A few new pics.
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Flirting With Summer or Whatever Happened With Spring?
Image via Wikipedia
Flirting With Summer; or, Whatever Happened With Spring?
I say this, for this year we plunged into a record low single digit, then in a few weeks were trespassing onto 90. The record low was the coldest day I have had in 24 years in Arizona. This was preceded by a day that refused to go above freezing. This, also for the first time in my life here.
Many plants still show no signs of life as the weather continues to warm into the 90′s this week (post begun a couple weeks ago). Very little rain here this “La Niña” season; less than an inch in several months. Some plants seem to be 2 months behind schedule this year, which may be not so good, since the famous dry heat of Arizona will tend to fry my many wildflowers with thin petals.
Our Redbud tree has blossomed incredibly this year, and someday I will put photo’s on this post to show what I mean. I put up a Japanese “Torii Gate” a few days before the earthquake and related disasters i Japan. Today I finished, well almost, a rock wall to one side of it.
continuation from two weeks ago
April 8 and flirting with winter
Today is yet another odd one; the mesquite’s have begun to leaf and blossom. An old adage is that they only do this after the threat of frost has passed. We will see, being that the weather service is predicting low Saturday night to be in the mid twenty’s! I’ll take a photo of before and after to see how the old saying goes. We may also see snow here at 4,000 feet. This intense system is expected to generate severe weather into the weekend in the Midwest.
I will put up an independent post about the Torii Gate, for anyone interested in the way I built it.
If Only I Had The Money For Real Estate
If Only I Had The Money For Real Estate
Why?
The house right above us is in foreclosure $65,000 for over an acre with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths plus views like this;
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–and this:
-and this:
.and me right below with all my remodelling skills
Can’t have it all for myself…
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Oh well.
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from currently balmy 74 degrees in Arizona February
The Big Denial: Conservatism Mandates Institutionalized Ignorance
As Belief Overrides Factual Cognition
The Edifice Of Media Conservatism Mandates Institutionalized Ignorance
This imposed limitation of perception creates a way into falsity without even knowing it, owning it, nor rectifying the self deception. Ignorance itself, becomes a major political and cultural commodity.
First I must say this, and I hope you will receive this post as what it really is; an honest statement of the facts of personal psychosocial dynamics–We are each in some ways and at certain times both conservative and liberal in our thoughts and actions of and in the world. In spiritual, political and social consciousness, if I do not know this about the subjective self’s interest in situational awareness, I do not know much.
The Closed Self vs The Open Self
In conservatism, belief trumps full facts in context, yet the conservative will usually avoid the nature of responsibility and accountability to their paradigms mind-frames, while likely suggesting others need to be held accountable for their own belief structures.
An idea of truth trumps the real thing, abstraction held above self application, yet that idea is called the “Real Truth” by many a self professed conservative, leaving the real of the real social and physical environments thing to seem an untruth. Behind this cognitive contraption often mandating a diversion to cognitive dissonance avoidance facades, ways of comprehending reality can be reversed through the conservatives perceptual lens. This convolution of reality makes the conservative mind, heart and soul, one where denial and obfuscation are invisibly incorporated into their protected from questioning perceptual bias, this going on to infect the mind, heart and spirit.
A retreat into a “sacritized” self narrative does seem to have an evolutionary advantage at times for obvious subjective reason–If I have the land then I can use it and others cannot; or the food; or the… a way to get or keep what I have vs dealing with all of the demands of honoring contravening interest of others. Others then require a negative narrative cognitively from the conservative point of view. Many self interest like these are pandered to by what is known often as “The Right Wing” and its vast economic and social directions hold on cultural narration via established corporate and power interest.
This conservative narration of superior view and entitlement then requires the appearance reality, and consensus reality, that rightness is on the conservatives side, leading to the assemblage of good abstraction for them and bad for others. This is usually frame-based upon their views tagged moral, character and other blame and shame types of negative outcasting of others. The classical “other” is then made the subject of both a fear based animalistic protectionism, and a targeting of hostility toward these others. Again this provides platforms for the continuous scripting of otherness on Right Wing TV, Talk, Internet and other medias, helping to keep the cement hard onto the desired targets, keeping tight delusions and perceptual avoidance necessities.
With Stealthy Face and Well Sugared Tongue
Confirmation bias to narrative is presented as alleged truth in most any argument, including what I am doing here. This is the creation of an Appearance Reality seeking to make the grade to social Consensus Reality, but to the conservative, seen as truth itself.
Emotion is a common buttress to convincing one of “true meaning”, powering up rationalization with its find what it needs logical scenarios.
Here this becomes appearance realities visible source of correctness, supplanting the rigors of full objective reasoning, with attitude, likely harboring inherently misanthropic viewpoints towards others. The conservative generally is not bound to honest investigation toward full context pattern recognition, but instead sees such attempts at objectivity as intrinsically hostile, misinformed, and likely misleading, leading the conservative to cherry pick both facts and context, such as when cold weather somewhere, or a record snowfall is “proof” of a global warming hoax.
We see that the corporate driven perception of reality selects out ideas and even data that support its philosophy automatically, on automatic pilot to continue their flight into the future, unfortunately, as with cancerous tissue and direction, without concern for the implications of its thought or its action of self preservation leading to possible annihilation. These days there are many commercials from suspect corporations, suspect for they seem to perceive a need toi define their interest as solely ones own, they go on to demonstrate how worker and family friendly they are. The intent quite likely to divert our attention from the full consequence of their action, instead showing us how much they are for folks like us, our fellow humans. You like having your job, don’t you?
Conservatism’s Everyday Shell Games With Smoke And Mirrors Too!
These approaches to appearance reality perception count upon our ignorance; that I not know the full truth, but instead focus upon a subjective narrative surrounded with goodness and what seems right. Simple and effective in corralling cognition behind an enclosure of idea that supports something perhaps intrinsically fatal to civilization, yet now protected from questioning by a kind of belief appearing to be full truth.
Mind control attempts to be not only unseen, but inoculating the subject to be suspicious of the actual truth, thinking it is skewed and attempting to manipulate perception away from a consensus paradigm presented to be seen as necessary to life itself. The “wedge issue” and “culture war” realms are filled with intent to cleave society from perceptions of wholeness and congruity, presenting the idea that what is problematic in life is being caused by groups of others extrinsic to what is good and wholesome. For instance, I could be called a liberal being part of the problem for my ideas here.
Now, as evident on many conservative propaganda platforms, evidence of global warming is not scientifically debunked, (that manipulative scandal aside) but ridiculed as being outside the conservatives confirmation bias. The proposal is then seen as automatically wrong and suspect to derision, along with shame and blame strategies to divert attention from full reasoning. This is all about mind control being presented as the obvious truth of appearance and consensus realities, while full factual contextual rendering is drawn out as suspect for its requirements for more thinking and appreciations of Creation.
Conservative media outlets supply this pro-corporation exploitation of the world as our paradigm’s view, as the honorable one, the truthful one, the one that is the only good one. Messengers of the vast preponderance of data, such as with climate change tied to human chemical alterations of the atmosphere, are then cast into doubt with various thought-terminating clichés standing guard as validation of alleged scientific inaccuracy and theoretical bias. To listen to conservative media outlets is to receive a near continuous narration stream of logical trickery filled with the smoke and mirrors of rationalizations pretending to be forthright reason.
These “facts” are demonstrated daily to many millions of Americans with argumentative tricks of the trade; where reality is traded for confirmation biased propaganda, to those needing it; The “Real Truth”. Now we can “see” the global warming hoax for what it is; Or so it is believed was proven to be the case. This is how emotionalized data can become something other than honest truth, while technically, perhaps, being factual data in the abstract, and so, true. An example may be in Antarctica, where, while the penguins there are facing the increasing stress on ice retreating, but in the center of Antarctica, snow may be falling more often than it was before, “proving” to some perhaps, that all is well, even exceptionally so, for new ice must obviously be being created at an increasing rate. Context controlled to fit bias, then facts or data selectively used to debunk scientific theories–by appearance reality manipulation of perception of reality.
‘I suppose those warm-mongers will call this freezing weather as part of global warming! What a joke!!!‘ Such “common sense” connection is oblivious to a possible phenomenon known as the warm arctic/cold continent paradox. Yes, a possible aspect of climate change including global warming, where the warming polar air allows the polar jet stream to uncoil further than “normal”, sending cold air plunging southward, all while the arctic is experiencing record warmth. Much easier to be simple, obvious, and certain, than take in nuance, paradox and ambiguity endemic to Life.
Mental Meltdown
In much conservative media propaganda, the melting of the polar regions and migrations of plants and animals to the north in the Northern hemisphere are ignored. The current human induced mass extinction event is ignored. The vast predominance of record highs over those of cold over decades is ignored for momentary confirmation biased opportunistic rationalization debunking prospered as good natured honest “proof”.
This dishonest trick on the self, of logical myopia, serves the perceptual bias the conservative must confirm to keep cognitive dissonance at bay or tagged onto others. This is a hostile world view, or cosmological and spiritually broken cognition that leads to a disharmonious view towards existence, producing classic us against them phobia’s and psychosis along with the projection of these “truths” onto perceived oppositional characters. Then, as it is in existentialism’s morass of pick and chose for oneself meaning; mentioning conservative us against them paradigms makes the one bearing this message a guilty party to conservatives fear based cosmological and spiritual perceptions of the universe at large beyond their tightly conformed tent.
A critical thought toward conservatism’s rationalization matrixes can well mean to them that you are against them, obviously, and so, one who is blatantly propagating us against them consciousness oneself. This reverse reality technique allows one to not review the full impact of the concepts and tenets one possesses for a critical external view of others, usual across many boards.
Conservatism is often itself an assault on critical thinking ability, crippling the conservatives ability to see objectively, and thus perceiving the world as subjectively motivated. In the USA, conservatives rescript their perceptions of abstract ideological fortresses, such as The Bible and the US Constitution, as being their right to interpret and not others. This preserves the conservatives sence of abstract arrogance, while seeing others attempts at understanding those abstractions for themselves as being intrinsically misguided or influence by some evil nature. For conservatives truth is a one-way street–theirs, and this cripples their ability to be truthful and free, let alone honestly responsible to the ramifications of their actions.
Do As I Say; Conservative Conformity Matrix
All conservatives harbor misanthropic tendencies towards those who do not see the world as they do. This presents a perpetual problematic relationship towards Freedom, Democracy and other Liberal institutions that must include all. The conservative is motivated to act against these others in the world and in society. Within the conservatives broken, or dysfunctional perception, others are conceived as being the same, these others becoming the targets for conservative blame, shame, and ostracism campaigns designed to deny others of their right to be as they are.
The basic fundamental of the conservative mindset is; ideology (belief) before fact or evidence. It is something we all do, bias towards our own interest when the interest of another seems to contradict our own. Seems. This means I believe another’s interest is in contradiction with mine or in competition with it. In the basic bottom line math of survival—like other animals–it seems in my interest to put me first. It takes something other; a higher interest, to see past a basic Darwinian mindset into one with a broad minded overview.
I imagine many on the sides of left and right, as well as the middle, think they are one way but not really the other. As we dichotomize our perception, we side to bias–Confirmation Bias, and quite likely emotinalize the weight of our believed in correctness compared to the others.
Conservatism particularly, requires logic and interpretive defectiveness and defensiveness to seem correct. In this sense it is opportunism and rationalization dependent. Its interest in reason is not toward an investigation toward objective truthfulness, but instead, one which reaffirms its borders and imposed limitations upon perception and cognitive apprehension. This defective reasoning is then often called “The Truth”, case closed. Conservatism, with its mandate to not include others and evidence fairly nor completely, must then impose upon itself a nonsensical narrative; one making the conservative seem to be more entitled to the world than those who do not share the narrative.
The Narrative Rules; Those Outside It Loose
Those who support a world view favoring objectivity and the use of full context are left with mouths and minds left agape as today’s propaganda conservatives define reality with their myopic rational constructs. Here in Arizona this perceptual bias towards established wealth and power, and a subservient population, is in classic conservative head lock. The interest of others is only conditioned to the money subservient narrative towards what hearts, minds and souls deserve of this world, but those seeking to correct the myopic deformity in perceiving human nature are viewed as on the side of social, economic and spiritual ill, or evil. In this, ignorance parading as good old common sense is itself the source of evil–ignorance in action over oneself and others.
Beneath the wedge issue emotional tents set up for unsuspecting citizens, with many prompted weekly at church, on radio and TV to keep under the wedge issue tents toxic gas, the narrative, the storylines of conservatism, the us versus them mindframes are inhaled deeply with invisible penetration. Conservatism is in this way the Dry-Rot Of Civilization; that which eventually brings the individual and humanity down by excluding compassion, empathy, understanding and honesty.
In The Image Of Man: Conservatism Attempts to Make Conformity Universal
The story always has their ideological prism focused squarely onto the individuals very identity and worth as a human being. Here, a particular definition of God, patriotism and other things abstracted as pure to their narrative; such as morals, true values, Truth and goodness, these are identified as intrinsically their own, the in-groups providence. Others are always needed to be identified as being deceived or against their abstract definitions, the lexicon becomes as a kind of guarantee to the idea.
To this mindset, saying a thing such as you are intolerant of intolerance can mean you are just as intolerant as any other bigot. The mind-traps for the conservative mind, such as this example of an existential derived false equivalency, is just one of a myriad of logical tricks employed by conservative propagandists to “prove” their own nobility of character. The radio and cable TV hums with these deformations of idea day in and day out, charging the batteries of those suffering under societal stress to target their distress onto various politically charged targets.
As in other cults and cultures, imitation becomes a means for an individual to felt security, as if immersion it the appearance reality of the narrative can create the actual reality in the cosmological and spiritual sense as being full Truth to existence. Those not like us are easily pegged as being against us. I have encountered many folks who express the current right wing talking points, pretending they are free thinkers as they repeat what they have just heard o,n the radio or TV; disparate theories pretending to be confirmed truths.
Now, once embedded into the confirmation bias, a list of others seeming contradiction, different viewpoints, different appearances and even styles of expression such as dress, music and such, becomes codified as alien and other to cherished abstractions. To individual and societal manipulators, the armory of perception becomes propaganda’s voice of reason, but actually, self serving rationalization. The authority and integrity of those outside of conservatism’s mental and emotional strangleholds are discarded as so much garbage–unconcerned for where these end up, for they are discarded from legitimacy in the narrative.
Into The Electrified Tent
I attended a “mega church” one recent Christmas with family members, only to find this church to be a place, not really of worship, but of mind control set to a corporate agenda. The back of the church was filled with right wing pro affluent lifestyle books and pamphlets to file through as you left the church. It was very much an atmosphere of affirmation of kind of lifestyle with an organized intention to bias minds, hearts and spirits to an elite way to be in the world, a way with a political agenda as central to spiritual identity.
During service itself, we where cautioned that being Republican did not guarantee you a place in heaven. I can’t imagine anyone actually thought that, or did they? What kind of movement is based upon a spirituality wed to a material list or a political one? From the giant screens projecting high-tech emotive imagery, to the modern music set to dramatics onstage, this service seemed to be most about keeping attention by entertainment and the engendering of the “correct” bias. I had stumbled into what appears as the GOP driven spirituality merged with the modern worlds consumption and excess bias being framed as being a Godly thing.
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Ill finish this article later, being I have things to do immediately—
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Related Articles
- The “New Centrism” and Its Discontents (chelseagreen.com)
- Got real conservatism? (psychologytoday.com)
- Must we parse the meaning of the word ‘open’? (washingtonmonthly.com)
Chicago Blizard Of 2011 vs Big Snow of 1967
Looking Back at Chicago’s Past With Snow in my eyes
Weather Memories
This coming snowstorm will likely dwarf the impacts of the Big Snow of 1967 in the Chicago Area. 100,000,000 people may be impacted by the various dimensions of this storm nationally. For me, being from the Chicago area, the local impact will have to meet a different criterion.
The forecast for this expected snowstorm in Chicago has it potentially topping the “Big Snow” of 1967. I lived in a nearby Southwest suburb that was actually near the heaviest band of that storm. We had 34 inches, with much more dramatic effects. I remember how surprised we were when we heard that so much of Chicago only had 23 inches from that one. The only folks getting anywhere quickly were on skis.
This next storm may not have those kind of localized differences. But this new storm will have to top 34-36 inches in my mind, and my mind has its own kind of measuring stick, or dip-stick.
That year of 1967, my town had the “Chicago” tornado of 1967, a small earthquake; 4.-something I believe, and my last remaining parent committed suicide, there was that. Quite a year for me there. But during the Big Snow I did deliver newspapers. Folks were shocked that I arrived at the door over the snowdrifts, some even gave $1 and $5 dollar tips which were huge back then.
So Chicago. I’ll just be waiting to see that yardstick disappear into the open field, with just your hand holding the tip. But for the rest of the Chicagoland Area, I suppose hitting 24 inches will do the record breaking job.
Now I have to prepare for the deep freeze coming here for the next few nights
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Weather Events: The Great Chicago Snow of 1967
– 9:31am
Jan 19, 2007 … One of the many weather events I missed in old stomping grounds happened forty years ago this month: the Great Chicago Snow of 1967. …
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Warm Arctic/Cold Continent Paradox
The Arctic Paradox – how warming makes for cold winters | Climatide
Dec 15, 2010 … The Arctic Paradox – how warming makes for cold winters … cold U.S. and Europe as the “Warm Arctic/Cold Continents Pattern,” which is the …
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Tucson Gem, Mineral + Fossil Showcase – January 29 – February 13, 2011 – Information
The recent tragic events in Tucson will not diminish the Tucson Mineralogical and gem/craft scene. Tents are going up around town as life goes on in our wonderful state.
Was in the 70′s today in Tucson and likely to be all week+. There is always a possible time for some changing weather here this time of year. The “La Niña” weather event occurring at this time will tend to keep us mostly sunny and dry. Who knows? May be flirting with 80 degrees farenheit by early Feb.
Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase – January 29 – February 13, 2011 – Official Information.
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The gem and mineral activity in the private sphere, as far as I am aware, begins a week to two ahead of the Jan29 starting time. And as a final note; one of the last of the gem shows is the oft promoted Big One at the convention center. It gathers many vendors from shows that have ended around town along with its own usual ones. It tends to not have the atmosphere of the many outdoor and hotel shows that I like.
At the official end of some shows, some vendors may remain along with dramatically falling prices for gift like items. These rapidly get picket through.
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Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot; Others Killed, Injured
Tucson Arizona
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot; Others Killed, Injured
Mass shooting at grocery store public event in Tucson
At least 6 dead, many injured, a man held.
Are These The Second Amendment remedies being encouraged by some?
{http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/sarah-palins-pac-puts-gun_n_511433.html}
This commentary is based on my first flush of feeling about this matter.
With the hate speech pandemic infecting many conservative/right wing media outlets, this kind of evil, thought by the perpetrators as good, may be just the beginning.
Why?
Terror knows it works to cripple free thought and thus Democracy. Those proposing it against fellow Americans are anti-American and antiChristian no matter the public provocations being offered as rationalizations. This is about ignorance versus understanding at the core level. As many of us are aware, in the human mind, ignorance, guided by emotional manipulation, can appear to be actual truth.
The terror making individuals are likely both mentally and spiritually highly disturbed. The question is; Why are so many conservatives advocating openly hostile contempt towards, not only liberals, but the Democratic party as well?
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CTV.caUS Congresswoman Giffords Shot in Tucson, Arizona
35 minutes ago
Source: Giffords for Congress via Bloomberg News US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and other people were shot at an event today in …
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via gabrielle giffords shot – Google Search.
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My New Years Post
I certainly hope that you all are having a good holiday season.
I’ve been having one; today I was out walking up and down hills taking photo’s in the snow. Well, mostly snow pellets and bone chilling wind. This reminded me of all my frozen alone time in childhood in the midwest. Just your own heart keeping you warm. Unlike the recent 70-mid 80 degree weather of mid-late December this 2010.
But enough bout me.
Now more about me. This is blogging
I loved seeing the wet ground and landscape vistas. Took maybe 200 photo’s. I have 6 gigs more waiting to go somewhere, most notable a new storage system so I can relieve this hard drive.
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In the coming year you can rest assure of more nature photo’s. All of you dropping in to see them can keep coming, the door is open.
I will continue with my sociocultural analysis, along with psychospiritual aspects. Some polemical diatribes are to be assured. My exposé of the pitfall trap of the conservative mind frame will be paramount, for reality yearns to be untethered from human imposed perceptual exclusions of fact and full context.
The problem with this all will be how much time I have for WEBing. Life is always short, so I am putting my time with the “real world” the hands on and touchable one so important to me.
Congrats on making it swiftly into 2011
Benafia
The Jesus Story On “Hot” Wedge Issues
What is the true meaning of Christmas?
Could it have something to do with the ever-present rebirth of an eternal answer?
But first the definition and its origin is in order; A look into what we believe and interpret the message of Christ to be would seem relevant to what meaning this Holy Day has to anyone reflection on a date named after Jesus Christ. As well, to not instil ignorance as an arbiter of idea; the meaning of the winter solstice, with its circling back of the light from the hold of growing darkness.
Before A Name Is Cast
Much religious symbolism has prior cultural roots; the preexisting human belief systems heavily influenced the evolution of these new dates of event timing and story meaning. Before Christ birth there was also a preexisting story about the virgin birth along with other narrative lines from earlier groups. — http://freetruth.50webs.org/B1b.htm –.
Some seem to be afraid of facing this and other truths that are intrinsic to a time, for consolidating their own exclusive consensus reality is the job always at hand, with a story held above factual inquiry toward Truth within a meaning. Avoidance of real facts and their actual contextual framework usually goes on to pollute and dilute perception of the self and of others, along with ideas conceptualized as realities.
Many, many beliefs and inclinations are from our self history. Merely repeating what one is programmed with in childhood, or when what one is seeking is to gain the approval of others via confirmation bonding ritual, does not make an honestly lived faith, only an imitative one seeking the “right stuff” verification from others. What most any orthodoxy can be sure of is an inhibition, or other taboo sentence imposed upon objective inquiry into Free Standing Truth .
They must instead declare the truth to be what they suggest if appears to them to be–one they are comfortable with and that you must accept to be a correct person. This is unexamined cultural programing.
A Word Or Phrase Is Not Necessarily Knowing
When objective (God given) reality is made subordinate to individual and group dynamics, truth may well be tossed out with the Child Jesus. One thing God is not afraid of is; truth seeking above hearsay, above ‘Just believe this, everyone else who is good does. God wants you too! Many of the greatest minds have concurred, so whatever questions you have are just not valid. Believe me! I had your same qurstions ntil I accepted (blank)’.
Nope. Not good enough, for it is surrendering your own connection to your spiritual core for ideas chained to others intentions, intentions that cannot be honestly taken as pure with a straight mind no matter how good. These here included.
I have linked to this article before pertaining to the current state of Christianity and Jesus Christ teachings, yet with the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth celebrated this Dec 25, a look at what his teachings and admonitions actually were, and where many “conservative” Christians are in regard to Christ teachings remaining in the Bible is always in order. Perception can control the appearance reality if not examined to truthfulness.
Jesus on Abortion, Homosexuality, Premarital Sex.
Anti Christian Christians?
The author above calls this new breed of Christianity; pseudo Christianity, for its marked divergence from the “real meaning” of Christ. What is that meaning? An answer is ever-born. Love and Peace is done, is here. It is the refusal to see it past the circumstantial and situational awareness of the problems defined in life as being held paramount instead of the answer. The answer is. Unconditional Love is. It is you and I who place the conditions upon knowing it. It is you and I who can remove them to know IT.
The avoidance of Christ message, morphed in part by the redacting of the Bible (revealing “Sacred Text” regarding Christ life) taken on some 1,000 years ago and on other occasions–like while preaching or proselytizing. Way back then, the more personalized Christ of ones own consciousness was mostly exorcised from scripture, sifting out to one seemingly more fitting with control by establish power structures of church and state; these need guilt and blame to enforce their orders paradigm. Even so, the real meaning of the mission of Jesus Christ still came through in powerful bits and pieces of the narrative. These may appear any day of the year in us, any moment, but perhaps not more honored as in Christmas time, where to give and to receive is a right of all as each will wish.
Most of us can detect this nature of Christ beyond the appearance reality narrative being engendered by reactive thinking; thinking that says you do not deserve to receive because–fill in the blank. Let’s say, because you cannot afford an opperation or a transplant. Money is then the God of Life and of Death, a blatant betrayal of Christ and of Life’s message. In sort term; anti Christ Message.
The “higher” notion of Christ is one of understanding and self review, and not one of blame, shame, robotic acceptance, nor accusation and the fear of punishment as a means for behavior control. These reactive exclusionary ostracism models create a perception that things are done or not done based upon Pavlovian pain and avoidance control mechanisms–might makes right, money makes right, which is not an individuals spiritual achievement or merit in comprehension of Love, but one of fear and of a kind of begging for peace of mind.
With Your Own Eye
We who see Jesus, not exactly as “your personal savior”, but a Savior of truthfulness above fiction or unexamined feeling, a truthfulness that understands our ability to miss the boat in comprehension, to make mistakes. Christ comes through as The Peacemaker; a revealer of Gods deeper Nature– Universal and Wholesome to Creation. This God does not require beings who are children of God to be always all wise, unerring and consciously complete with understanding.
This Divine Being does not punish us via the viewpoints of others and their thoughts of judgement imposition. Instead, as Christ did, we are encouraged to operate from our higher angels, and not the fallen ones. Forgiveness of ourselves is a first root into Divinity; to comprehend a way forward into Creation in union with It, not a problem with It.
Deconstructing Christianity To Impose Business As Usual In The Temple
Now that mission of Christ is under siege in conservative Christianity, or pseudo Christianity. These self proclaimed conservers of Christ, quite as with the self proclaimed conservers of The US Constitution, reverse the intention of common connection, of coherent union in a living process of Being, by substituting hierarchical kinds of subjection to God and Government as defined by our human opportunistic ideological myopathy. This narrow view-point happens to be endeared to the powerful, yet claiming to represent you, me, and the rest of The People under these mind-framed top serving institutional parameters.
For example; conservatives and so called libertarians seem to be for withering government in this US democracy. This creates a void and not opportunism expected Nirvana, leaving a void to be filled by multinational corporations. Corporate “individuals” as entities are actively seeking to solidify their hold on the necessities and comforts of living. We no longer are to have an”organic” connection to Life’s functioning, but one tied through and around businesses.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple
Now, “The Greater Good” is manipulated and contorted to serve corporate interest above those of individual and nation. The survival of both these basic necessities of humanity are becoming the survival of the business machinery and not the right of connectivity of all in Life. Once these new Pharo-like elites rule the USA uninhibited, I hope you have work clothes for being ordered to work here, there, even to old age, or else. We have sculpted an economic model that is its own Death Panel.
Here in Arizona, the death date for some citizens is being fixed by so called state survival interest; the connections of the wealthy being services while those of the not wealthy are being terminated. The state, under conservative stranglehold, is determining the expiration date for the poor and helpless by intentionally not caring for them as we could. Exactly no “Right to Life” because one is poor. Period.
Modern Activist Conservatism Represents Not Only The Dry-Rot Of The Soul, But Of Civilization
The activist conservative US Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can wield their influence at will, and as they do, they “naturally” socialize their cost onto you, the consumers. Private Socialism is essentially what predatory corporate capitalism is. Kinda like “Big Government”, only now you have no right to vote, and of course, no right to socialize your cost onto all.
The corporate “individual” can charge higher prices to pay for propaganda and attention by the state or the “corporatocracy”. You and I cannot raise our pay, well not likely and not essentially whenever we will. It is we who pay for this corporation to connect its will to government, while no one is so entitled to pay for our influence except at our own cost. They have us coming and going by the emerging paradigm, while having many a conservative and libertarian cheering for the ruse. This is how ignorance in action works.
Casting out the money changers by Carl Heinrich Bloch.
The Root of Evil!? No Way! The Way Of Abundance By Gods Grace Being Shown! I Need Money But Am Not Actually Loving It! It’s Kinda A Pain After All!
The Bible is meant to teach lessons, particularly in the stories about Jesus Christ. It is not much of a stretch for inclusion to view a concept such as “The Temple” to also mean the seat of consciousness, its Temple, where ones soul and Creation are erected into a place of worship and of holiness, or at least could or should be. This is how a story becomes personal–how it manifest in my life in its meaning.
The anit-Christ bottom line is as it is with health care in the US– Your money or your life. This is quite why the corporate model as allowed by law, is a perfect match with that of psychosis; an obsession with self gain and regard without regard for The Whole. The connectedness of being in relationship with all of Creation; The Whole, all environments, the completeness of existence etc, is disregarded or ignored by emotional dysfunction in order to preserve a solipsistic enterprise for the individual called the corporation, or even called me getting ahead.
Yes, this is the love of money, above life itself. This love comes sanctioned with all kinds of conservative “moral” and “value” excuses that never sound like the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, but instead, a pedagogy that uses others and the environment to “get ahead” while not accepting the socialized consequences of our actions. Although most any rationalization will be put forward as the answer for denial, it remains ultimately all about the money. This is the primitive tribalism of us vs them, sanctioned by the righteous framing of some reason for superiority of consideration.
So much for a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Survival is now dependent upon an abstract reference unattached to spiritual truth or the individuals true merit, but wed to a fallen narrative of materialism first, money first, spirituality somewhere else if one can find it. What do you mean by spirituality anyway. that’s just your opinion after all. Now we enter the existential morass of relativity; where one idea is equal (likely considered far superior) to another simply because it suits our preferences. This relativity and self projection of intent is classical to modern media conservatism.
With this ideological onslaught of a truncated concept of individualism eroding the values and understandings of Universal connectivity, and with established orthodoxies aligned with wealth and the powerful, the meaning of His mission is stealthily becoming anti-Christ while still proclaiming the abstract ideals of Christ teachings for those approved of one way or another. Most any notion can be morphed into its opposite by gradual reframing of the connected notions around it. Why repetition is so important to spinning right wind(g) mind control.
The Great Lazy Seduction Of Conservatism And Orthodoxy
Do this or else
We have reason to wonder why media Christianity, or predatory conservative manipulated pseudo Christianity, is diverting attention from Christ teachings, then inserting Wedge Issue control features regarding emotional and spiritual attachment. This movement of cause and relationship diverts us from the power of connection, of love, forgiveness and understanding as spiritual mandate, substituting them with perceived sources of irritation and stress. These tagged to issues are framed and cornered into emotional dead ends, where blame, distrust and anger are targeted onto “outside” targets.
{Just by mentioning this, to many a conservative; false equivalence via the use of abstraction, may become a vehicle called a Thought-terminating Cliché; an idea, a reason to consider no further, a question, an answer, or even a lonely idea. Example; “He does the same thing he judges us of!” Then; end of story.}
In the ideological, propaganda forwarded institutions operating throughout the modern society; compassion and empathy for all, as exemplified by the teachings of Christ, are snickered at and derided as false values. This perhaps exemplified recently by the pseudo news entertainer Glen Beck, as he warned about empathy and its insidious liberalism. Ignorance is no obstacle to some conservatives, it is so often a mandate, for unfortunately, they tend to thrive on it as they claim to speak for wisdom and knowing.
Attitude is often all that matters; for the narrative control is actually all emotional. Most probably associated with the many unresolved issues, unapproachable issues that many a conservative possesses to keep separation and alienation alive and well in consciousness. Attitude speaks a thousand words of unexamined reason without wonder. This is where what is known as evil, or ignorance in action, may find its protective teflon like coating in pride and presumption.
Ignorance gets coated with good intention, and many a random reason, along with the consensus reality narrations against liberalism, that is a must unfortunately perpetuate in overthrowing Christ (Let’s say the Way of Understanding, Compassion and of Love and Peace) and creating a Christ formed into a false idol. One where the aforementioned attributes are assigned to those who listen to me, or who seem to believe as I do. Turn the other cheek and all is not relevant in the post fallen narrative.
DO NOT LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN! Or the TUBE!
Come the various crusades being launched by TV televangelist, preachers building fortunes at their followers expense, and wealth dependency ideology programmers who blame the troubles in ones life on these outside others (even government–ones own representation in Democracy). The audience is encouraged to both donate money and beg, and or pray properly for Gods help within their own emotional, economic, afterlife, or current health issues.
The conceived appearance reality edifice finds the trouble in outside otherness, targeted for its “evil” nature, while inwardly we hear claims that we chosen few will be who gets the love and select afterlife by an all loving yet terrifying Supreme Being. So many of the ill and troubled watch a good appearance reality performance on TV, consciously sculpted to represent consensus reality–agreed upon knowingness, while viewers are encouraged to surrender their objective right to know God directly and in Person whenever they so allow Gods vision to become their own. No TV required.
The Way is already paved in perception if allowed to be seen. The very attributes and admonitions as defined by Jesus are ever relevant. But; ‘Pray as we show and send in the dough, for giving is spiritual. And did we mention; goodness will flow to you. This is your insurance policy after all! We must spread the word. And all while a true life and the connections to It are all around each of us, but quite like ones own nose, so close they may be missed for what we do not know, what we are sure of we lack, and are hence susceptible to be manipulated to those claiming to know for us. It remains a truism; humans will believe anything if described sufficiently and assuredly.
Not As I Do
The against others teachings from the pulpit are not the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ offered resolution and understanding via facing the real truth of situations and the responsibility of ones own state of awareness in beingness. From there, the enlightened to Christ Way move on to make the health and security of the least of their neighbors a prime spiritual cause, a mandate for the Way of Love. As for those who do horrible things, Christ admonition was to ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’. Only “The Money Changers” seemed to raise the ire of Christ as He saw their claim upon the temple; perhaps representing ones own consciousness, where comprehension of deep connection may abhor the parting out of Creation for self gain.
So called religious and cultural wars are diversions intended to perpetuate ignorance as God, while a true path to knowing Universality is claimed impossible, and only delegated to God. Wars and relationships remain in intractable conflict as long as a false truth is worshiped above the Universal Rule of Law. (I often capitalize primary concepts as you may have noticed along the way)
Unfortunately for much conservatism, doing without actually knowing is so often the way they roll. Entitled by hubris and the awareness that people can become confident followers in what they do not know for certainty, humanity has often sought the comfort of numbers; in religion, war, and economic definitions, above the transcendent attributes in knowing the all connectedness of Life and Spirit as One.
This strategy of diversion, denial and blame/shame, created the classic “other” phenomenon predicated on the individuals separation and alienation anxiety in regard to true spiritual power and authenticity as exemplified by the story of Jesus Christ. Christ sought to break through ignorance and cultural/psychological dissociation. He spoke of self review as primary, with inner honesty as paramount to self realization. He exhibited the transcendent nature of Love and caring for those born onto the earth, as if health for the garden and its abundance was paramount for humanity to thrive in peace.
May we find peace in every season.
Related Articles
- Jesus Christ vs. Social Conservatives (lewrockwell.com)
Perception Is Reality == WRONG!
I have heard this statement often as of late, that;
Perception Is Reality
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Sorry
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WRONG!
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Perception is Appearance Reality
There is an often vast difference
We humans love having conclusive phrases that work as poetry, in that a few words can say and mean so much. Unfortunately, soundbite aphorisms can be as wrong as rain, or as right as rain. It depends on whether the clothes make the man, or you cannot judge a book by its cover. You get the picture, perhaps even when things may be not as they appear.
Reality IS Reality
Our perception, our cognition, has logical interpretation programs running that likely are not perceiving the Whole of Reality. The sun may obviously circle the earth; that is observational, empiric common sense after all, yet the Real Reality is another matter, one which most did not see as evident or reasonable. And as it was; anyone who suggested the Real Truth was not the appearance one back then, was declared to be a very bad person, even though they saw reality in a deeper way, an intrinsically more honest way than just following the obvious.
We seem to not know for sure what The Reality is as absolute Truth, but reality is not limited to our perception–we are. The bigness of Life does matter, but under that Bigness, we exist with limits to intellect and observation. You may find clothes to reveal much; a kind of narrative to looks, with story-lines emanating from this and that of style as to personal choice. I put much less stake in the seemingness of appearance, for appearance is often easily fooled, and being enamored by it may lead one down paths well paved with illusion.
Appearance Reality can be played off of Consensus Reality to create a logical matrix of imaginary cause and effect cognition that seems to be The Reality, yet in reality, is rationalized ideology hiding behind its cloak of ignorance propped up by a narrative storyline. Ignorance becomes a commodity of great value, as it allows much to be hidden from sight and from thought and feeling. It comes with a need to draw upon emotional judgement as its truthfulness weight, becoming the great seducer that unconsciously sculps up illusion as truth, and perhaps, the now distant to perception Truth as ill will.
Consciousness can be dressed with all manner of interpretation programing while I as the individual thinks it is exactly as things are, for I feel and “see” their apparent reality. In ignorance I may believe appearance is actually truth. Many an institution, both official and personal/cultural, can depend on not knowing–by not allowing open questioning, in effect, instituting a worshiping of ignorance above truthful knowing and understanding. This avoidance, or block inserted into perception, always leads to dissonance in a universe operating with reality as its underpinning logic. Whether its just me or an entire society, a nation, falseness inserted into the psyche as truthfulness will come to haunt the future untill resolved by understandings knowingness.
Loading The Countries Deck
With our American politics full of statements with little basis in full contextual fact, or real indigenous truth backing them up, the American public has been quite easily mislead by Appearance Reality contortions based upon erroneous reasoning. Some of us do know how illusion and misinformation can be mated, producing mutated offspring far from the well of truthfulness. We then are rendered susceptible, ripe for misdirection as to fault and blame for this politically induced harm. Reality goes on to be damaged by our intrusion upon it with our imaginary cause and effect reasoning.
Here is a recent historical example: A majority of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of Sept, 2001, without any actual evidence other than fabricated associative narrative story-lines being perpetrated into the mainstream media. This untruth was even believed after it was well established in that very media that he was not.
The Sacred Way Of Laziness And Avoidance–Irrationalism Pretending To Be Reason
Conserved ideas are not welcoming to honest truth, but instead position themselves around ancient psychological devises that actively avoid questions and contravening to ideological data. These hiding places for ignorance are then given fancy or profound cover, such as patriotism, loyalty and allegiance, when what they are not loyal to is The Truth of a matter, and so they are actually housing darkness pretending to be Light.
Once confirmation bias is established, there is little personal need to check for facts or for truthfulness. We may now live in a relatively “protected” from honest analysis zone. It is others that “just don’t get it” as far as the rationalization scenarios go in the narrative. Our requirement to feel OK about ourselves, including our decisions, can easily trump reality, prop up familiar and already chosen fantasy as legitimate cause and effect. I suggest that when this is done personally, in politics or in other matters, the real Reality will create dissonance and disharmony no matter how good the false narrative’s rationalization scenarios (intentions) are, for Truth Itself will not be deceived.
When Ignorance Is The Secret Guide
The story I “know” seems true to me, so your possible disagreement means you are mislead or misleading. Many media propagandist use thought trickery constantly to in effect empower ignorance over knowing truthful perception. This thought “play” tends to demand confirmation bias loading of reason, and a negative narrative tag onto anyone’s inability to “see clearly”. As ideology is conserved so I can feel solid in my self perception of identity, the Real Reality can become less and less important, while imagination becomes pivotal to rationalization, emotional judgements of others can become more and more profoundly expressed.
In my view, America’s ills are tied to an inability to honestly value truth above ideology, or comprehension; that other belief systems held that conserve ignorance in the form of not allowing questioning to deeply held notions of truth and of right and wrong, are what are actually the obstacles in our way. Things being promoted for confrontation perpetuation, such as many Wedge Issues and the so called Culture War, help to keep intact the schizophrenic American identity, where even “We The People” can mean opposite meanings of self identity from one person to another. We The People, not you people.
The Hiding Of Light
Perhaps comforted by both illusion and amnesia, lives can be lived without comprehension of larger context nor of the very real greater connection and interrelation to all of Life that is there for the seeking.
Ignorance may be bliss, but it may be the bliss of the fooled. We have reason to wonder of much we believe real, for without critical thinking, our perception can be our delusion.
The Mind Where It Matters
There may well be a “Battle in Heaven” between the forces of Wise-dumb and those of Wisdom. We each are the deciders in which side we take in every moment of our lives. The war, or more correctly; challenge, is within ourselves; whether I take comfortable but problematic shortcuts to knowing, or seek instead a disciplined and conscientious passion for knowing to the best of my ability.
The great seducers to perception are the pre-packaged narrations being constantly provided by interest other than the Whole Truth. For one reason or another, for preserving ignorance and its advantage; these seek to keep the Real Reality at bay, disguised for opportunistic reason.
These actually erroneously embedded choices create much of what we call evil, or what I call ignorance in action. That they create reverberated ill is to be avoided by the actual actors in their production scenario. Some sort of others, outsiders, are to be blamed, for their seemingness as causal characters, while they are the progeny of effect, where thereafter the damage to human reality is made evident by the seemingness of appearance.
In this sense, evil can be conserved as self defined good, while Reality is seen as being wrong to the conceptualized narrative identity’s common sense being prospered as; good and deserving of such above others–without question. Now hearts can be ignored for my interest as defined by my truncated self identity attachments to not understanding deeper cause and effect.
Belief is to be chastised by Truth for consciousness to know what perception is in reality. This becomes a matter of deep personal honesty, or one of taking shortcuts to knowing that are not legitimate, not questioned, and not up to the truth available in real perception.
It is Reality that is Reality
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Related Articles
- reality check (parwatisingari.wordpress.com)
- Perception (socyberty.com)
- Perception is Reality – Martha Karua Anecdote (socialightmediakenya.com)
- Philosophy Filter: We act as if there is an objective reality, so why not assume that there is? (ask.metafilter.com)
- Reality, Truth, Perception, Individualism, Society: What is Reality If Not a Subjective Analysis Based Upon One’s Life Experience? (socyberty.com)
- My Reasons to NOT Believe… (kestalusrealm.wordpress.com)
- How the growth of denialism undermines public health (denyingaids.blogspot.com)
As America Falls : How Ignorance Will Kill Democracy
America In Peril
The idea gaming of America, from whence decisions and deceptions flow
“Corporatocracy, theocracy, plutocracy, even The Idiocracy; anyway you say it, these conservative paradigms require a whole lot of crazy. We move reality into fantasy, and yet, our followers do not see for they are already hooked.”
Now more from this fantasy quote. A quote whose ideas may create Reason to Wonder whether there are any reasons this fantasy is not a likely reality considering the following real quotes and reasoning. And so I wonder in which manner—
“We need to fool and foil the vast majority of Americans interest to preserve and enhance our wealth at the expense of the general population. Since Ronald Reagan’s time we have been making this reverse democracy happen, enjoying the swelling benefit of profit as the majority loses ground.
The tax is evil mantra has succeeded in disempowering government from serving all the people. We have conditioned the population to not comprehend the substantially positive relationship between taxes and real Freedom and real responsibility to a nation. We first needed to wedge the general public away from the reality that taxes actually enhance freedom and democracy, to believing the ideological twist that taxes stifle freedom and opportunity.
Now many, if not most feel tax is actually a burden and not the responsible nature of accountability in an interconnected world. We have sold the public our own view of opportunistic advantage, yet have them believing they are fighting for their own with the perpetual ruse of “No More Taxes!” Good thing they never plan to check out whole context with actually critical thinking!
Oh! The many blessings of ignorance.
Governments loss of ground allows our corporate power to supplant it, rendering voting more and more superfluous; involved with distracting wedge issues and culture warfare blinded to real powers fields of interest. Our moral value and religious fronts are aiding this campaign greatly by generally reversing the position of Jesus Christ and inserting our own ideological lens for deciphering biblical meanings.
For instance; most do not know there was abortion allowed during Christ time yet he did nothing about it directly, instead, he spent most of his energy on the poor, the sick and the ostracised. Liberals like Christ of Nazareth believe the context a child is born into is possibly more important than denying a woman her own spiritual challenge. So what is our wedge? Everyone has had their own innocence violated in one way or another, particularly in youth.
We transfer the whole issue to be a supreme issue of innocence; the unborn child against the horrible intentions of a parent steeped in her own problems. We use detachment of the womans context, defering to the individual nature of all as once being children. What if your mom killed you! we ask in all seriousness; changing a reality equation with one of fantasy. Our followers will now be only an imaginary step away from internally registering that liberals like Christ would rather see them die than do something about it. With murder now part of the message; our followers will be capable of each and every ill in good and in Gods name. Here we use ones own spiritual insecurity and guilt in our conservative followers to target cause onto our enemies, insisting they are now the enemies of God as well.
Our Good New Time Religion
Religion is not an obstacle to the clever opportunist. We can reverse engineer any abstract concept and create an appearance reality that our view is true and its original meaning false. We cripple critical thinking by using the fear and insecurity in our fellow Americans to work against this greater paradigm consideration, making it instead the realm of individual choice.
This is why we must always generate fear toward the liberals nature and enrage inner stimulated threats to inner fantasy to be targeted externally to the objects of our choice. Simple Projection does this escapist job for us! We have subverted the collective interest of Americans and made subversion seem to be the domain of only liberalism. With business in charge of most information dispersal; we have that handle in our hand.
We accomplish this surrender of The American Spirit by igniting the passions of the populace, targeting apparent reality solution tagged to our issues. This guiding of feelings allows our cause to be infused as the impression of theirs, with ignorance and illusion as their supreme guiding lights. Then we have them right where we can manipulate them. Gradually the ladder steps further and further from reality oversight, now into the charge of fear, fantasy and paranoia triggered by our stimulation. We put evil in charge of defining good and deliver it with a smile and a prayer! My good is yours! No! Really!
End Game
Now America can be permanently rendered into a caste system having nothing to do with real equality of right or a really fair opportunity and accountability. We have controlled America by using the Pivot Point Of Perception; generating a broad-based consensus reality by continually drenching the population with apparent reality opinion disguised as wisdom, as fact, and most importantly, as plain common sense.
By worshiping the ideology of individualism we can pivot perception on abstraction, and so control both government and Democracy with our own will. Needless to say; an army of ignorance filled with passionate confusion claiming to see all too clearly, will then finish the job of our overthrow– of them! It is happening as I speak my friends. This is how our pyramid scheme of profit off of The People can last a millennium and more, past even the Pharos. –and I did it MY Way!
To finish this coup we go underground; form front groups to instigate and propagate a groundswell of apparent populism while having our friends in government and media promote fantasies of impending socialist government; this, obviously seen by any collective based care. We intend to keep all that we can get. Hell no you wont!; to any of it going anywhere that we ourselves do not approve of! Now that is Freedom! Fantasy is a key to taking down Democracy and installing plutocracy. I must admit to you in all honestly; I love this ruse. Thank you Jesus!
Myopic Freedom
From here we can promote ideas that in the abstract appeal to all as causes of Freedom. In practice this freedom will serve we who have, by keeping Democracy inebriated and inept with confusion. I remind you that stealthy intellectual contradiction as to Freedoms true whole context and cost is an absolute must. Our wealth does give us the means to make this happen while having many Americans cheer our cause as their own at their own peril. Our wealth itself makes us more free than the majority!
Emotion people; emotion enables ignorance to rule as enlightenment...“
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Meanwhile. Back to the first start of this post.
.(By now: What is her talking about?)
Oh Yeah.
Maybe I will change that title later. I really wished to say; The Ascendant Mania Of The Right Wing; Where Ignorance And Ideology Poison The Principles Of Freedom And Democracy.
The trouble with titles can be the instant concept framing that ensues in what seems to be a polarized population. Mention the Mainstream Media, or even The Media these days, and differing views will hear entirely differing Consensus Reality mindset suppositions. Notions of The Truth and Facts will also be sifted into Confirmation Bias assumptions designed to select out contradictory or negating context, concept and information to keep the comfortable security of predetermined ideological curves.
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Enough already from me.
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From Bill Moyers: “Welcome to the Plutocracy!”
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This excerpt from Bill Moyers piece on the plutocracy I saw on Truthout. I know; in some spheres these very people are considered very bad by the corporatocracy/plutocracy/cracy
“For years she had worked at minimum-wage jobs, until 17 years ago, when she was hired by the Whirlpool refrigerator factory in Evansville, Indiana. She was making $ 18.44 an hour when Whirlpool announced earlier this year that it was closing the operation and moving it to Mexico. She wept. I’m sure many of the other eleven hundred workers who lost their jobs wept too; they had seen their ticket to the middle class snatched from their hands. The company defended its decision by claiming high costs, underused capacity, and the need to stay competitive. Those excuses didn’t console Connie Brasel. “I was becoming part of something bigger than me,” she told Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times. “Whirlpool was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She was not only sad, she was mad. “They didn’t get world-class quality because they had the best managers. They got world-class quality because of the United States and because of their workers.”
Among those workers were Natalie Ford, her husband and her son; all three lost their jobs. “It’s devastating,” she told the Times. Her father had worked at Whirlpool before them. Now, “There aren’t any jobs here. How is this community going to survive?”
And what about the country? Between 2001 and 2008, about 40,000 US manufacturing plants closed. Six million factory jobs have disappeared over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing jobs. Natalie Ford said to the Times what many of us are wondering: “I don’t know how without any good-paying jobs here in the United States people are going to pay for their health care, put their children through school.”
Now, if Connie Brasel and Natalie Ford lived in South Carolina, they might have been lucky enough to get a job with the new BMW plant that recently opened there and advertised that the company would hire one thousand workers. Among the applicants? According to the Washington Post; “a former manager of a major distribution center for Target; a consultant who oversaw construction projects in four western states; a supervisor at a plastics recycling firm. Some held college degrees and resumes in other fields where they made more money.” They will be paid $15 an hour – about half of what BMW workers earn in Germany
In polite circles, among our political and financial classes, this is known as “the free market at work.” No, it’s “wage repression,” and it’s been happening in our country since around 1980. I must invoke some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but if indeed it’s the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics, as I once read, surely this truly educated audience will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation’s economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0 Americans was growing, too – from $17,719 to $30,941. That’s a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefitted. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.
That’s wage repression.
Another story in the Times caught my eye a few weeks after the one about Connie Brasel and Natalie Ford. The headline read: “Industries Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts.” Nelson Schwartz reported that despite falling motorcycle sales, Harley-Davidson profits are soaring – with a second quarter profit of $71 million, more than triple what it earned the previous year. Yet Harley-Davidson has announced plans to cut fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred more jobs by the end of next year; this on top of the 2000 job cut last year.
The story note: “This seeming contradiction – falling sales and rising profits – is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and unemployment shows few signs of easing.”
There you see the two Americas. A buoyant Wall Street; a doleful Main Street. The Connie Brasels and Natalie Fords – left to sink or swim on their own. There were no bailouts for them.
Meanwhile, Matt Krantz reports in USA TODAY that “Cash is gushing into company’s coffers as they report what’s shaping up to be a third-consecutive quarter of sharp earning increases. But instead of spending on the typical things, such as expanding and hiring people, companies are mostly pocketing the money or stuffing it under their mattresses.” And what are their plans for this money? Again, the Washington Post:
“…. Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year… But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth.”
That’s how financial capitalism works today: Conserving cash rather than bolstering hiring and production; investing in their own shares to prop up their share prices and make their stock more attractive to Wall Street. To hell with everyone else.
Hear the chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ethan Harris, who told the Times: “There’s no question that there is an income shift going on in the economy. Companies are squeezing their labor costs to build profits.”
Or the chief economist for Credit Suisse in New York, Neal Soss: As companies have wrung more savings out of their work forces, causing wages and salaries barely to budge from recession lows, “profits have staged a vigorous recovery, jumping 40 percent between late 2008 and the first quarter of 2010.”
Just this morning the New York Times reports that the private equity business is roaring back: “While it remains difficult to get a mortgage to buy a home or to get a loan to fund a small business, yield-starved investors are creating a robust market for corporate bonds and loans.”
If this were a functioning democracy, our financial institutions would be helping everyday Americans and businesses get the mortgages and loans – the capital – they need to keep going; they’re not, even as the financiers are reaping robust awards.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he’s run off with all the toys.
Late in August I clipped another story from the Wall Street Journal. Above an op-ed piece by Robert Frank the headline asked: “Do the Rich Need the Rest of America?” The author didn’t seem ambivalent about the answer. He wrote that as stocks have boomed, “the wealthy bounced back. And while the Main Street economy” [where the Connie Brasels and Natalie Fords and most Americans live] “was wracked by high unemployment and the real-estate crash, the wealthy – whose financial fates were more tied to capital markets than jobs and houses – picked themselves up, brushed themselves off, and started buying luxury goods again.”
Citing the work of Michael Lind, at the Economic Growth Program of the New American Foundation, the article went on to describe how the super-rich earn their fortunes with overseas labor, selling to overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have little to do with the rest of America, “while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.”
Right at that point I remembered another story that I had filed away three years ago, also from the Wall Street Journal. The reporter Ianthe Jeanne Dugan described how the private equity firm Blackstone Group swooped down on a travel reservation company in Colorado, bought it, laid off 841 employees, and recouped its entire investment in just seven months, one of the quickest returns on capital ever for such a deal. Blackstone made a killing while those workers were left to sift through the debris. They sold their homes, took part-time jobs making sandwiches and coffee, and lost their health insurance.
That fall, Blackstone’s chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, reportedly worth over $5 billion, rented a luxurious resort in Jamaica to celebrate the marriage of his son. According to the Guardian News, the Montego Bay facility alone cost $50,000, plus thousands more to sleep 130 guests. There were drinks on the beach, dancers and a steel band, marshmallows around the fire, and then, the following day, an opulent wedding banquet with champagne and a jazz band and fireworks display that alone cost $12,500. Earlier in the year Schwarzman had rented out the Park Avenue Armory in New York (near his 35-room apartment) to celebrate his 60th birthday at a cost of $3 million. So? It’s his money, isn’t it? Yes, but consider this: The stratospheric income of private-equity partners is taxed at only 15 percent – less than the rate paid, say, by a middle class family. When Congress considered raising the rate on their Midas-like compensation, the financial titans flooded Washington with armed mercenaries – armed, that is, with hard, cold cash – and brought the “debate” to an end faster than it had taken Schwartzman to fire 841 workers. The financial class had won another round in the exploitation of working people who, if they are lucky enough to have jobs, are paying a higher tax rate than the super-rich.
So the answer to the question: “Do the Rich Need the Rest of America?” is as stark as it is ominous: Many don’t. As they form their own financial culture increasingly separated from the fate of everyone else, it is “hardly surprising,” Frank and Lind concluded, “ that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people.”
You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from reading history. Ultimately gross inequality can be fatal to civilization. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Jared Diamond writes about how governing elites throughout history isolate and delude themselves until it is too late. He reminds us that the change people inflict on their environment is one of the main factors in the decline of earlier societies. For example: the Mayan natives on the Yucatan peninsula who suffered as their forest disappeared, their soil eroded, and their water supply deteriorated. Chronic warfare further exhausted dwindling resources. Although Mayan kings could see their forests vanishing and their hills eroding, they were able to insulate themselves from the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well-fed while everyone else was slowly starving. Realizing too late that they could not reverse their deteriorating environment, they became casualties of their own privilege. Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure, Diamond warns, if elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their decisions, separated from the common life of the country.
Yet the isolation continues – and is celebrated. When Howard came down to New York last December for what would be my last interview with him, I showed him this document published in the spring of 2005 by the Wall Street giant Citigroup, setting forth an “Equity Strategy” under the title (I’m not making this up) “Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer.”
Now, most people know what plutocracy is: the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn’t meant to become an American phenomenon – some of our founders deplored what they called “the veneration of wealth.” But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of coining a variation on the word— “plutonomy”, which describes an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer and that government helps them do it. Five years ago Citigroup decided the time had come to “bang the drum on plutonomy.”
And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document “Revisiting Plutonomy;”
“Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by
market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper… [and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years.”“…the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the United States –
the plutonomists in our parlance – have benefitted disproportionately from the recent productivity surged in the US… [and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor.”“… [and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.”
I’ll repeat that: “The dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.” That was the case before the Great Collapse of 2008, and it’s the case today, two years after the catastrophe. But the plutonomists are doing just fine. Even better in some cases, thanks to our bailout of the big banks.
As for the rest of the country: Listen to this summary in The Economist – no Marxist journal – of a study by Pew Research:
More than half of all workers today have experienced a spell of
unemployment, taken a cut in pay or hours or been forced
to go part-time. The typical unemployed worker has been
jobless for nearly six months. Collapsing share and house
prices have destroyed a fifth of the wealth of the average
household. Nearly six in ten Americans have cancelled or
cut back on holidays. About a fifth say their mortgages are
underwater. One in four of those between 18 and 29 have
moved back in with their parents. Fewer than half of all adults
expect their children to have a higher standard of living than
theirs, and more than a quarter say it will be lower. For many
Americans the great recession has been the sharpest trauma since
The Second World War, wiping out jobs, wealth and hope itself.
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Related Articles
- Religion as a Tool of Repression By Charles Sullivan (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
- “Bill Moyers: “Welcome to the Plutocracy!”" and related posts (care2.com)
- Welcome to the plutocracy… (shannonturlington.com)
- Has Democracy Outlived Its Usefulness? (planetpov.com)
- Bernie Sanders: There Is A WAR Being Waged Against The Working Families Of America! (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
- Robert Creamer: The Crowd That Had the Party Should Pick Up the Tab (huffingtonpost.com)
- Americans Overwhelmingly Support Wealth Redistribution to Fairer Levels (crooksandliars.com)
- David Swanson’s Remarks at the Lincoln Memorial: “We The Plutocracy” (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
