Maybe I am at a crossroads or in a lull. All these years of reading have left me empty. This country, full of good but very dumbed down people, is run by a fascist shadow government. My questions now are merely how and when it came about. Bigger yet, is it the normal state of affairs throughout history? I suspect so.
Not to go all Godwin on the matter, but the Nazis came to power by deft criminal maneuvering. The primary tool at their disposal was murder. Once an important person is killed, and the crime goes down uninvestigated and unpunished, a cloud of intimidation sets in. All throughout the legitimate power centers there evolves unvoiced but well-understood fear. Smart and brave people who confront the hidden power source are murdered, threatened, scandalized … eventually smart and brave people exit the system, and we are left with thugs, cowards, sociopaths, and cynical manipulators. (Which reminds me, the 2016 election will be a “choice” … Clinton v Bush.)
If fascism is done right, the shell of representative government is left in place so that people imagine nothing has changed. Indeed, we still have our elections, cops on the beat, people writing newspaper stories and arguing and reading and talking to us on TV and radio. But it is all a shell. There has been a body snatch. Everything we see and hear is a lie.
Curious and bright people are labeled “conspiracy theorists.” People have learned to be indifferent and incurious about the important events of our times. They are even smug about it, thinking themselves wise to be so. From a distance their attitudes become indistinguishable from stupidity.
Media is vapid. Journalists are innately aware of where power lay, and avoid messing with it. They cleverly changed the definition of journalism to “objectivity” and “get a quote from both sides.” They do not think (which causes “bias”). The most highly honored of the profession are the laziest, least inquisitive, and least ethically challenged. Those who trip the wire are quietly demoted, fired, assigned to cover trivia, or murdered. Sometimes, as with Michael Hastings, the murder is noisy, serving as warning. (Note how everyone tippy-toes around that subject. Fear is at work.)
For decades now I have started my day in my chair, reading this or that book, trying to piece all of this together. I think I have come to a point now where I understand much of the big picture. Most of my time lately is spent in the past reading about people who haven’t yet come to grips with the true nature of our country. I am looking over their shoulders.
Back in 2000 we were treated to a ‘big reveal’ of sorts, as the election was reduced to a contest in Dade County, Florida. None of us knew how corrupt the Florida voting system was. The outcome did not matter much, as neither Bush nor Gore were worth spit. But we got a look inside a vote-counting system that had already been corrupted.
At that time I remember that a TV reporter mentioned that there had been a book written on American elections, Votescam, that claimed that the entire election system was rigged, Florida to Alaska. The book, we were told, was of course nonsense and was not taken seriously by serious people.
That stuck in my mind. Fifteen years later I stumbled on that book. It is about two young men, Ken and Jim Collier, brave and resourceful, who stumbled on election fraud in Dade County, Florida, in 1970, and decide to challenge the power system (including a sinister person with a bright future, Janet Reno). By the time they launched a lawsuit against the Republican Party in 1984, one-third of our votes were being counted by black-box computers, and accountability had been lost.
The book was written by the Collier boys, and then updated posthumously by Victoria Collier, a daughter-niece. Both Ken and Jim died at young ages in the 90s.
It is frustrating, as I know they will fight and lose. I am crawling through this book even as it is written in entertaining format. I am seeing through Jim and Ken’s eyes, and they are slowly learning that there has been a body snatch. Everyone they deal with is either corrupt or intimidated. They are flailing.
I need a change of direction. It is 2015 now, and ALL of our votes are counted by computers, no voting system is reliable. Journalism is a huge joke. Cops are criminals, and lawyers too of course. Politicians are cynical narcissists and charlatans. Hidden power is still (barely) hidden. Our coming presidential election will be between a Clinton and a Bush, two people who in an accountable system would be behind bars. We will laugh and shout about it.
I have a book here, The Definitive Book of Body Langauge, and another, A Devil’s Chaplain, a series of essays by Richard Dawkins. They sit unread. I want to get off this diet of intrigue, as the ship of legitimate government sailed on 11/22/63 (or 7/26/47). Instead I go off on another journey into darkness.
At this point I want to know the fate of Jim and Ken Collier … how did they die? It is somewhat mysterious … just that they “died young.” I hope to learn of congenital problems that took them early. I hope it is not the scourge of accidents, suicides and cancers that so often afflict people who trifle with power.
I keep coming across the aftermath of 11/22/63, and yes, the computerization of the vote counting system is part of that aftermath. The executive was overthrown by the military-industrial-complex, and a natural fallout was that event would not be allowed to be undone by mere votes. Our last real choice was 1960, and the last real threat of a genuine choice … 1968. In Votescam we learn that as early as 1970, a mere seven years after the event, CIA, FBI, the “two” parties and the media are collaborating to neutralize elections.
As I said to my friend George last year when I learned he was going to die of cancer, “there is always baseball.” We both like the game. It is passive, entertaining – both meaningless and important at once. If only I could put my head in that box and leave it there.
In the Empire of Lies, it does no good to know things.
Piece of Mindful 