Hilary's Emails

[don]

Re: Hilary's Emails

After three decades years of witnessing the worst sort of pandering, lies and empty promises from Democrats and Republicans, it astounds me that there are still those among us who actually believe voting does anything but encourage the bastards.

Excepting VT's act of faith that the next president will tame FIRE, does anyone else have an expectation that as wholly-owned FIRE/War Party subsidiaries any of the candidates will do a thing to upset their masters and the status quo?

I keep on waiting for folks to come to the realization that they are being played for fools, but it never seems to come.

+1 Woody.

This farce is being played out in the warm embrace of the Surveillance State, which has everyone's emails forever. And the possible 'solutions' march on . . . .

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I've said before it will not come from either existing party. It's a long shot, but a third party could win. While not likely in 2016, it is in 2020.

The problem with waiting until 2020 is that the damage that EJ is looking for between 2018 and 2020 may render a change too late to save the economy. As it it it will be a struggle even with an independent victory.

We have to get the money out of politics, and have federally funded elections. That would make the election of a third party much easier.

Let's give the public a real solution to vote for.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

After three decades years of witnessing the worst sort of pandering, lies and empty promises from Democrats and Republicans...

I keep on waiting for folks to come to the realization that they are being played for fools, but it never seems to come.

Couldn't agree with you more, Woodsman. Unfortunately, we live in a society filled with non-recovering addicts and co-dependents, and that's why nothing changes. Addictive behavior is so pervasive in the United States, if everyone went into recovery all at once, then every institution in the USA would collapse- including the political system. Especially the political system.

When children are abused by authority figures, they have to somehow make it OK in their mind because because the truth, that the people they depend on for their very lives are dangerously out of control, is something that a child's psyche cannot handle. Depending on the severity of abuse, abused children (and adults) cope with abuse by using:

Repression (unconsciously forgetting the abuse happened),
Suppression (consciously choosing to forget it happened),
Minimization (it wasn't so bad),
Rationalization ("Mom hits me because I'm a terrible child"),
Denial ("Dad is a saint who would never hurt a fly"),
Delusion ("I was tortured by space aliens!"), and even
Dissociation (leaving one's body to escape pain, or splitting into alternate personalities).

Practiced often enough, these coping skills become a way of life. When it comes to American determination to believe in lying politicians and a dysfunctional political system, these coping behaviors are rampant. It's like a country full of abused children desperately clinging to the fantasy that Mom and Dad really do care and have our best interests at heart. Because the ugly truth, that we're governed by psychopaths who have no concern for us at all, is too depressing for most people to contemplate. That we're now living in a surveillance state, with the Constitution in tatters and the Bill of Rights blown to smithereens, is too frightening to contemplate.

Most Americans have little tolerance for psychological pain and will go to extreme lengths to avoid it. That's too bad, because pain is what gives people the impetus to make drastic changes. Ours is a very sick society in need of recovery:

When Society Becomes an Addict by Anne Wilson Schaef

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I've said before it will not come from either existing party. It's a long shot, but a third party could win. While not likely in 2016, it is in 2020.

The problem with waiting until 2020 is that the damage that EJ is looking for between 2018 and 2020 may render a change too late to save the economy. As it it it will be a struggle even with an independent victory.

We have to get the money out of politics, and have federally funded elections. That would make the election of a third party much easier.

Getting money out of politics is key, along with term limits, but it will never happen when it's the politicians themselves who would have to write the bill that shoots them in the foot, get it out of committee, pass it in both houses and have the president sign it into law. Right now you couldn't get those craven psychopaths in Congress to pass a bill agreeing that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

They might promise they'll do it, but once elected they'll do no such thing. Remember Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution with their simplified income tax on a postcard? The Tea Party, which got totally co-opted by the Republicans... Or Obama, whose actualization of Hope and Change was to appoint Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers as Director of the National Economic Council... to last November's Republican landslide which promised to shake up Washington, only to roll over the instant they were installed in office... the only thing you can trust politicians to do is lie.

Our entire political system is structured to prevent any third party from having a chance. Third party candidates are not allowed to participate in presidential debates. Even if a good third party candidate made it to every ballot, 99% of voters when given the choice of voting third party -vs- their fear of what they consider the greater of two evils getting in, will throw away their vote by voting for the lesser of two evils.

The only way your vision could happen is if the electorate said, "We're sending you to Washington to do two things: Institute strict term limits, and eliminate all financial contributions to political campaigns, making every Federal election 100% taxpayer funded, both to begin immediately. You have 30 days in which to do these two things. If you haven't completed your task in 30 days, on the 31st day you and your families will be publically executed."

That, of course, will never happen.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Hilary's Emails

When Society Becomes an Addict by Anne Wilson Schaef

Sounds like an interesting book, and one I've missed. I'll pick it up.

It's always good to remind yourself that modern society is built on 3 fictions.

1. Land as a commodity
2. Labor as a commodity
3. Money as a commodity

Europeans made those three up. They weren't always so. And they don't always have to be so.

But try explaining to someone that you're not buying land. You can't own land. Never could. Even here you're just buying the right to a take an interest in a piece of land (a real estate) that is surveyed, mapped, and plotted by the state who deeds to you state backing in applying force to excluding people from it if you ask in exchange for property taxes based on the market value of the right itself. What a convoluted mess.

Or try explaining to people that money is not real, that it's based on nothing but faith, and that every single loan agreement is even less real than that - it's actually treating a faith-based number in a computer as a commodity that time and use value - imagine that - like an idea with an expiration date - when you wrap your head around it, it's obvious that something like ZIRP can go on forever.

And don't even get started with the labor one. People aren't ready for that one yet. And people will kill over any one of these three fictions in a heartbeat.

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

The numbers are there and growing:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/re...ependents.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx


The intensity of anger is growing:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...-and-democrats

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361206...term-elections

It's improbable, but possible, that an individual could emerge and the message go viral. We still have a long way to go until November, 2016; sixteen months.

34% of the vote can win at all levels of government, with three candidates.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Hilary's Emails

The numbers are there and growing:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/re...ependents.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx


The intensity of anger is growing:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...-and-democrats

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361206...term-elections

It's improbable, but possible, that an individual could emerge and the message go viral. We still have a long way to go until November, 2016; sixteen months.

34% of the vote can win at all levels of government, with three candidates.

I think we're just too polarized. We don't see eye-to-eye enough. Even the slogans don't match. The second demographic transition is occurring unevenly, just as the first did in the 19th century. We all know where that led.

There are a couple of things we can agree upon, but they're insufficient to make up a complete political platform. I'm none to happy about more Clintons and Bushes. But I don't see a 'third way.' Even if our lifestyles and culture weren't so different as they are region to region, county to county, household to household, and we could get over all the social issues that plague the country, the economic issues would still stand.

I have no interest on voting for anybody talking about deregulating finance in any shape, way or form. And I have no interest in voting for anybody talking about lowering middle class wages or benefits in any way, shape, or form.

And that's not even to mention the other leg on this stool - foreign policy - which maybe there could be some agreement over, but maybe not as things look to be turning more hawkish these days.

We're just not going to see eye-to-eye on enough of this stuff for a third way candidate to make any sense at all.

Remember Americans Elect?

Me neither.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Sounds like an interesting book, and one I've missed. I'll pick it up.

It's always good to remind yourself that modern society is built on 3 fictions.

1. Land as a commodity
2. Labor as a commodity
3. Money as a commodity

Europeans made those three up. They weren't always so. And they don't always have to be so.

You're right, but even though I know you're right, it's hard for me to imagine a world without those fictions. If people try to solve the big problems by feeding the illusions that cause the problems, things can't get better. Like healthcare reform that fails to address the problems caused by Insurance companies and Big Pharma. It's merely an illusion of reform that only tinkers around the edges.

We need to come up with something better. Full reset. I kinda love how Ursula K LeGuin wrestled with the issues of money, property, authority and self-determination in The Dispossessed. Could humankind ever be capable of such a society on a worldwide scale? I doubt it. But it sure would be cool.

But try explaining to someone that you're not buying land. You can't own land. Never could. Even here you're just buying the right to a take an interest in a piece of land (a real estate) that is surveyed, mapped, and plotted by the state who deeds to you state backing in applying force to excluding people from it if you ask in exchange for property taxes based on the market value of the right itself. What a convoluted mess.

Or try explaining to people that money is not real, that it's based on nothing but faith, and that every single loan agreement is even less real than that - it's actually treating a faith-based number in a computer as a commodity that time and use value - imagine that - like an idea with an expiration date - when you wrap your head around it, it's obvious that something like ZIRP can go on forever.

And don't even get started with the labor one. People aren't ready for that one yet. And people will kill over any one of these three fictions in a heartbeat.

From Skinny Legs and All (I seem to be referring to all my favorite books today):

"Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It was akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldn't bake a cake because she didn't have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just didn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves."
- Tom Robbins

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the labor-as-a-commodity fiction.

[Woodsman]

Re: Hilary's Emails

...I'd like to hear your thoughts on the labor-as-a-commodity fiction.

Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" is the go to book.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" is the go to book.

Thanks, Woodsman.

[cmisto]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I lament that there has been no update by EJ. But conversations like this make the entry price worth it.

Thank you all for your contributions.

[charliebrown]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I wonder this same thing Shiny. All around me I see unemployed and under-employed people. No one has any money to pay them. Doesn't make any sense.
Maybe if these people could print there own money under-employed Peter could pay unemployed Paul and vice versa. Sounds like a debt jubile is needed.
However the owners of the debt would lose on this one, and they are in power. Won't happen except with the point of a spear. Sorry to say it, I am generally a pacifist. I see now way out.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I wonder this same thing Shiny. All around me I see unemployed and under-employed people. No one has any money to pay them. Doesn't make any sense.
Maybe if these people could print there own money under-employed Peter could pay unemployed Paul and vice versa. Sounds like a debt jubile is needed.
However the owners of the debt would lose on this one, and they are in power. Won't happen except with the point of a spear. Sorry to say it, I am generally a pacifist. I see now way out.

I don't see a way out, either. I don't endorse violence except as a very last resort. "All peaceful means of redressing a wrong having failed, raising the sword is pious and just."

Civil unrest is rising around the world, but except for pockets like Fergusen it's quiet here. Back in the Vietnam era we had massive demonstrations. Now? The public is sleepwalking. It's as if our country is drugged. Oh, wait. It is!

[lektrode]

Re: Hilary's Emails

maybe if the lamerstream media wasnt so .... uhhhh.... biased ?

like i've mentioned a time or 2...

IF IT WAS A BUNCH OF RIGHT-WING REPUBLICAN TEXAS OIL BARONS WHO HAD RUN THE ECONOMY INTO THE DITCH
not once, but twice in less than 10 years (vs a bunch of 'leftwing neoliberal' capital D types - aka lwr manhattans 'finest' limo-libs)

the headlines - just like in the 60's - WOULD STILL BE 6" TALL - in every newspaper, on EVERY 6pm 'news cast'

but.... since its the people that the hil-n-bill show 'represent' ???

nothing to see here, move along...

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Yes, there is a definite double standard.