Democracy: The Pall Over Freedom That ...

Makes dancing, whoring, drinking, and hanging with riff-raff, less joyous and more de'classe'.

This very thing, democracy, we vend mercilessly to a mostly reluctant world was used by the Founding Fathers to 'calm' the free spirit in the 'lesser' classes after the Revolution.

So why is that a bad thing? Maybe there was way too much of that stuff happening at one time but we're past all that! So what's the point?

The point is how we got to be the way we are now and could we have been a different, happier, freer people if we had not been fobbed-off into a fantasy world of self-improvement and civic discipline called democracy.

The common folk were anathema to the new masters, the Founders; their life styles held in low esteem. There were few exceptions among the Fathers to this class bias and in some cases they exhibited downright loathing. For example:

Alexander Hamilton found Americans "vicious" and "vile".

Samuel Adams, "a torrent of vice".

John Adams: "Indeed, there is one enemy who is more formidable than famine, pestilence and the sword". His comment on the fitness of the average American. "I mean the corruptness which is prevalent in so many American hearts, a depravity that is more inconsistent with our republican governments than light is with darkness".

The rulers feared sex slightly more than drink as a distraction from their vision of docile, productive, well-behaved subjects. This from the staunchest friend of the common people amongst the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, on why the common man should be discouraged from visiting Europe: where,'' he is led by the strongest of all human passions, into a spirit for female intrigue,...or a passion for whores..."

It would appear then, the Founders actually feared and despised the concept of democracy but used it as a device to subtly control the masses, or rather to encourage them to self control, sans a large degree of personal freedom. Of course, they themselves would have no part of it... this democracy business. Fit only for the rabble, you see.

After the Revolution and during nation-building every barrier to the voting franchise they could devise was erected to exclude the people. Gender, males only; Race, white males only; Property ownership; all were requirements for the privilege of the ballot. John Jay infamously quipped,"Those who own the country ought to govern it." Thus, every opportunity to approach or influence the seat of power was kept from the common people.

This elitist spirit prevails even today in the bizarre Electoral College barrier between us and our direct vote for the Chief Executive.

Just a few years after the end of a bloody war waged partially in response to onerous taxation by the English Crown, the new elites resorted to the same tactic. A tax was levied on the production of alcohol to make it harder for the masses to obtain it cheaply, and thus, discourage drinking. The Patriots had reacted to the Crown levies with rebellion as did the farmers who made the whiskey. The result: more bloodshed, as the militia was called to force the taxation on the new (small 'p') patriots.

For a definitive, in depth, study of the history of the choice we've been offered between personal freedom or democracy, see, A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell. Professor Russell has gone past the bounds hagiographers seldom dare cross in examining the covert motives of the Founders and what we may have lost as a result.

I Once Knew a Man Who Knew a Man...

"I once new a man whose father was born when Jefferson was president of the United States."

This interesting, if somewhat prosaic statement, actually holds a wealth of historical promise. In fact, the man I knew, c. 1940, was my great-grandfather at about age 90. His father was born in 1803 during Thomas Jefferson's first term. Looking at the past in this manner demonstrates that three individual lifetimes link someone living in 2011 to almost the entire time span of our Republic.

I consider this simple chronological approach to history as using what might be regarded as giant steps through the wilderness of days keeping the past from us. Consider:

That 1803 man might have known a woman who also had known an elderly grand-parent and that person's parent was born when Shakespeare was writing King Lear and MacBeth in 1605 . Thus the addition of only three more human existences gets us back to the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era. So now we have just six people and the continuity covers almost five hundred years of Western history.

Add three more long lived ancestors; it's 1415 and the English forces are victorious over the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

Just three more and, viola!...it's 1215 and Magna Carta!

In summary:
Three human lives starting with the author's own in 2011 covers US history back to the founding fathers.

Six lives takes us to Shakespeare.

Nine to Agincourt.

and twelve lifetimes...the Magna Carta. The beginning of much we hold dear in the history of the West.

I've only touched upon our own Western History. Scholars and history buffs everywhere might use the same technique to retreive their own ages from what appears as a dauntingly remote and arcane past.

The Winner, Still #1,is...Wow! Check Out #10,OMG

As most of us know or are not terribly surprised to learn, Christianity is number 1 in religious adherence worldwide and, although somewhat reluctantly these days, many do acknowledge Islam to be #2. So how come next to nobody knows what number 3 is? See chart for the big surprise and then ask yourself how 1.1 billion people can be ignored or denied equal standing when referencing religious adherence.

Thanks to Adherence.com for doing the accounting while keeping in mind all numbers are approximate. If the ranking of the Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist folks at #3 is a surprise; what rounds out the big ten at #10, is astounding. Slightly ahead of Spiritism and Judaism, is, what on Earth!, Juche, official religion on North Korea; 19 million admirers and growing; so who knew?

Charts from Adherence.com

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million


10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha'i: 7 million


14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

Tribute to a Gutsy Guy: Julian Assange

{Re-posted as a reminder the Web is hosted by Corporate Spiders eager to not displease bureaucrats, politicos or the military. The illusion of freedom and privacy is chimerical. A fatwa has been issued on the head of Julian Assange, dead or alive.}

Guardian photo

firetown
Internet Shut Down as Egypt Braces for Huge Protests http://nblo.gs/dzqLJ

firetown
Search Warrants Executed in the United States as Part of Ongoing Cyber Investigation http://nblo.gs/dzqLK

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The Internet / The SoapBox
We communicate via the web at the sufferance of the system. When we are no threat, perceived or actual, we are allowed to continue our harmless pursuit. The instant this usage is perceived as a threat to the elite; it ends. So keep on blogging; keep on ranting and raving, keep uttering anything that comes to mind, you are harmless by definition.

The much touted use of the net as a force majestueuse in the recent Presidential contest was pure chimera. If it really threatened to be anywhere near decisive, it would have ceased to be. Make no mistake, a culture that can fight 2 1/2 wars without provocation and with borrowed money, can pull the plug on all we hold sacred in a thrice if sufficiently challenged.

Societies love to be admired as generous and tolerant if the cost is small. The web today is no more than a soapbox was in Hyde Park, or Washington Square in the past. A leather lunged orator could bray to the crowd or to the wind as long as able but only as allowed by elites. Stray for an instant from the permissible and a minion of the law would call you down. And perhaps kick apart the soapbox for good measure. See Google v. China for splintered soapboxes.

So what is different today? Have people become nicer, friendlier, less murderous with the advent of the web? Not noticeably so, maybe a little worse. What is the corpse count by violent death in the couple of decades since Al G. or somebody set all those internet electrons in motion?

If you seek independence anywhere in web-land remember the Web is all Corporate and Corporate is all Government; ad nauseam. Wikipedia

Posted by Robert Magill at 11:25 AM

The View From Inside Juggernaut/ or

Watching Passively as Americanism Crushes the Infidel.

It matters scarcely a whit how one views our America these days, as we are now mere ballast inside a beast; the War Forever juggernaut. Each of us a solitary cell connected to other bits of the larger organism. If our particular cell has an eye...still, we cannot see clearly. A brain...we cannot think clearly. A heart...well, you know. Our dim view of reality is limited to opaqueness in the walls of the beast. Only if our little cell is attached to where the ego grows fat do we still, in roaring hubris, pretend to be of consequence..

Rest assured, it is pretense. Michael Vlahos of the United States Naval War College estimates the total defense community now approaches 30 million. If you are not part of the warrior class, its constituents and minions, riding on the juggernaut, nothing you say or do really counts for much. You ride inside as ballast to weight the beast and add to its power to trample. If you are part of that warrior class, but you have not "seen the elephant" as the boys said during the civil war (been in recent combat, that is) you have little voice and don't get to steer. Since Richard Nixon signed away Selective Service in favor of a standing army and thus quelling the Viet Nam war resistance movement, power and treasure has flowed nonstop to the military.

Now it is almost total. If the treasury has one dollar left or enough ink to print one, it is spoken for: to buy things that go boom. Not for food, nor clothing, not for shelter...only to defend the homeland against...whatever, whomever, wherever. Somebody will think of something that threatens us. They're good at that. The rest of us, the "shoppers", as we are dismissed in military circles, are out of the loop. Others know what is best for us. Recent executive power has been broadened to include the option of killing anyone who could be a threat to the implementation of this power... anyone. They will decide who is the threat.

Alas, our pious Americanism has bound us to the canon so completely we are unable to save ourselves from a War Forever machine which now qualifies as a dictatorship. There is no escape. The possibility of our defection through expatriation has been nullified with a pen stoke. The entire world is seen by the powers as potentially hostile and your presence anywhere abroad could be construed as hostile to the machine. A machine that always craves kinetic release frowns on any deviation from the credo. You are with us or, de facto, against us: ergo; enemy.

{juggernaut is a term used in the English language to describe a literal or metaphorical force regarded as unstoppable. It is often applied to a large machine or collectively to a team or group of people working together, or a growing political movement led by a charismatic leader, and often bears association with crushing or being physically destructive.}
Wikipedia

Memories of Ole' King Koal

Trenton Chamber of Commerce Photo

Prior to and during WW II in Trenton, NJ, where I grew up, (State capitol, 100-150 thousand people), everybody burned coal. Once a month or thereabouts, the truck would pull up, and down a chute tumble several tons of black, shiny, anthracite coal. It even had a brand name, "Blue Coal", and sponsored a favorite radio drama,"The Shadow", (The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, the Shadow knows, heh, heh, heh).

Houses, factories, railroads, the local utility Public Service GAS & Electric, (accent on the gas part, a by- product of coal burning), before the Big Inch pipeline connected the northeast to the Texas natural gas fields and took the business away, they all burned coal. Some hard coal, some soft coal but lots and lots of it.

Now, it's true that on certain days in the winter, when conditions were just right, a stinky pall settled over the area. Like the smog in L. A., perhaps. What didn't add to the mix was any great amount of auto exhaust. No cars to speak of then. Depression on, remember? And later, wartime restrictions on passenger cars.

In my working class street, all of the men were employed at blue collar or white collar jobs. All, with the exception of my family and one or two others, did so without cars. People; women, kids and working men, walked, or rode the bus! Every day, for every purpose.

TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES; reads the sign on the bridge over the Delaware river, leading to neighboring Pennsylvania. The sign is still there they tell me, but the world no longer takes since Trenton no longer makes. The jobs have vanished. Nada, all gone. EXCEPT, government jobs. State capital, remember?

All the decent paying work in factories, foundries, needle trades, or the railroad no longer exist. You work for the government, go on the dole, or eke out a two job existence.. Not much else remains that would support a family of working class people.
How did this terrible thing happen, we all ask?

Well.

At the end of WW ll, Washington was in a panic. The boys were coming home. What'll we do with them? There's no work except war work, and the girls, and the others are doing that. Oh my! Depression again. Can't have that.

Got it. Send the boys to school, anyway the ones who can read and write and... get the gals back in the kitchen. But how? They've all gotten so...independent these days. Put them in brand new houses at next to nothing down. Even less for vets. But where? Suburbs of course, nothing out there but corn fields. Get them to leave the city and drive back and forth to work and then, of course! ...sell them new cars! Eureka! But people love the city, grew up there, friends and families are there, how will we do that? They don't want to leave.

No problem. Scare 'em out! Tell them during the war while you were away fighting for the country, they moved in and took all the jobs and you know what that means.
No, ...what?

Your sister!

Okay, I'm ready to go. But how do I get back to my job in the city? The roads out there are all tiny country lanes and are jammed up all the time.

No problem! Since the commies are going to bomb us any day now we have planned smooth and wide super roads all over the place to move our strictly defensive guided missile launchers from place to place quickly. You can use these great new highways, free!.

Best of all, your new house on its own private grass patch will be state of the builders' art. Latest in all the new kitchen appliances and best, best of all, your furnace will run on natural gas or will burn oil. No more shoveling that messy coal and putting the ashes out on the curb. Welcome to the bold new world of Levittown! And in no time we'll move your job into another corn field so you won't have to go to the city at all.

And it worked. For awhile. While we, the USA, still had all the money and made and sold all our good stuff to the rest of the world. If you weren't able to buy our stuff and you were among the losers of WW II, well we'll give you the money to rebuild, then you could buy all our stuff. However, if you were our friend during the war but you were godless and didn't play our game, well, tough, nothing for you.

And it worked. For awhile. But then our new friends learned how we made our stuff and they made it cheaper, and often better. Well, that won't do. Too many cheap towels and sweaters on the market from our old enemies, oops new friends, okay close up the knitting mills in the old industrial North and ship the work down to the New South. Cheaper land, big tax dodges, lower wages. Great, that's done.

And it worked. For awhile. But soon the folks in Dixie wanted more. Fuggettaboutit! Lots of peons looking for jobs. Let's move further south.

And it worked. For awhile. They, those ingrates, wanted more. Let's move West, really far west. The good commies are really our friends now and they work for rice and noodles. Let's go West to the Far East!

And it worked. For awhile. Now, bigger ingrates, and they want it all! Instead of doing what we do and buying everything in sight, they save their money! Isn't that cheating?

In the beginning everything was peachy. They made stuff and made it cheaply and pretty good, too. The ships sped across the seas on tons of really cheap oil, and all was well. But things started to change a bit. Running all those big ships made sense when fuel was a giveaway but it got more expensive. Much more.
And people at home were going in hock to pay for all the new stuff because they hadn't saved enough to pay for it.

No problem! In the new world they won't need money. That's old style. All they need is lots of cheap credit and a computer to shop in the virtual world we have created for them. But ...that will require plenty of smart people who work cheap to take orders for the stuff, and we don't have enough. No problem. People in India speak English, sort of, work for a pittance so they get the job. And diction lessons as well.

And it worked. For awhile. In no time all, this coming and going became just going. A one way street of money...ours. So what! Our credit is AAA, well...AA anyway. What's the big fuss? We're good customers. So charge it! I'll have another hamburger and I will pay you Tuesday! Oops that's not right. That's what Wimpy said in the comic strip. Not what our Masters of the Universe would ever say. But maybe that's how it sounded to those too-clever-by-far commies, 'er, our good trading partners. Just because they saved their money, (the chumps), they are beginning to make noises saying we are not paying them enough interest on the money they lend us to buy all their stuff because our wonderful, spotless currency has gotten a tad faded. Hey, it was our money to begin with. And so what? More hamburgers please, I will pay you Tuesday...maybe.

Now, talk about gall, they say they will give us more money but in exchange they want our holy institutions, the very icons that separate us from the rest of the worlds' unwashed, our glorious cathedrals of commerce and culture, our banks. What insolence! What's with those people?

Okay spoil-sports, you can have the banks. They're empty. Ha Ha!

Now with the oil looking to become more expensive than say...water, everybody's getting worried. What to do? Can't burn coal. Too messy. Ah, we'll build more nukes! What... don't you remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, all that waste we can't take care of, half-lives out to forever?

Not to worry. Mankind is very clever and somebody will think of something. When the first nuclear plant was going up in India, they didn't even have a crane to hoist the containment vessel up into place. Well, they built a great big bamboo scaffolding and a bunch of guys with ropes dragged it up. See!
Somebody always thinks of something.

Remember, we don't need no stinking coal to boil our water when we got ...nucular!

"Peace! Bah. There's no money in it." ...Uncle Sam

"My job doesn't make me a war monger, does it?"... Joe Everybody

The stacatto series of Money Panics of the nineteen thirties AKA, the Great Depression, which sounds a bit classier than Panic! Panic! Panic!, ended December 7, 1941 by Japanese airmen shouting Tora!Tora!Tora!, and, presto, War began decades of prosperity for us all.

We have done other things in the ensuing decades to make money, but we always fall back on old reliable Casus Belli . Make some money. Have a war. Make some more. Have another war. It's what we do because it works.

We sold some cars; used to sell a lot more until those other former war-mongers oops, Japan and Germany got into the act and ruined it. We made lots of airplanes, mostly war planes of course. Plus big machines and little machines of all kinds. Well, we actually gave that up years ago. Sent that work to the farm team, AKA the rest of the world, to manufacture, along with the needle trade, electronics, computers, wow! damn near everything when you think about it.

Not the ordnance, oh no, we still make most all of the stuff that goes boom. Let the farm-team buy that stuff from us, thank you very much. That's about all we have to sell these days, anyway.

There is one problem, however. All our war stuff and the boom-boom action that accompanies it, costs money. Runs at a loss. So we finally have had an old fashioned Money Panic! lately. Don't anybody call it that, though. Call it recession (will that be one dip or two, like ice cream) or retrenchment, 'depression lite', anything but Money Panic! But then, why-oh-why won't the banks lend out money anymore? Oh, so that's what happens when bankers hit the Panic button.

Yeah,yeah, but it's the fat-cats who are the war profiteers, not us. Well, the billionaires are not on the production line turning out fighters jets, or grenades or drone consoles, etc, etc. Somebody else is making a buck from the war machine, no es verdad? "Hey Man, only doing my job, man.", a million voices ring out, kinda miffed.

Our culture is as homely and normal seeming as apple pie and mother's milk to us, yet the US is the biggest war profiteer since the old Romans and we don't even realize it anymore. Just something we do (have always done?), in the lifetime of most of us, Yes. The sheer genius of the whole deal is ...we do it now with borrowed money. How's that for hubris! And delusion.