Why Am I Doing This?

Those of you who’ve read me for many years will have undoubtedly noticed a major transformation in the tone and content of my writing over the course of 2017. This shift has been the result of much personal introspection regarding how I had been doing things in the past and whether I was pleased with the outcome.

In the June post, People Are Devolving Into Degeneracy and Violence – Don’t Join the Club, I noted:

When times get tough people can unite and fight back against a common enemy, or they can be manipulated into fighting each other. Unfortunately, the latter has become increasingly popular amongst all sides in what has become an increasingly deranged, adolescent and counterproductive political environment.

Meanwhile, the people who are truly powerful, the oligarchs of industry and their bought and paid for political minions are the ones who really benefit. The primary purpose of this website from the very beginning has been to highlight how power actually functions in imperial America with the hope that people across the political spectrum could unite and push back against the unaccountable rent-seeking practices of a common enemy. It seems I was extraordinarily naive.

When a writer and thinker such as myself is forced to admit failure, it’s a very tough pill to swallow. Writing this blog is in many ways a thankless task. I’m essentially doing volunteer work day in and day out because I passionately believe in the ideas I put forth, and to see them have little to no effect on the public debate can be very depressing. Rather than seeing human beings unite to throw off the predatory shackles that bind them as I had hoped, I see people who should be coming together punching and yelling at each other in the streets — and that’s on a good day. On bad days, people are getting shot or run over, from Virginia to London. Watching all this madness unfold while the truly powerful sit back and grin, more secure in their positions as ever before thanks to rabble fighting each other, sometimes makes me want to just stop doing this writing thing. After all, what’s the point?

Upon deeper reflection, I’ve come away with several unpleasant self-critiques about how I had been engaging with readers over the past five years. For one thing, I realized that most of my posts revolved around expressing outrage about how poorly others people were acting and how dangerous these actions were to society at large.

While understanding how the system works and identifying some particularly bad actors is very important, it’s not nearly enough. By spending so much thought and energy on the transgressions of others, I realized that I had done my part to contribute to the “outrage culture” which currently infects our political dialogue. Pointing fingers at others incessantly is what unconscious people do, which more conscious people inspire others to live up to their best natures. For years, I had been doing too much of the former, and not enough of the latter. That’s not to say there’s no value in calling out bad actors, I think there is. The point is that my content had become defined by a dangerous imbalance, and it was bad for me and bad for you.

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Guard Your Mind Like the Precious Resource It Is

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence.  Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

Something I’ve been working on personally is becoming more in control of my emotions and, more importantly, trying not  to immediately respond when something makes me angry. In order to do this, I’ve found it necessary to be conscious of the anger itself. Specifically, I’ve noticed that when we get angry we tend to move into a state of mind that is obsessively focused on the source of this anger. We dwell on how we were wronged over and over in our minds like an uncontrollable movie, which then makes us even more angry. In an attempt to stop the movie and momentarily feel better about the situation, we tend to lash out. It feels good for a second, but it almost never gets you anywhere.

Anger and fear are two emotions that serve important evolutionary purposes and certainly have their place, but I’ve found neither to be productive when it comes to solutions to serious problems, or to establishing better relationships with those you care about. When one is angry or fearful the instinctual response is to do whatever might make you feel better in the moment. Allowing oneself to react from a state of fear or anger will almost always lead to poor decision making, unless you are actually in a situation that requires such a response.

I discussed this concept in May’s post, Do Ends Justify the Means?

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The Imperial Collapse Clock Ticks Closer to Midnight

As I noted in last Friday’s piece, Donald Trump Finally Comes Out of the Closet, the firing of Steve Bannon represents the most significant event to occur during the Trump administration thus far. For the purposes of this piece, it’s important to review some of what I wrote:

Irrespective of what you think of Bannon, him being out means Wall Street and the military-industrial complex is now 100% in control of the Trump administration. Prepare for an escalation of imperial war around the world and an expansion of brutal oligarchy.

The removal of Bannon is the end of even a facade of populism. This is now the Goldman Sachs Presidency with a thin-skinned, unthinking authoritarian as a figurehead. Meanwhile, guess who’s still there in addition to the Goldman executives? Weed obsessed, civil asset forfeiture supporting Jefferson Sessions. The Trump administration just bacame ten times more dangerous than it was before. With the coup successful, Trump no longer needs to be impeached.

Here’s another prediction. Watch the corporate media start to lay off Trump a bit more going forward. Rather than hysterically demonize him for every little thing, corporate media will increasingly give him more of the benefit of the doubt. After all, a Presidency run by Goldman Sachs and generals is exactly what they like. Trump finally came out of the closet as the anti-populist oligarch he is, and the results won’t be pretty.

Of course, his cheerleaders will remain enthusiastically in denial about what’s happened to their hero, but Trump has been totally brought to heel, a fact that’ll become increasingly crystal clear in the months ahead. This is now your standard Wall Street and military-industrial complex run Presidency.

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No, Corporate CEOs are Not Heroes

I warned everybody about this in several posts last week. How some of the worst cretins rummaging around the carcass of American freedom and democracy instantaneously began salivating ferociously at the opportunity to look heroic by coming out in opposition to a grossly exaggerated Nazi threat hyped up by the corporate media. The events in Charlottesville presented such a tremendous opportunity for sleazy people in power to preposterously frame themselves as “speaking truth to power,” I knew they’d milk it for all it’s worth. Days later, and they’re still doing it.

Of course, the “journalists” of corporate media, i.e., public relations stenographers for billionaires, are doing everything they can to push this ridiculous narrative. Unsurprisingly, The New York Times has helped lead the charge, with David Gelles penning an article on Saturday that has to be one of the most revolting pieces of shameless propaganda ever composed in the english language.

The article, titled The Moral Voice of Corporate America, should be etched in stone and thrown into time capsule so generations hundreds of years from now can accurately comprehend just how absurdist things had become by mid-2017 — the waning years of the hopelessly stupid American empire. A time when everybody enthusiastically lost their minds in a manic and desperate effort to avoid stark reality.

Although the article is legitimately unreadable, as students of how the media manipulates the attitudes of the general public, we can’t simply ignore it. I’ll limit my use of excerpts, as I genuinely feel nauseous sharing any of it. The first few paragraphs show you all you need to see.

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Liberty Links 8/19/17

Must Reads

Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.’ (Yes it is, The Weekly Standard)

The White House is Now Run Entirely by Hucksters, Democrats, and Generals (Possibly the best title ever written, The Intercept)

Central Banks Hold a Fifth of Their Governments’ Debt (This is a dying financial system, FT)

America At The End of All Hypotheticals (Excellent free speech article, Popehat)

Saudi Arabia’s Missing Princes (Crazy story, BBC)

Noam Chomsky: Antifa is a ‘Major Gift to the Right’ (He gets it, The Washington Examiner)

Video Footage from the White Supremacist Rally (VICE)

Barrett Brown Talks to the Internet Party (Fascinating interview, YouTube)

U.S. Politics

See More Links »

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Donald Trump Finally Comes Out of the Closet

The firing of Steve Bannon is in my opinion the most significant event to happen during the Trump administration thus far. Moreover, it will have massive political reverberations across the U.S. political spectrum for years and years to come. I wasn’t planning on writing today, but this news is so incredibly significant I find myself with little choice.

Taking a step back, part of the reason I was immediately able to see through the Trump con was due to my upbringing in New York City. The guy was constantly in the news my entire life, so I had a pretty decent understanding of where he was really coming from and what makes him tick. The mindset of your typical NYC-based billionaire real estate developer is filled with all sorts of perspectives and priorities, but thoughts of populism are not amongst them.

Trump used populism to get elected, and then as soon as he won, immediately appointed some of the most destructive oligarchs imaginable to run his administration. The reason I warned about this incessantly at the time, is because I learned the lesson from the Obama administration. People = policy, and the people Trump was elevating were almost unquestionably awful. Irrespective of what you think of Bannon, him being out means Wall Street and the military-industrial complex is now 100% in control of the Trump administration. Prepare for an escalation of imperial war around the world and and an expansion brutal oligarchy.

The removal of Bannon is the end of even a facade of populism. This is now the Goldman Sachs Presidency with a thin-skinned, unthinking authoritarian as a figurehead. Meanwhile, guess who’s still there in addition to the Goldman executives? Weed obsessed, civil asset forfeiture supporting Jefferson Sessions. The Trump administration just bacame ten times more dangerous than it was before. With the coup successful, Trump no longer needs to be impeached.

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Nazi Fears and ‘Hate Speech’ Hysteria are Being Amplified to Attack Civil Liberties

It doesn’t take courage to denounce Nazism. Moreover, it appears many of the people incessantly proclaiming how anti-Nazi they are, happen to be the same folks who have the most to answer for when it comes to all sorts of transgressions against the world over the past couple of decades. That said, I’ll give my my quick two cents on the Nazi, white supremacist hysteria currently being amplified by the corporate media.

The general proclivity to obsess about how one’s group, whether it be a nation, political tribe, or race/religion is superior to all others represents such a immature and unconscious way of seeing the world, it’s really is hard for me to believe so many people still see reality through such a lens. This type of thinking tends to attract very insecure people. People who cannot look at themselves individually and be proud of the person they see. As such, they scurry around looking for a group with an established superiority myth which they can then latch themselves onto in order to feel better about themselves.

The good news when it comes to Nazism/white supremacy, at least here in the U.S., is that most people appear to be at least conscious enough not to fall for the most basic and primal type of tribalism — i.e., finding a race-based superiority cult attractive. In contrast, the more nuanced superiority cults, such as those based on mindless nationalism or political identity, are far more entrenched here at home, and present a much greater danger to our future.

Before some of you lose it, I wrote “mindless” nationalism for a reason. I think it’s completely normal and healthy for everyone to love and appreciate their own national/regional culture, this is not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about the hordes of mindless automatons who simply fly the American flag and constantly profess their super-sized patriotism, while being completely unaware of the multitude of evil and anti-American actions being done both at home and abroad in their names. It doesn’t seem to matter to these type that their government is acting in total opposition to the Constitution they ostensibly claim to uphold. These people might be less shallow than an self-professed Nazi, but they are far more dangerous to decent, ethical Americans at home, and billions of innocent people abroad. Political party tribalists represent a similar threat, as I’ve discuss on multiple occasions.

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Americans are Rapidly Descending Into Madness

I don’t live in an echo chamber, partly because there aren’t enough people out there who think like me, but also because I constantly and intentionally attempt to challenge my worldview by reading stuff from all over the political map. I ingest as much as I can from a wide variety of intelligent sources, picking and choosing what makes sense to me, and then synthesizing it the best I can.

Though I’m certainly grounded in certain key principles, my perspective on specific issues remains malleable as I take in additional information and perspectives. I try to accept and acknowledge my own ignorance and view life as a journey of constant mental, emotionally and spiritual growth. If I’m not growing my capacity in all of those realms until the day I die, I’m doing it wrong. Life should be seen as a battle against one’s own ignorance, as opposed to an obsession with the ignorance of others. You can’t legislate morality, nor can you legislate wisdom. The only way the world will improve on a long-term sustainable basis is if more of us get wise. That’s a personal journey and it’s our individual duty to accept it.

While I am only in control of my own behavior, this doesn’t mean that the behavior of others is irrelevant to my life. Unfortunately, what I see happening to the population of America right now appears very troublesome and foreboding. What I’m witnessing across the board is hordes of people increasingly separating themselves into weird, unthinking cults. Something appears to have snapped in our collective consciousness, and many individuals I used to respect (on both sides of the political spectrum) are becoming disturbingly polarized and hysterical. People are rapidly transforming into radicalized mental patients.

What’s worse, this environment is providing a backdrop for the most destructive people of my lifetime — neoconservatives and neo liberals — to preen around on corporate media as “the voices of reason.” This is one of the most perverse and dangerous side-effects of the current political climate. As I noted earlier today on Twitter:

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Trump Administration Targets Data on 1.3 Million Americans for Visiting a Website

There are two points I want to hammer home in today’s piece. First, we all need to accept that Donald Trump is not some sort of crazy aberration in U.S. politics, but rather basically just the ghastly continuation of the authoritarianism and militarism which has characterized our insane society since we experienced a civilization-wide mental breakdown following the attacks of 9/11.

I’ve written about this ongoing cultural insanity on many occasions, but most passionately in my 2013 piece, How I Remember September 11, 2001:

In the days following the collapse, all I wanted was for the towers to be rebuilt just like before. I wanted the skyline back to what I had know since the day I came into this earth at a New York City hospital to be restored exactly as I had always known it. Career-wise, I felt I should leave Wall Street. I thought about going back to graduate school for political science, or maybe even join the newly created Department of Homeland Security (yes, the irony is not lost on me). I read a lengthy tome on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. I was an emotional and psychological mess, and it was when I was in this state of heightened distress that my own government and the military-industrial complex took advantage of me.

It wasn’t just me of course. It was an entire nation that was callously manipulated in the aftermath of that tragedy. The courage and generosity exhibited by so many New Yorkers and others throughout the country and indeed the world was rapidly transformed into terrifying fear. Fear that was intentionally injected repeatedly into our daily lives. Fear that translated into pointless wars and countless deaths. Fear that was used to justify the destruction of our precious civil rights. Fear that was used to initiate a gigantic power grab and the source of tremendous profits for the corporate-statists and crony-capitalsits. Unfortunately, that is the greatest legacy of 9/11.

If you take an honest look at Trump, what you’ll see is an authoritarian goon building upon the more marketable authoritarianism that came before him in the persons of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Many people thought that by electing Trump they would break the cycle, but the cycle is continuing with reckless abandon and will probably continue on its present course until the U.S. empire collapses on itself.

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A Few Thoughts on Charlottesville

I’m going to keep this relatively short. I’ve written thousands of articles over the years, and anyone who’s read me for any period of time knows where I stand when it comes to hatred, bigotry and violence. I find all these things repulsive, and think people who gravitate to such behavior to be operating on such a low level of awareness, it’s genuinely hard for me to believe these people exist in real life.

I published my seminal piece discussing the repulsion I feel with today’s political environment back in February in the post, Lost in the Political Wilderness. Now’s a perfect time to reread that piece, but here’s an excerpt if you’re short on time:

I think the U.S. citizenry is being afflicted by a sort of mass insanity at the moment. There are no good outcomes if this continues. As a result, I feel compelled to provide a voice for those of us lost in the political wilderness. We must persevere and not be manipulated into the obvious and nefarious divide and conquer tactics being aggressively unleashed across the societal spectrum. If we lose our grounding and our fortitude, who will be left to speak for those of us who simply don’t fit into any of the currently ascendant political ideologies?

For those of you who consider yourselves to largely reside in the yellow state (2nd tier consciousness), I have one key message for you. There’s a very deliberate attempt to manipulate you into devolving back into one of the lower tiers. Likewise, there is a very deliberate attempt to prevent those on the cusp of higher consciousness from ever evolving. The reason is simple. The lower tiers are very tribal and easily divided and conquered. The higher tiers are not.

Unlike most people writing articles on Charlottesville, I’m not going to spend my time getting on a pedestal to prove to everyone how much I hate neo-Nazis. My contempt for bigotry and violence has been a constant theme throughout all my writings over the years. In contrast, the purpose of this piece is to try to knock some sense into people so that we don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Let’s start by discussing a tweet I wrote earlier today.

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