How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
This is a story that is buzzing in my former home state of Montana. The newly elected Commissioner of Public Education is barely able to construct and utter a complete sentence. She might be, like so many Americans, functionally illiterate.
Read about Elsie Arntzen here.
This is a discussion initiated by Calgucus under the “Trees are Fake” post far down the page that I want to bring to the front page. It is easily apparent that the country is being stirred into a high state of agitation, to what end I do not know. Trump’s attitudes toward women are “trumped-up,” so to speak, the recorded conversation with Billy Bush (note the name) obviously staged. That was done with purpose. Although I certainly can be surprised either way, I tend to suspect Mathis is onto something when he suggests Trump is gay. Melania strikes me as classic beard, a beautiful model selected for distraction. That would make the Bush conversation calculated misdirection.
And now immigration and deportation nonsense, all fake. There might be a showcase event or two for the television news readers, but that is the extent of the genuine kerfuffle.
It is designed to get people agitated, to get them to go to rallies, which are organized from above, and not below. That much is obvious.
The question is, to what end?
Please join in the discussion.
Today is Inauguration Day. I have been having improper thoughts lately (I should go to confession), one of which is that such grand delusions as coronations are necessary. People need to imagine they elect their leaders. Why we were given a clown like Donald Trump, why we were forced to choose between him and an even less qualified person, is inside baseball stuff. I don’t know that answer.
This is off the beaten path, just something nice for us to enjoy.
A few years back my wife and I had a chance to see the Colorado Symphony perform Beethoven’s Ninth Choral Symphony, Ode to Joy. My wife has long loved classical music and in our twenty-one years together she has watched me move closer and closer to it, to her delight. That performance that day was so rich, so well performed, that when it was over the house exploded, genuine cheers and shouts of appreciation as I have never experienced before. No rock concert can come close.
We are going back to see it performed again in a couple of weeks. I am pumped. In the meantime I ran across the video that follows beneath the fold, “10000 singing Beethoven – Ode an die Freude_Ode to Joy.” I know nothing about it, but with over 8 million views, no doubt readers here are familiar and can fill me in.
Enjoy, and if you are short of time, cheat and jump ahead to minute six leading up to that part of the movement where the conductor jumps out of his suit. The same thing happened with the Colorado Symphony.
The theory that all trees are fake, an optical illusion put there by bears to hide their dens, is gaining wide traction these days on the Internet. Bears are actually very clever manipulators who run the planet from underground, with elaborate lighting and shadowing devices that create the illusion of trees within a thirty yard radius around us as we walk outdoors.
My kingdom for a good book to read in the morning. Any suggestions? Instead, I skimmed Facebook … it appears now to be the primary vehicle for spreading propaganda, once the role of TV news and tabloids, but I repeat myself. It is coming down fast and furious these days.
This morning’s lessons:
Meryl Streep is a blueblood descendant of British royalty, and was chosen to be famous for that reason. She’s not smart, not even a good actress. Her opinions don’t matter.
The 2002 failed coup d’état in Venezuela spawned a 35-page Wikipedia entry, and Hugo Chavez another 52 pages. As I came to understand that Fidel Castro was an American Intelligence agent, I began to realize there is a pattern here. Hugo Chavez, like Castro, is/was an Intelligence agent.
Chavez led a plot against the government of President Carlos Andrés Perez in 1992. It was an illegal coup, and could have easily led to his permanent imprisonment, execution or banishment. Instead he went on to become the President of Venezuela by popular election. That tells us all we need to know.
Continue reading “The 2002 Venezuelan manufactured coup d’état”
The 2002 failed coup d’état in Venezuela spawned a 35-page Wikipedia entry, and Hugo Chavez another 52 pages. As I came to understand that Fidel Castro was an American Intelligence agent, I began to realize there is a pattern here. Hugo Chavez, like Castro, is/was an Intelligence agent.
Chavez led a plot against the government of President Carlos Andrés Perez in 1992. It was an illegal coup, and could have easily led to his permanent imprisonment, execution or banishment. Instead he went on to become the President of Venezuela by popular election. That tells us all we need to know.
Continue reading “The Manufactured 2002 Venezuelan coup d’état”
I have been busy researching an event from 2002, the failed coup d’état in Venezuela. Then-president Hugo Chavez was taken hostage for a couple of days and then restored to power. The upshot is that Chavez was controlled opposition and that the event was manufactured for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. It instilled confidence in Chavez, its whole purpose. (Wikipedia clues us in in the first sentence with the number “47.” That is a spook marker telling us the event was fake. We are not supposed to know that.) [A better word than “fake” is “manufactured,” as thousands of honest people were sucked into it by agents provocateur.]
“Democracy was invented as a device for reconciling government with liberty. It is clear that government is necessary if anything worthy to be called civilization is to exist, but all history shows that any set of men entrusted with power over another set will abuse their power if they can do so with impunity. Democracy is intended to make men’s tenure of power temporary and dependent upon popular approval. Insofar as it achieves this it prevents the worst abuses of power. (Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1959)
“No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by group leaders in who it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.” (Edward Bernays (“Father of Modern Advertising”), Propaganda, 1928)
“The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” Prof. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966)
Bernays words, that no serious sociologist believes in the voice of the people, neatly sums up the general attitude of our leadership class regarding elections: they are a necessary evil, but in no way should be allowed to influence public policy (as Professor Quigley makes clear). Consequently over the centuries American elections have always been the object of fraud and foul play. The only time the voice of the people is allowed to make a real choice is when the same people in power control both candidates. Then the votes can be counted and a winner legitimately declared. Thus I have no doubt that Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968.
Piece of Mindful 