Have you ever experienced a “Duh!” Moment where you slap your forehead upon seeing something painfully obvious? I had such a moment last evening.

Go back to the year 2000, and the presidential election. Normally, the parties just take turns. The person holding the office is a ribbon cutter, not much more. Some, like Clinton and Obama, are very good at it, having good memories and stage presence being very good at making speeches. They seem presidential, and that is the only real job requirement.

Those two were groomed for the office. The fact that each changed their names at a young age is a hint that they were being prepared for big things ahead. (Oddly, Gerald Ford changed his name at a young age too.) They were on the calendar, so to speak, scheduled to burst on the scene, as if spontaneous.

George Herbert Walker Bush is a powerful man, and apparently a talented man as well. He must be a very efficient administrator, a “gets the job done” kind of guy. He served as president unofficially for eight years, and officially for four. He was then moved aside by Ross Perot to make way for Clinton. But he never lost touch, never really left the realm of power, or so it appears.

His son, George W. Bush was a clown, a man who lacked gravitas, abhorred study and had to be puffed up by PR staff to be electable. In a real world if these men, the candidates, were more than images in a TV screen, he could not have been elected constable of Podunk county. But he was chosen, and more than chosen, was forced on us. When it became apparent that Al Gore was going to win in 2000, the Supreme Court stepped in and just outright handed the office to Bush. It mattered a whole lot to some very powerful people that Bush, and not Gore, hold that fake office.

Why? Here is my “duh!” moment. It was not about electing W, but rather returning HW to power. 9/11 was on the calendar, and they wanted a man with a proven track record to manage the Oval Office end of it. The government was only a small part of the events of that day, but it required someone with brains and administrative skill to make sure that end of the operation held together. No screw ups!

George Herbert Walker Bush may be one if the most important men ever to crawl about in the alleys of power in this country. He was there for the Bay of Pigs, for JFK’s departure, for Watergate, Iran Contra,  Reagan’s departure, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq attacks. He ran the CIA while Ford was president. He was de facto president from ’80 to 88, and then for real for four years after that. And now I realize that he was there for 9/11 too.

He’s an old man now, soon to depart, and I won’t shed a tear. But I am in awe of his accomplishments. He’s been like a ghostly presence in all of the important [public] events in this country for the last fifty years or more.

[This is a rework of an earlier post, with a little more justification behind my contention that most of our leaders are false leaders, as real leaders are a pain in the ass.]
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Two recurring themes on this blog are the nature of power, and false leadership, or “controlled opposition.” If one wants to understand the landscape around us, a firm grasp of both are critical.

Power is the ability to cause another person to submit to your will. When a majority is governed by a minority, as we are, issues of power become critical, as the masses have to be persuaded that the minority interests are actually the “national interest.”

There are many means available, among them logical persuasion, subversion, bribery and brute force. The least effective means of bending others to our will are persuasion and brute force. For this reason, we are constantly bombarded with clever lies, manipulative advertising and staged events, all designed to influence and undermine our thinking.

Among the most effective devices in controlling our thoughts and actions is the false leader. Most often, this is a person of low character who has been bribed to behave and speak in a certain manner. False leaders are easy to spot. They usually receive large publicity, and pay no price for anti-authoritarian behavior.

I will give but a few examples, and then get on with my day:

• Jane Fonda. This woman came to symbolize the burgeoning antiwar movement of the late sixties. Her mission was to discredit it. Cameras followed her everywhere, including a trip to North Vietnam where she was photographed in a gun turret pretend-firing at American bombers. It was iconic. Mission accomplished. Were she a true dissident she would have paid a hefty price for her activity, consorting with the enemy, but she went on to a lucrative movie career, among other activities.
• John Kerry. This man stood before cameras and tossed his war medals over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol. It was a staged event – remember, cameras were there, meaning they had advance notice. Later, he would be asked to testify before congress, be elected senator, marry an heiress, run for president, and become Secretary of State. That sort of good fortune does not happen to a real leaders. True dissidents are hounded, terrorized, jailed, beaten, tortured, but never asked to run for high office, and almost never marry into the oligarchy.
• Julian Assange. Supposedly holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange generated the “leaks” that stoked the flames of color revolutions, starting in Tunisia. The revolutions, the so-called “Arab Spring,” while not staged, were fomented by agents provocateur, and done to cause regime change in targeted countries. Assange, a towhead, merely needs darken his hair to wander freely about, which he surely does, only occasionally appearing at the embassy for a photo op. All of the highly publicized stories of his troubles in Sweden have been invented to enhance his image as a dissident.

This is fun, an easy subject for writing with a wide array of candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Fidel Castro, and the most prominent of all, Barack Obama. They arise for various reasons to achieve various ends – to mislead and undermine popular movements, to ensure that popular dissent is contained, or just to distract us while real business goes on in secret. It is all part of “full spectrum dominance,” where no matter where we turn for effective leadership, we come face-to-face with the enemy.

I’ll offer some more over time, maybe in the coming days, and hope that readers can contribute as well.

By the way, I get accused of cynicism now and then, and do not buy it. I am not at all down on people, but life choices and circumstances dictate that some people behave badly. Those who must perform acts of deceit in public (business people, advertisers and politicians) do not deserve respect, and those who are paid to honor them (journalists and some bloggers) as well are not worthy of respect. And those are the people I write about mostly, along with spooks. They are our underclasses, our wretched waste, our pointless people.

But this moment I am about to share is more like the real life I live, my little life, and after I do so you’ll see that it is not something important to write about. It is like we all live our lives in close quarters with one another. Most people are nice and friendly and well-intentioned. Most people are not politicians, business people, advertisers, journalists, bloggers or spooks.

We have a long driveway at our house, and plowing is a major task, and we get a lot of snow. Along about March, especially after just returning from Costa Rica, snow was not welcome, but we got seven inches. I am plowing the driveway, not at all enthused, ready for spring. A neighbor is out walking her three dogs, and one of them, a bigger old lab mix, sees me and bolts from her towards me. I instantly recognize a friendly dog, and show no fear, and as he runs up to me I smile. He comes up behind me and I pet him and he nuzzles my leg. He is used to good attention. I smile at the lady, and she is just beaming ear to ear.

When a dog approaches a stranger in that manner, it often ends differently. But this dog is a nice dog, meaning it has a nice owner, and everyone enjoyed the moment. It was a little special.

That’s more like I live, like everyone lives. We are all mostly good and nice. But our leadership dance to a different drum. They are not nice, good, or well-intentioned.

Ergo what is called cynicism. I was called a cynic on Facebook for suggesting the Steve Bullock “moment” was faked (that’s where I saw the photo). But I have to ask, if you are so trusting of politicians, who are paid to deceive us, what is the opposite of a cynic? A damned fool?

It looks like the US wants to use the Brussels incident to invade Syria. Get ready for another bloodbath. And does that not make one suspicious that the US was behind the Brussels incident? (Cui bono?) And if so, would not a normal and intelligent person suspect the incident might be faked? Again?

I was looking over available movies yesterday, thinking one might be worth a trip down the hill. Meh. It all seems like crap. Maybe it is the fact of aging and maturing, but enjoyment of a movie requires willing suspension of disbelief. It is harder to do at age 65 than even at age 60. At age 20 I bought into all nonsense. Now I can embrace hardly any. A really good movie, like No Country for Old Men, is so rare as to be worth an automatic academy award, hands down.

Continue reading “A highly effective system of oppression” →

We took a tour of San Jose yesterday – after seeing Rome, Florence, Prague, Barcelona, not much measures up. But we did get a sense of the place. The building above is a National Museum, very modest in terms of grandeur, as are the presidential home and congressional buildings. The art museums were sparsely furnished. We spent a long time underground looking at Columbian artifacts, not my thing, but I did note that sun worship was prevalent, as in Europe, and that certain images, such as a sun eagle, were a match for the Egyptian God Horus.

One of our tour companions wants to move here, is ready for a life change, and is finding it difficult, many hoops. Despite having universal health care here, people from other countries have to buy in, so she would end up paying $700 a month, cheap by American standards. Local authorities want her to invest, but she would not be able to work here. In addition, she needs to put $60,000 in the bank and withdraw $2,500 a month to live on, and do that regularly while renewing her visa while avoiding the tag “perpetual tourist.” All very difficult.

Costa Rica has no army, has not since 1949. People wonder why they have never been invaded in that time, and the answer is seen all around in MacDonalds, Taco Bell, KFC and other American companies. They have. But they have not resisted American corporate power, and so the US military has had no need to take off the gloves. If you live like a serf, you can live in peace. Got that Nicaragua? Venezuela? None of this going your own way nonsense.

There is no poverty in the extreme, no beggars, and no extreme wealth either. Faces on the streets are mostly serious, as if needing to be somewhere quickly. Very few smiles, and those mostly in younger people. It is a large city, somewhat dirty, with bars over windows and razor wire everywhere. It is not unlike Lima, but far far more inviting and healthy than Dehli or Kathmandu, based on our brief experiences.

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

The above words, from the song For What It’s Worth, purportedly written by Stephen Stills, were taken by most to be a war protest song. In reality, it was about the Sunset Strip riots, and the object of protest was closure of a night club. That kind of confusion is not unusual, as Stills, from a military family, was never one to object to war. He even bragged to others that he was in Special Forces in Vietnam.

The words came to mind as I reviewed the events surrounding the passage of Antonin Scalia.

Continue reading “Weird scenes in Cibolo Creek Ranch” →