- Americans get their opinions from television, and younger ones rely more on Internet but use the same sources.
- Any image can supply only a tiny fraction of a larger whole.
- The voices that accompany images are authoritative sounding, and encourage us to imagine all that we cannot see.
- So in essence, we see perhaps less than 1%, and imagine the other 99%.
- So the key to opinion management is to influence our imaginations to fill in the other 99% as our leaders want it filled in.
- That’s easy. It’s done via suggestion.
So, they showed you a guy in a wheel chair with his legs missing. Fill in the blanks! You did. It never occurred to you to question the photo, because it was right there on your screen.
That’s how it’s done. That’s why public opinion does not matter in our society. It’s easily managed.
Piece of Mindful 
As you have said many times before: “If it is on tv it is real.” Tv is not ever going to “get real.” Every minute of programming is about the con, whether it is to sell security systems, junk food or better, longer erections. It’s all con, all the time. Even the phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute” was never actually said by P.T. Barnum. http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html Few have the ability to resist the con.
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The suggestion here is that you see more than the average. Seems a little vain.
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It’s simple: Once you know you’re being lied to, lies are easy to spot. Takes no special talent.
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Like we’re really not going into Syria?
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Just for fun sometime watch Wag the Dog, a fun movie. It’s about a TV war. But I assume we’re already in Syria and like Iraq, you’ll only see <.001% and think you've grasped it. You're sorta missing the point.
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As a kid growing up in Cooperstown, seeing the Cardiff Giant on display (my more-than-kind neighbor ran the ticket window at the Farmer’s Museum), really made me think about how far some would go to deceive. A thought that really stuck with me I guess.
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Is that anywhere near where Smith discovered the tablets?
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Once you know you’re being lied to, lies are easy to spot.
And you know this because…??? You have more knowledge than us? You have greater perception?
You seem as clueless as anyone else, probably even more so. You’ve express a lot of post modern myths (There are no biological differences in people! Race is a social construct! Early childhood intervention will close education gaps! Immigrants will bring me prosperity!) that everyone else knows are total bullshit, but you’ve bought into a certain narrative, so you ride that train.
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Even in the 60’s people we’re singing “you’d better free your mind instead.” I guarantee you that once you pass the portal you’ll not have those thoughts anymore. My position is privileged in that I can see where you are at clearly, and you can’t.
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The good vibes you had in the 60’s didn’t last, so how fundamental were they?
You like to brag about your perceptions, so show me the money. I don’t see much. You offer vague insinuations about conspiracies running the world, but when asked for details, you hide behind rhetorical devices. The certainty behind your conclusions arises more from arrogant ignorance than from any understanding of the dynamics that affect the world.
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And there lies the answer. Chaos is the goal.
Law trumped Reason,
Power trumped Law,
Corruption trumped Power,
Chaos emerges Supreme.
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I like this one:
Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard, be evil.
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More importantly immerse yourself in the teachings of these, Chomsky, Che, Alinsky, Moore, Orwell, etc, etc.
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I too can cite long lists of people I have not read.
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What “conspiracies running the world”? You hold that one conspiracy ran 9/11, me another. Yours makes no sense, unless people beg to be attacked. Mine merely says that they staged the event to rally public support behind aggressive war against old Soviet spheres of influence, and to forestall economic collapse.
But it’s one event. Now I claim they are running a “strategy of tension” to keep us behind them as they continue the slaughters. The US is not an entity here, but banking and military contractors are. In that manner, Wall Street and London are one, running “Al Qaeda,” “Muslim Brotherhood” and various terror groups, including the Chechens, as there is not much of a war without an enemy. When death squads are run by the Wall Street/London axis, they are called “rebels.”
This is a constant throughout history – concentrated wealth, power corrupted, totalitarianism masked as its opposite. You’ll find the same rhetoric of freedom and defense from aggressors behind the Third Reich as well, which is why many of us see the current 1947-present US as a mere extension of that force. We did, after all, import them after the war, and shelter them.
Anything else? Too vague for you? That’s past and present. I do not know future. I know intent, but outcomes in doubt.
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When you say banks and the military are running these rebellions, you give them too much credit. I don’t find these entities all that particularly competent or foresighted.
There is far more money made in peacetime than in wartime. I don’t think the thrill for gratuitous violence is all that high at the level of banks and the military. More careers are ruined in war than in peace.
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War is a racket. Banks are involved because dollar only survives as a viable currency due to to being the exchange currency for oil. Iraq was trading in Euros, Iran has threatened to run its own bourse. US has for decades now done all it can to thwart Arab democracy, Arab alliances, because it all threatens the dollar.
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A little too pat.
These players do a lot to damage the dollar. I don’t think they care that much about it. They’ll happily take thirty pieces of silver in any currency.
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What happens to Wall Street, the American financial sector, our military, our police state without a strong dollar? h
ow do we pay for that monstrosity?
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The dollar is strong because it is backstopped by the productivity, the wealth building ability, and the human capital of the people who use it. Just because our elites want a strong dollar does not mean they get one. Rulers for ages have tried to decree a strong currency, but it doesn’t work unless it is backed up by the work of a population.
And the dollar is getting weaker, thanks to the machinations of our so called elite, who engage in stupid wars and stupid financial trading and stupid demographic policies etc. The rock is rolling down the mountain. It is just a matter of time.
We are helped mainly from our competitors doing other stupid stuff.
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The dollar is propped up by oil. Period. We print so many of them that it would have collapsed even in the early 70’s had not Kissinger had the foresight to make sure that Arab states used dollars for high oil prices and sent them to Wall Street. Every country that imports oil needs to hold dollar reserves. Countries with oil that threaten not to use dollars, like Iraq, Venezuela and Iran, are considered mortal threats.
Real policy lurks behind the stage play of foreign policy. No one cares about Arab or Muslims and “terrorism,” which is our creation and staged for agitprop purposes.
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The dollar as a reserve currency is a nice perk, but it is not the sole arbiter of wealth. Money is fungible, after all, and many countries do quite nicely with their own currency and letting the exchange rate do its thing. You are pretty anxious to find hobgoblins.
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If the Argentine currency collapses, as it did, it’s a local catastrophe. The dollar stakes, from a Wall street/London standpoint, are very high, a world-wide catastrophe, which again is why PNAC was near panic in urging that we attack Iraq, and why 9/11 was seen as necessary to engage the public in the unavoidable wars. When an empire is in decay, when military power is all it has left, then unending war is the result.
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That’s all rather specious.
So you are telling me that the dollar is overvalued relative to other currencies, and all the money traders get marching orders from Washington DC to maintain an artificial exchange rate? Yeah, right.
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You overstate your position for effect. I said that the dollar is really the “petrodollar” and only maintains its international use because it is the trading unit for oil. Once that is done, the dollar is done. That’s why the wars, usually against oil-rich countries.
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You mightily discount the trade-a-bility of money.
Quite a lot of oil is sold in other currencies. There is less here than you imagine.
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False! Oil is based on dollars, world-wide. Each country that produces it theoretically has the option of selling it in other currencies, but practically are prevented from doing do – Iraq by invasion, Iran by threat. All countries that buy oil must do so in the currency of those selling it. China buys oil using dollars.
Venezuela under Chavez bartered in oil, importing doctors from Cuba in exchange, selling it at steep discounts to other Latin American countries, and lending them money that allowed them to get out from under the IMF tyranny. Now do you understand why, even though popular, elected, reelected and reelected, he was a “tyrant”?
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http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1095057.html
http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/nunan.htm
The US switched Iraqi trading in oil back to the dollar in June,
20042003. Iraq had switched to the Euro in 11/2000.LikeLike
First link tells us Iraq traded oil in Euros for three years (and the US did not explode). It was initially considered a bad deal, but they came out on the favorable rise in the Euro.
Second link tells us that the US gets a free lunch from oil priced in dollars. TANSTAFL.
It’s like commerce in one language: nice perk, but not the whole game. You still have to backstop your economy with real production.
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Hah! It is that our economy is not “backstopped” by real production that makes us resort to military dominance of other regions. It is the absence of real production that makes them use our military to enforce petrodollar hegemony.
Gotcha!
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Our country is still remarkably productive, if you would bother to look, instead of masturbating to your favorite political fantasy.
And how long has military might alone kept anyone wealthy? Wealth comes before military might.
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Circles go round and round, painted ponies up and down. We’re in depression-level unemployment, hidden behind new ways of measuring. Housing continues to slump. Since 1980 we’ve had boom and bust, each bust worse than the one before, the 2007-08 collapses comparable to 1929, and from which we have still not recovered. Most of our consumer products are made abroad. Our kids are knee-deep in inescapable debt (even death does not free them). Our most common cause of bankruptcy is medical expense.
You’ll find numbers to satisfy your notions. But again, it is only the petrodollar that keeps us afloat. Without it, the dollar shrinks, and we do a Soviet-style swan dive into the tank. That’s why we keep attacking peaceful countries.
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I agree with your report on our status, but I don’t see where the policies you champion would make things any better. The high executive function socialist countries you tout are in many ways in worse shape than us.
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Too general to deal with. Be specific and we’ll continue.
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We’re in depression-level unemployment, hidden behind new ways of measuring. Housing continues to slump. Since 1980 we’ve had boom and bust, each bust worse than the one before, the 2007-08 collapses comparable to 1929, and from which we have still not recovered. Most of our consumer products are made abroad. Our kids are knee-deep in inescapable debt (even death does not free them).
Which country is this? Spain? Greece? Italy? They are different than us in some ways, but in the main we have similar lifestyles and general social arrangements. Your tout their success in crafting a more cooperative social arrangement, yet there is a giant sucking sound, with growing debt outpacing the ability to service the thing; demographic change that is not encouraging; expectations outpacing deliverance.
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It is indeed a world-wide depression with origins in the American financial sector. European countries under the Euro are suffering most. I don’t know the answer, as the US wants the Euro to fail for sake of the dollar, and Greece, et al, cannot recover and repair their own systems until they get out from under the EU. Lose-win?
You got me here. No answers. But it was not the social programs in these countries that harmed them, even as EU insists that they be cut back as the remedy. It was the bankers.
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Yes, wonderful bankers: push for policies that explode, then go back for more. Must be nice.
But social programs aren’t free. A society can only support so much.
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“Social programs” are merely people providing utilities using economies of scale. It’s far more efficient for government to do some things than private sector, which has perverse incentives in most mutually beneficial activities. We can afford social programs easily. We can’t afford our current health care system. It’s eating us alive. Other countries solved this problem.
Bankers cannot help themselves any more than individual rioters can stop a riot. The problem is that Wall Street controls government, and were not punished for their crimes.
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We can afford social programs easily.
Pretty glib. Our eyes are bigger than our wallet.
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