Betrayal! The Pervasive & Defining Crime Of Our Age

Let me apologize in advance for what may be an upsetting piece of writing for some of you. If you're in a state of shock or exhaustion from recent events, perhaps you should skip this one.

I don't offer this analysis in order to further distress anyone — but until you understand what is happening and how that influences your psychological state, you'll remain the emotional equivalent of a rag doll shaken to-and-fro by events.

Such understanding may not bring you to a place of calm acceptance. But it will set you free.

Betrayal

The recent acts of violence in the US, especially the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, are not arising out of a vacuum. Nor are the Brexit vote, the election of Trump, or the recent Catalonian vote for secession, random unconnected acts.

These — and future similarly disruptive events sure to come — are all arising out of the fact that we all have been betrayed.

For the purposes of this article, let's define betrayal as:

the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions of a trusted person or institution. The emotional impacts of betrayal may include shock, a sense of loss, grief, damaged self-esteem, humiliation, self-doubt, shame, and anger.

We're betrayed every time our trust is violated, in small ways or large. An example of a small betrayal might be hiding a frivolous purchase from your partner when you've both agreed to stick to a shared budget. A larger betrayal would be infidelity.

But betrayals aren't limited to relationships between individuals. They can be perpetrated across groups, even nations. Like the enormous betrayal of trust committed when the US sent its military into Iraq on the basis of falsified ‘intelligence'.

No matter the perpetrator, size and scope of a betrayal, the parties involved are only able to heal the damage done if there's an open and honest dialog where the betrayer admits to their violations and atones openly and honestly. As discussed in much more detail in our excellent podcast with an experienced cognitive therapist, the betrayer must fully atone for their actions, face all consequences, and openly answer every question posed to them by the aggrieved.

If none of that happens, then then the animosity festers and is never ‘gotten over.’ Time does not heal that wound. It only offers a swampy breeding ground for a swarm of resentments.

In other words, if you find yourself increasingly distressed or angry (as I am) about the rampant violations of public trust in today's world, it’s because you're paying attention. It means you're not crazy; you're normal.

Betrayal Of The Public Trust

In the US, politicians deservedly enjoy a very low approval rating. Their words so rarely match their actions that it’s a too rare delight to find someone of character and conscience in DC.

Instead, we regularly see dirt bags like this:

This congressman is why people hate politics

Oct 4, 2017

Washington (CNN)

 

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy has had one hell of a last month.

 

In early September, the Republican House member admitted to an extramarital affair with a "personal friend"following the unsealing of divorce records that showed he had been involved in a relationship with Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist.

 

It got much, much worse on Tuesday when the Post-Gazette reported on a text message exchange between Edwards and Murphy in which she alleges he urged her to have an abortion.

 

Murphy's personal foibles are not the point here. What is the point is that he is someone who has been an outspoken critic of abortion rights in his public life even while apparently being much more willing to consider it when it impacts him personally.

 

Murphy was a co-sponsor of legislation –passed in the House on Tuesday night– that would make it illegal for women to abort a baby after the 20-week mark.

 

He has a perfect 100% score with National Right to Life, having voted with the organization on five key pieces of legislation, including the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act." As my former Washington Post colleague Aaron Blake expertly documents, Murphy was also touting his anti-abortion stance even as he was reportedly urging his mistress to seek an abortion.

(Source)

A sordid tale indeed. The essence of which is a powerful politician saying one thing but doing another. He loudly espoused strong family values and a staunch right-to-life voting record — all while conducting an extra-marital affair and pressuring his mistress to get an abortion.

For the constituents who believed in this man, his deeds offer a profound betrayal. 

Tim Murphy represents the credo that the politicians in The Swamp live by: Do as we say, not as we do.

There are so many examples of prominent politicians and religious leaders saying one thing but doing nearly the exact opposite that one hardly knows how to begin listing them all. 

Heck, even "America's Dad", Bill Cosby, has turned out to be a serial rapist.

All these betrayals have led to a rule I now live by: The more someone proclaims a strong moral position, the more I suspect them of secretly doing the opposite.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Institutionally Betrayed

But the scope of our victimization goes far beyond that conducted by individuals. The very institutions, both public and private, that we rely on are often fleecing us more than serving us.

The betrayals of the Catholic Church in covering up thousands of sexual assaults and tens of thousands of child victims are absolutely devastating.

Pharmaceutical companies quietly fund opposition to medical marijuana ballot initiatives because the data shows that the use of safe and effective marijuana seriously cuts into the extremely profitable sales of highly addictive and deadly opiates.

Car insurance companies rob their most loyal customers by slowly ratcheting up premiums in a scheme called “price optimization” in the industry. (This happened to me because I had not taken the time to shop around recently. I was horrified when I did. I wasn’t as badly screwed as some customers who paying up to 800% more than they should, but it still hurt.)

Of course hospitals with their captive hostage billing rackets are among the worst of the worst. So are private for-profit prisons, indecipherable 48-page phone bills, and Monsanto ghost writing “research” to obscure the probable cancer causing nature of Round Up while certain EPA staffers looked the other way.

In short, it’s difficult to have any sort of optimism about any large US corporations at this point. All of them are busy betraying us in ways large and small, every day, ranging from being evasive about the degree to which they snoop into our private affairs, to the ways in which they limit our access to the free flow of information by altering the results of popular online search algorithms.

In such an environment of pervasive betrayal, it’s difficult to maintain any sense of trust.

It turns out the best strategy is to trust nobody. Especially not a corporation with a large enough staff to segment their actions into enough ‘silos of deniability’, where no one person feels directly culpable for placing profits over people. “Hey Bill, as an exercise, why don’t you run an analysis that shows how many customers we might lose if we steadily increase their insurance rates, and then I’ll run it by legal and accounting…”

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Sovereign Betrayal

The behavior of nations is no better on this front.

For example, in response to the highly-democratic Catalan referendum for independence, the EU bureaucracy has been busy betraying any commitments it had to protecting and advancing democracy. The EU Commission First Vice President said this:

STRASBOURG —The Spanish government’s “proportionate use of force” in Catalonia was necessary to uphold the rule of law, the European Commission declared on Wednesday.

 

As the European Parliament opened a debate on the Catalonia crisis, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans sided unequivocally with the Madrid government.

 

“None of us want to see violence in our societies,” Timmermans went on. “However it is a duty for any government to uphold the law, and this sometimes does require the proportionate use of force.”

(Source)

"Proportionate use of force?"

Wow. That's an amazing perversion of language. Most of you have seen the pictures of peaceful people being ruthlessly clubbed by Spanish police — simply because they exercised their right to vote. Here's a graphic video of a woman's fingers being methodically and cruelly broken as she lay on her back barely resisting (only watch it if you have a strong stomach).

Police broke my fingers one by one and touched my breasts

 

A woman dragged out of a polling station in Barcelona by police broke down in tears today as she claimed they had broken her fingers 'one by one' and sexually assaulted her while they laughed.

 

Marta Torrecillas was filmed being violently removed from a school in the city's upmarket Eixample area as Catalonia voted for independence yesterday.

 

The clip, captured at Paul Claris School, showed her being manhandled as she tried to walk past officers in full body armour on a day when footage of police brutality sparked outrage around the world.

 

Her dress was forced up around her thighs – leaving her exposed and humiliated – as she was dragged down towards the exit.She later claimed officers had touched her breasts and broken her fingers 'deliberately, one by one'.

(Source)

Her crime? Thinking she had the right to peacefully cast a vote. For that she was brutally assaulted, as were hundreds of other people. To which the EU VP merely said “it is a duty of any government to uphold the law.” 

Remember, it was the EU that voted to sanction and then bomb Libya because of concerns that Qaddafi was persecuting civilians (despite virtually no evidence this was the case) .

When your own government protects other people (as a pretext for violent regime change) but persecutes you, it is nothing short of a massive betrayal. Remember, anger, resentment, and humiliation are extremely difficult to ‘get over.’

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Betrayal By The Elites

Here in October 2017, the stock and bond markets are in melt-up mode. This is a gigantic theft — a deliberate transfer of wealth to those who already hold financial assets. The 1% is getting richer and richer while everybody without an already-significant pile of financial assets to their name languishes.

The central banks know exactly what they are doing and why. Stoking a massive boom in financial assets is benefiting their member banks, the ruling classes, the industry titans who fete them at swanky events like Davos, and the rich members of Congress.

Of course, this unfair wealth transfer is a massive betrayal of everybody who needs to save their hard-earned income for the future.

The central banks have vastly reduced the purchasing power of newly-earned money, making assets twice (or more) as expensive as they were just five years ago.  Anyone looking to buy a home, invest in a stock, or purchase a car, clearly can see this.

That’s inflation in every sense of the word. Inflation destroys wealth; it doesn't grow it.

Here are a few simple questions to frame things.

• Would you rather receive 2% on a ten-year bond or 6%?
• Would you rather get 1 share of a given stock or 2 for the same amount of money?
• Would you rather get a dividend yield of 1.5% or 3%?

Obviously, you’d rather get more than less in every case. You’d take two instead of one for the same money whenever you could.

But the Federal Reserve has decided, using deeply flawed reasoning and no historical perspective, that simply jamming up the value of financial assets for those who already hold them is the best course of action.

Are you one of those who needs to save up for retirement? Tough luck. The Fed has decided you're the loser in this story. You've been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Generational Betrayal

One of the very worst forms of betrayal is that levied against an entire generation.

Today, we're saddling young people with poor job prospects, high student debts, impossibly expensive housing stock, and a crumbling national infrastructure. All while asking them to shoulder the costs of the older generations underfunded entitlement and pension programs.

The statement to young people is clear: “We don’t care about you. We only care about us.”

It's reprehensible. But that’s what massive betrayals are.

To just focus on housing in the US (and let’s be clear, housing is just as bad a situation in London, Stockholm, and a hundred other cities across the globe), the Federal Reserve has made higher home prices a specific policy goal. Its truly idiotic theory was that higher home prices make people feel richer, and that such people will borrow against the equity in their homes to spend more.

The reason this is idiotic is that a house that costs twice as much isn’t twice as valuable. As the market price goes up, the square footage and amenities remain exactly the same. The only real difference is that your property taxes and insurance costs have climbed, too. So in actuality,  it's an even larger money drain than before.

Because assets generate cash flow and liabilities consume cash flow, it’s best to think of your primary residence as a liability and not an asset. But few people do that during a housing bubble like the one we're in now. Just remember that all gains are speculative — they only matter if you're able to sell the house and invest the profits elsewhere. Otherwise, your "gains" can easily evaporate with the next market downturn.

The charts below show the astronomical prices homebuyer are faced with today. Here's the national price index, which has propelled above it's previous bubble high (remember: the bubble the triggered the Great Financial Crisis?):

(Source)

The view from a regional level often looks even more grim. Here's what homebuyers in Dallas are experiencing:

Ouch!

Sorry next generation, the boomers driving the Federal Reserve's policy have decided that you are expendable pawns. To protect their advantage, the older generation has decided to eat its young.

In other words, you’ve been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

*  *  *

In Part 2: Fighting Back — A Call To Action, we detail the agency that we as individuals have in this story, to throw off the shackles of our victimhood and secure a prosperous future as protected as possible from the clutches of the betrayers. The betrayals will only come more fast and furious from here. This is expected. Dying systems with failing narratives are always messy and become increasingly desperate in their actions. Start taking steps to seize your future freedom now. Click here to read the report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)