.

Also the curiosity of the bored and unfulfilled has no bounds, as demonstrated by social media, news, celebrity status etc etc.. I am sure this discourages many potential leaders (especially introverts) from attempting to make a public contribution.

I used to want, in my youth, everything to be burned down... and for the survivors
to start all over again. I think this is part of why analcapulco and the libertarians meet in their utopian bubble, hoping for a cleansing anarchy to give them a chance in a safe world where no one will gain enough power to dominate or rape them.

John Marks and his propertarian Guru, I forget his name, have some rather novel ideas about a new structure that has not been tried yet.

But unless individual human beings and enough of us actually grow up emotionally or spiritually, I don't think any system will matter.

Imagine suddenly half the controllers/elites suddenly woke up and no longer needed to assuage their ego's because suddenly they felt actually happy and fulfilled? In their happiness they no longer needed to hoard everything for themselves?

What could ever propel or help this to occur? Jesus Christ gave it a good shot, and although it is not a totally failed experiment, too many dogmatic, stupid, selfish religious leaders practically screwed Christianity out of being able to redeem or guide the masses in the direction of Love, Happiness or Freedom.

The theory of narcissism, and understanding of psychopathy and sociopathy is very new. It at least gives us a handle on understanding who could be among us without souls or consciences. The more people learn and recognize the evil ones... who include both the satanic, and also those who just don't care about anyone else...
the closer we get to finding at least some answers.

To rescue humanity from oligarchs, satanists, cynics, the depraved, the immature
is a collective goal that comes from painful education and letting go of childish hopes
that we don't have to face up to reality and assume our rightful responsibility as adults and guides. It is everyone of us that has evolved past needing to strut in front of others, or demean others, everyone of us who loves others as ourselves. (well it takes loving oneself also.. right? Maybe that is the biggest challenge of all!)

Of course, there are always the stray viruses and plagues which come along either intentionally or not, to wipe out large swaths of populations. Perhaps this is what God reverts to doing when Good People Don't Stand Up?

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Mike (here)
How do you know my slave number???

Remember that one time when you did mushrooms and danced naked around the bonfire? Everyone saw it, tattooed on your butt.

Posted by Mike (here)
Now I'm paranoid. Look out for my next thread titled, "Dennis Leahy is a Deep State Insider"...

Damn! Just when I was counting on my Deep State Christmas bonus! You've ruined everything!

Posted by Mike (here)
I guess I just don't subscribe to the notion that they're all greedy conmen.

I don't make statements like "they are all sociopaths" or "conmen" or "they are all greedy and corrupt" lightly (and I was referring to federal level US politicians.) Let's start with Congress: I watched loosely for the past 40 years and with great scrutiny for probably a decade each bill that came up in the US House and Senate, and watched not only what bills passed into law, but also who wrote the bills and co-sponsored the bills. I have made a serious challenge in front of politically savvy and politically active groups and have challenged them to find a bill that has passed into law in the last 40 years that is actually (not in a Doublespeak title like W bush's "Clear Skies Act" that actually loosened air quality standards) citizen-centric or actually eco-centric. Try to find one single law. There isn't one. All the laws that have passed are corporate-centric and/or warmongering and/or ecocidal. If you think I am exaggerating, that there just had to be some eco-centric and/or citizen-centric laws passed, I challenge you to find one. You'll find hundreds of corporate-centric laws that have passed.

Have you seen the statistic showing the average net worth of Congresspersons before entering Congress and after leaving Congress? They exploited loopholes and cashed-in on insider trading in the stock market up until about 10 years ago - then passed a law against the practice, that they subsequently changed to make it near impossible to get a disclosure from them (in order to hide the fact that they are still insider trading. Hey, who better to know when a corporate (often MIC corporation) stock was going to go up (or tank) than the people writing the laws affecting those corporations. It has been pointed out by others that they also spend their entire last year of their term of office on their own reelection. Do you see some good guys here, serving the citizens of the US that they are supposed to represent? Name some names. Tell me who the good guys are.

Were some Congresspersons that have held seats over those past 40 years actually fighting against the expansion of the Americentric/American Global Empire, fighting against the incredible metastasis of the Military Industrial Complex and US military, fighting against the security state, fighting for environmental safeguards, fighting for the rights of citizens rather than corporations, and casting vote after vote with impeccable ethics and integrity, or were their votes strategically complying with the highly unethical "politicking"/back room dealmaking that Congresspersons are well known for and that citizens are trained to appreciate?

Posted by Mike (here)
Institutions and hierarchies can be inherently rotten, but it's not always so when it comes to individuals comprising it. For example, we can all agree that big pharma is corrupt, but I've met many well meaning and honest doctors. In politics you're much more likely to find seedy characters, I'll grant you that.

There are many leaders in industry that have earned their stripes. To say that they're all greedy and corrupt, and that's the only reason they've achieved what they've achieved seems like a pretty simple approach. Many many people have earned what they've gotten thru good ol blood sweat and tears. Even (gulp) some politicians .

The Pareto thing states that in any given domain, the square root of the number of people operating in that domain do half the productive work. If you have 10 employees, 3 do half the work. If you have 100, 10 do half the work. 1000, and 30 do half the work. And so on. Its a pretty ironclad rule and it applies across many dimensions, capitalism and socialism and whatever other ism you can think of. It also explains the 1%. I'm not saying that corruption and tyranny and downright evil haven't played a role in their rise to the top, and i'm not saying they're maintaining their control thru moral means.....but I am saying that if we all started at zero tomorrow, those same oligarchs would become oligarchs all over again eventually . Not just because they're shrewd and clever and evil, but also because they're highly competent. I'm not debating their moral character with you, but I am suggesting that competence has much more to do with wealth and positions of power than we think. Much more so than tyranny, in my view.

Obviously some ordinary worker in a corporation is not in a position as a decision-maker to cause exploitation and great harm - there is a hierarchical structure, and the top of the pyramid (major corporate offices such as CEO and CFO, and board members) bear that responsibility.

Not all individuals with oligarch-class wealth make up the "shadow government" that creates the nefarious and greed-driven agenda, but do keep in mind that the shadow government stepped out of the shadows on Nov. 22, 1963, and again on Sept. 11, 2001 to deliberately flex their muscles publicly, and that at the heart of it, they really are some mighty sick psychopaths, not hardworking, bright, boy scouts. Don't be so kind as to assume these are hard working bright guys that happened to make great wealth. (The hardest working people I have ever known are all working poor.) We're talking about the likes of the Rockefellers and Carnegie - that many people have naively lauded as brilliant industrialists rather than recognizing them as masters of exploitation and deceit.

A lot of wealth is in the hands of the recipients of inherited fortunes, who were not themselves the clever exploiters (nor did they work hard for it.) I doubt these individuals would regain wealth if it was all taken away.

Posted by Mike (here)
We need to know who the best are. Not so much as it applies to your musician buddies, but certainly as it applies to brain surgeons, dentists, and plumbers. If I'm getting brain surgery, I want the best surgeon. When hierarchies flatten out, we no longer know who the best is.

I guess I don't understand this comment. Like, the Grammy winner is not actually the best musician, the Oscar winner isn't the best actor, the department head in academia is rarely really the best (unless we are talking about buttkissing), and of the 4 neurologists I just saw, the lowest underling doc was by far the best and the department head was an arrogant ass (that missed key details in his examination that the underling doc caught.) You won't find the "best" of anything by looking at the top of the hierarchy, because the hierarchy is not merit-based, it is politically-based. (the politics of the workplace) You find the best by asking people whose opinions you trust, and who have experienced and compared more than one specialist. It's not impossible for "the best" to also gain high position, but I can't think of any examples that I have witnessed. Maybe Elon Musk as his own CEO? (I have not studied him, but I get the impression his companies are mainly following his own ideas, rather than just hiring bright people - which is what Bill Gates says of himself.)

Posted by Mike (here)
And I'm not sure how we could equally distribute resources without a Marxist takeover of the corporations. The corporations own and direct the resources.

A good example might be the timber/logging industry. They often don't own the resource - typically the resource is trees on federal public land. It's already ours, we the people already have it, it is already "distributed"/apportioned to us. We can go on federal public land and hang a hammock from our trees, burn some in our campfire, even cut a Christmas tree down and take it home. The federal government allocates permits to the timber corporations to extract trees from those public forests ($1 per tree), and the federal government pays for (our tax dollars) logging roads to be built in those commercially-allocated forests. It is typically the same for the mining industry - that is "we the people's" gold and iron and copper that is then allocated to the mining companies for nearly nothing. Unless you are an Alaskan (there is a kickback to Alaskan citizens from oil extraction), your resources are being completely stolen by corporate entities. In these examples, "redistribute resources" might be more a matter of the public trust executor charging a fair price and allocating some of the profits to citizens, and giving citizens a legitimate seat at the table to make decisions of which raw resources can or cannot be extracted from specific locales. "Re-distribution" wouldn't be cutting down all the public trees and giving every citizen a few cords of wood.

However, the greatest accumulation of real wealth is property/land, as the US 'founding fathers' knew, and they wrote a Constitution to protect theirs. Like the end of the monopoly game, I do suspect at some point that the serfs will kill the landlord and take the land, but can't visualize it happening while the lords have the protection of the US military.

Posted by Mike (here)
Look, I've made arguments for socialism in the past. If someone offered me a living wage tomorrow and lowered my rent, id offer my allegiance and loyalty immediately. At the moment, I'm not so much arguing for capitalism or socialism or for the oligarchs, I'm simply offering up ideas that are popping into my feeble mind as I'm reading along here, and trying to learn as i go. Plus, Bill has offered me 20 dollars for every post i make that will likely annoy you.

Ha! Bill pays me $30 every time I make you snort!

I'm really not arguing for political Socialism in the opening post, I mentioned that the USA, Inc. stomps out any socialism that pops up anywhere, and that should be a pretty good clue that the VERY last thing the oligarchs want is sharing. This is unbounded greed at work. Currently, the USA, Inc. is attempting to destroy a government that displays some socialist principles (The Venezuelan government nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry, and shared the profits with the people of Venezuela in social programs. This successful example of a form of partial socialism had to be destroyed to protect the oligarchs.)

OK, this reply has gotten ridiculously long. Can't you just grunt some simple questions/comments that I could reply to with one word answers? Bill owes you a lot of money!

[Ernie Nemeth]

It's a shame that Dennis and Rakyt do not run for office. They would make a formidable team!

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by waves (here)
Thinking just as big as the system we're up against, what is a truly practical approach?

In terms of anything truly mass scale practical that would be necessary to break the incredibly tightly woven web of roadblocks protecting the oligarch stranglehold - Dennis, I think you are right that we have no practical way to take back media as I say is required for mass enough momentum and unification, and I am right that it will take far more than changed election laws or any sprinkling of honest elected people to break the backs of the oligarch system.

There are gatekeepers, laws, infiltrators and killers now in place monitoring every bubble of momentum against the beast - I think big enough scale changed elections laws has no chance of happening in practicality. But elections laws STILL wouldn't break the system anyway. ALL elected are still crippled ants up against a system of a million unified beasts.

So with that in mind, what could really happen and matter on a mass scale and how? What really are any practical, workable, probably ideas to break the unified beasts stranglehold on every aspect of our lives, keeping in mind that we couldn't even get the whole of Avalon to unify on any one platform of objective and procedure.

I wonder if the worst cleverness of the stranglehold is that the biggest problem is not the perpetrators, it's rising above the mass of vehemently closed minded people with Stockholm Syndrome defending their abusers.

OK, let's 'up the ante' a bit:
As part of the takeover of the election system by citizens, dismiss, "with prejudice", every currently elected and appointed official, who then are removed from the pool of future candidates (because they were selected using the old system.) Every elected and appointed office would be single term, and each office-holder and appointee could never run for or hold that position again.

With one of the requirements for candidacy of not being tied to the Global Corporate Network, every single new office holder and appointee would not be beholden to or controlled by that GCN. I'm not talking about putting a smattering of new faces into the existing system with the existing power structure (that would be like peeing on a forest fire), I'm talking about flushing the toilet and starting anew with an entirely new elected body. Once that elected body had served their single term of office, the next election cycle would remove all of them from office (no longer a "toilet flush", but a full renewal), and again an entire new group not tied to the GCN would take office, and the previous office-holders could never run for that office again. No career politicians, just ordinary people chosen by the rest of the citizens to act as representatives for 4 years - a position that would actually be able to honestly be called "public service."

Mandating no election influencing by media and no political advertisements, a method of exposing each candidate to the same citizen-authored topics, requiring candidates' written responses, would allow each citizen voter to differentiate between candidates to find one that most closely espouses their own responses to the same list of topics. Currently, candidates do not actually have to reveal anything specific about anything, and can use emotion, good looks, demeanor, nebulous emotionally-charged words and phrases such as "patriot", "freedom", "a thousand points of light", "yes, we can", etc. as an election strategy. Without forcing all candidates to respond to the same topics, it is impossible to do any sort of logical comparison. Worse, currently there is no expectation that an elected official will actually fulfill "campaign promises", and there is a nearly impossibly steep hill to climb to remove someone from office that obviously lied in campaigning and is doing the opposite of what was "promised."

It's obvious that the oligarchs, the real deep state, that actually creates the agenda and policy that their representatives follow and codify into law and policy as US government agenda, need the US federal government to be compliant to their agenda. It's a multi-billion dollar game show every 4 years, and multi-billions are spent every year on their propaganda machine to placate the stirring masses of disappointed aware and quasi-aware citizens and to convince unaware sheep that they are in green pastures.

The firewalls that are in place can only be dismantled from the inside by members of the US federal government. Those changes can never be made by a citizen's movement outside the government, and will never be made by oligarch's representatives inside the government. I'm proposing a bloodless revolution, attacking and taking over the election system (rather than attacking the government or the individuals in government.) Removing all currently elected from office and replacing every one of them with a citizen not tied to the GCN wouldn't be "crippled ants" - it would remove the superhighway of control over the government by the oligarchs. I'm only proposing it as a possible solution to those who understand the veracity of my statements in the opening post and actually want to drastically change it. It is possible, it is doable (but even I agree that it is unlikely to occur.) For those that prop-up and support the current system of oligarch/deep state control over US agenda, it is merely a list to giggle at, and they embrace it continuing on as status quo ad infinitum, because they expect to benefit from the arrangement.

[ExomatrixTV]

Good question and 100% related!
cheers,
John

[onawah]

A very interesting analysis of the caucus events in Iowa and what it portends from Dark Journalist in the first hour of Episode 81 in the X Series.
See:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WGJOj-ZSBW4