Transformation

A few of us are fortunate to have transformational experiences. I have described my own as being the result of luck. Indeed happenstance had quite a bit to do with it. At the tender age of 36 I exited the formal workaday job environment and began laboring on my own account and on my own schedule. The formula for an independent CPA was to work even harder, explore leads, find new clients, market, market, market. Since I didn’t really like the work I was doing and had enough income to survive, I didn’t do any of that. On any given day when work was done, I was off running, working on the house, spending time with the kids and reading. I behaved in this manner even as I knew that I was supposed to be working that business, marketing, marketing, marketing.

All to no end, I must add. I hadn’t been much of a reader in my formal working days, at best managing a Stephen King novel or whatever was popular, even James Dobson and his barbaric ideas about child rearing. (My oldest daughter set me straight on that – a shoulder pinch is cruel and painful.) With more time on my hands, I began to scour the fiction stacks at the library, and came across a few authors I remember with fondly to this day, among them Ludlum and Lawrence Sanders. (Modern-day “Robert Ludlum” works are shit, by the way. Ignore anything written after 2001.)

There was nothing special going on with me, but exposure to the written word was important. 1988 was the 25th anniversary of JFK’s death, and Jim Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins, came out, and I sent away for a copy. Right in the introduction Garrison said that the assassination had been carried out by right-wing patriots. I laughed at that assertion, as I was a right-wing patriot. But it did set me off on a journey to understand the assassination and its implications, and perpetrators. That goes on to this day.

The key to transformation was not the path I was on or what I eventually learned and continue to explore. It was mere exposure. Over time I absorbed a large trove of non-fiction, some of it moving, but most, in retrospect, unimportant. Most of it was seeds falling on the ground, only a few coming to germination. My interests kept broadening. By the time of the 1991 Gulf War I was no longer a right-wing patriot. But the other side of that coin, the left-wing ideologue, was as much a dead end. These things are learned in order, and not randomly. I could not have seen the futility of the American left without first knowing the stupidity of the right.

The process now has gone on for a quarter century, and though I feel closer to some important truths now than ever, another transformation could easily set everything on end. What if the men who killed Kennedy were right? What if he was being played by the Soviets and leading the US into a dangerous détente? What if that is the ugly truth? My idealistic self does not want to travel that route, but it’s there and cannot be ignored.

My current state of mind is described as “conspiratorial,” as if I have reduced the world to the machinations of powerful groups or a few wealthy families. That mindset is out there, and is played beautifully by intelligence ops like Alex Jones. The world is very big, far more so than our minds can comprehend. So we tend to reduce it to bite-size morsels, and “Rothschilds” and “Illuminati” and “Jews” are such tasty bites. There is indeed a social order that comes about due to the natural fallout of unfocused collective pressure by pockets of concentrated wealth. It is not managed, and is to a large degree random.

It is important to understand, for instance, that the 2008 banking crisis was such a fallout, unplanned and unexpected. We can see only in retrospect how it came about, and I’ve only encountered one person who actually described it contemporaneously – Australian economist Steve Keen. But he did not reduce it to a few bad guys or a secret society, but rather to the collective stupidity of economists who travel the path of least resistance, guiding public policy in a manner that satisfies financial power centers. There is a reason why economists are allowed to prosper even as they are wrong all the time. Say that one of them advocates strict regulations and oversight … being right in this manner does not please wealth.

There are too many within the “financial power centers” to do any meeting and planning. Even Bohemian Grove won’t hold them all. It is a collective stupidity borne of high intelligence. People who now decry “banksters” and “credit default swaps” are in no better company than the people who blamed Morton-Thiokol for the first shuttle disaster. If we had that kind of wisdom looking forward instead of backward, we’d never have any disasters, crises or downturns.

Natural fallout of unfocused collective pressure by pockets of concentrated wealth does indeed explain most of our world. It is perfectly rational to set aside big conspiracy theories about bankers and masons. But it does not explain all of what goes on. “Natural fallout” does not explain Kennedy murders or 9/11. That kind of evil is a result of having the wrong people in power. These people, sociopaths and manipulators, were let into the pantry by Harry Truman in 1947 when the National Security Act passed forming the CIA and NSA, changing “war” to “defense.” They were given carte-blanche to engage in secret missions to destroy political movements, assassinate leaders, sponsor coups d’état, disseminate propaganda, manage news and manipulate minds.

All overseas, of course. Not at home. As if it could be contained!

We needed these people to help us win WWII. 1947 was the time to put them out to pasture, quarantine them, marginalize them, give them a statue or two and let them fade away. Instead, HST gave them the combination to the safe. He later realized his mistake, too late. They are now so well entrenched in government, having neutralized the executive branch in 1963, that they will only be dislodged by the natural fallout of focused collective pressure by pockets of intelligent activism. It will take invasive surgery to remove the cancer, and it cannot be planned in advance since we do not know what we will find when the patient is cut open.

It’s going on as we speak, with machinations abroad coming to fruition in a showdown among superpowers in the Middle East. As our leaders attempt to surround our enemies for checkmate, we are seeing the phenomenon of self-encirclement. The whole world is on alert due to the machinations of our leaders and planners. We are ripe for another war.

I do not know the future anymore than the participants. I only hope that leaders, real leaders with consciences and broad vision, emerge. I want to think that Putin is such a man, but that’s really reductionist, isn’t it? And anyway, if he is such, won’t he just be assassinated?