A New Civil War

a reply to: enlightenedservant

You're touching on part of the reason for my views in your post. Most people are smart enough to be educated on a topic, it's that they don't have the time/desire to learn (or as a side topic, may not have good sources to learn from), and I would argue that we shouldn't expect them to. There's more to life than learning about what government is doing. Why should we expect citizens to go to work, provide for themselves and their families, and then come home and hold down another full time job in keeping up with the issues? The point of representatives, is that we elect people to do that for us as their full time job.

a reply to: Aazadan

The problem is that you are displaying exactly the kind of thought process the so-called elites want you to. They want you to believe that the bureaucratic business of running the country is so incredibly complicated that you and I cannot possibly understand it and the policy behind ... and that precisely why they and only they are qualified to decide how much you should make, where you should work (or if), what we should eat (and how much), where our children should go to school (and what they should learn), etc.

All of these things I mention are things we all used to be considered quite capable of deciding for ourselves.

Explain to me exactly why a pencil pusher at a think tank in DC knows best how to decide all those things specifically for you and your family than you do yourself.

a reply to: Aazadan

The main difference in our perspectives is that your post kept pointing out the lack of ability or capability of educators and citizens, while I think it's strictly a lack of will. But I do agree that we need representatives in government (for now). This is especially true when it comes to things like the issuing of bonds to fund local projects and time consuming contract negotiations.

Though my ideal world would have a weekly voting procedure where citizens can login to their voting account and vote on issues. Then their representatives simply implemented those decisions, with the courts ensuring those measures are constitutional. But that's a long way off.

a reply to: ketsuko

On their own merits I don't think anyone in government is more qualified than me, on average. However, decision makers in government have access to better experts on every subject than I do in the form of lobbyists, or even just experts that offer their advice (think tanks and such). On top of that, government officials get to learn about these issues as their job. For me, or other people to do that, it's something we have to do on top of our jobs/other obligations.

Lets take a simple example which you used, which is that of school curriculums. Why are you more qualified than the school board to know what your children should study? How many experts in various industries have you spoken to in order to figure out the job market? Furthermore, assuming you have done that... was it a local or national job market? Do you even know what city you're going to be living in 10+ years from now when your child is ready to work? If you do, how can you even guarantee your child will work in that city? These are labor market decisions that you're not qualified to make.

Furthermore, lets say you do study all this stuff, and you come to a conclusion. What sort of proof do you have that you're even making the correct decision? You might be making a decision, but it's not necessarily the right one. Government officials might not be making the right decisions either, but they have an extra 9 hours a day to think of solutions, so they're more likely to get it correct in addition to the fact that they're starting with more information than you have.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
The main difference in our perspectives is that your post kept pointing out the lack of ability or capability of educators and citizens, while I think it's strictly a lack of will.

A lack of ability is a lack of will. There's also the issue that even if citizens were all well informed, they would be dictating things like foreign policy and who we ally with on the whims of the public. That same public who wouldn't have access to classified material dealing with state business behind the scenes. Therefore, the public is always going to have less important information to make a decision on than our representatives will.

originally posted by: masqua
On a lighter note, there are those who are already locking and loading...

That's no lighter note... because one of their targets would be me. And arming myself to defend myself against them is counterproductive.

Im probably one of the more volatile and dangerous.. truly in my nature... on this board. Saying that to know where Im coming from.. I know it is not time for armed action. Others like me or of similar mind know this too. This is information war.. I cant bear to use the infowar thing fat boy made up.. but it truly is. Its a new age and new time.. if an info revolution is not enough or is lost, all bets are off. People are putting their futures on the line to eat the beast from within and its unrecognized. It cant be, you know. But you can see the result in some things. This isnt a partisan thing either. Its a fat federal power scum VS We the People thing. Harming average American Citizens is always forbidden... regardless of a D or R.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: Aazadan

Though my ideal world would have a weekly voting procedure where citizens can login to their voting account and vote on issues. Then their representatives simply implemented those decisions, with the courts ensuring those measures are constitutional. But that's a long way off.

Sadly, few people take an interest in this kind of issue. Voting turnout on local issues is abysmal, and even on hotly contested presidential elections the turnout is nowhere near 90%.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
The saddest part of this is we have all the power and no government can defy a united populace, but we allow them to do just that by dividing us, using these damnable political parties to control us. They know as long as they can keep us divided with the hatred we see now surrounding elections, we can be fully controlled. If we ever as a people woke up, we could easily, peacefully take back control of our country. The bad players on all sides would have no choice but to go back to the sewers they crawled out of. Not a shot would need to be fired and as a truly united people, this could not happen again.

The problems with our country are not rocket science. The lobbyists force the politicians to pass laws creating cartels and monopolies in exchange for campaign financing. There's are specific reasons why wealth inequality in this country, and the rest of the world, is at all time highs. Money talks, and the people without money have no representation. Most people are outraged by taxes being too high. But it really doesn't matter what you pay in taxes. What DOES matter is the purchasing power of your take home pay. If we are all being fleeced at the company store what difference does it make how much you pay in taxes? You can't talk about taxes being too high without also talking about the company store fleecing the workers into poverty at the same time!

So why is everyone talking about having a civil war? It's because every year the cartels and monopolies are pushing middle class people deeper and deeper into poverty wages. People are just sick of working harder and harder for less and less. If people were flush with cash they would be too busy buying stuff living their lives to think about having a civil war. But the reality in this country is wealth inequality is at all time highs. I hear people complain we have too much communism in this country. I hear people complain we have too much socialism in this country. But nothing could be further from the truth. Wealth inequality is so bad, most people just can't even imagine how bad it actually is. It's really bad. This video shows you just how bad it really is if you can bare watching it:

www.youtube.com...

It's really too painful to watch. I think it is important to understand what is making everyone so unhappy. The people with power and privilege, the oligarchs and the elites, think everything is just fine the way it is. The people in power want NOTHING to change. The middle class people who are being driven deeper and deeper into poverty wages are becoming more radicalized for change each election cycle. This country is becoming a powder keg.

I agree with paragraph I quoted from the OP. I just have a different prescription on how to achieve the goals outline in the paragraph than what most people were arguing in the thread so far. I hope we can at least agree on what is the problem we are all facing. Maybe you have different opinion are what is the problem. But please just assume I have correctly identified the source of everyone's desire for having a civil war. And that is, essentially, the average working class person has no representation in our government, we have no power, most people are living in poverty, or on the edge of poverty, or just one or two pay checks away from losing everything. Every year it gets worse and worse. Every year you have work harder for less. The whole system seems stacked against the little guy and nothing ever gets better. And remember your enlightened self-interest if you are a business owner. If your customers, the little guy, have lots of money then you will make lots of money and you will become a big time boss. So hopefully I have identified the problem.

I have a couple of ideas on how we solve this problem. First has to do with a particular propaganda technique. The people in power do not trust the votes. So for years highly sophisticated propaganda techniques have been developed to control the voters. Here in introduction to the basic techniques:

www.youtube.com...

Unless you are aware of these propaganda techniques you will have no defense against them. The oligarchs and elites will control your vote like fiddle. It is important to understand that the purpose of the political theater is to make sure the government stays divided so NOTHING ever changes. The presidential election really doesn't matter. By the power of gerrymandering, if Hillary wins the Republicans will control the House. If Trump wins the Democrats will control the Senate. No matter who wins, the election is rigged so we are guaranteed to have divided government. Divided government means NOTHING will change.

The goal outlined in the OP paragraph I quoted will never be achieved unless the voters can defend themselves from the propaganda techniques being used against them. There is one technique in particular that is very popular today as a way of brainwashing voters. The trick is to say something that gets people so mad it puts them into a heighten emotional state. It has to be something the generates emotional outrage. Once the brainwashing audience has been primed then the programming begins. The programming usually begins by assigning blame to someone or some group of people as the cause of the outrage. And then along with assigning blame, the audience naturally begins to worship the authority giving the information through sympathetic identification.

For example, take the voter fraud issue and the "Soros Voting Machine" story on Infowars. Who is not mad by some European billionaire coming into this country forcing a "liberal" and "NWO" agenda on us. Let's kill the effing SOB before he "destroys" our country! However, the conclusions are based on a couple of particularly biased interpretations of the facts. If you looked at it objectively, the issue may not really be supported by any facts at all. Here's what I found:

"As is typical of such claims, this one is based on nothing more than the most tenuous of connections — namely that among the number of non-profit boards on which Smartmatic Chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown sits is the Global Board of the Open Society Foundation, an international grantmaking network founded by George Soros. That fact that one of the many people on one of the many boards of one of the many organizations with which George Soros (a large Clinton donor) is involved also happens to chair an electronic voting company is taken as proof enough by conspirators that George Soros has the means, motive, and intent to commit a massive act of voting fraud. And, despite being the multinational billionaire business magnate that he is, Soros utterly lacks the common sense not to rig an election through a confederate so obviously connected to him.

As is also typical of such claims, those who propagate them mistakenly assume that every company in the business of providing electronic voting services is producing machines that record and count votes, which isn't the case — such services can include anything from providing streamlined systems for reporting election results to the press to automating the process of voter authentication. It this case the assertion that "Smartmatic's voting machines will be used in 16 crucial states" is a false one "

a reply to: dfnj2015

So to continue my last post. Before we can take our country back, the people must be aware of the numerous propaganda techniques so they can defend themselves from their influence.

The next part of the solution I want to talk about has to do with the psychology of human nature:

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

If we do not understand why people become so corrupt, our government will never work in our favor. We need to understand why is there so much corruption by our leaders and a complete lack of respect for the public trust.

I read this really interesting piece of psychological research on the causes of corruption called "the metamorphic effect of power". Not only does power corrupt, be even worse, having power changes the powerholder to have "contempt" for those they have power over. Once the powerholder has this contempt, the powerholder no longer sees their subordinates as people deserving of any human respect. Instead, the powerholder sees their subordinates as worthless ants that can stepped on without any moral consequence. This idea of having power over others will change a person's psyche is very important. It's only by having awareness of this effect that its negatives can be avoided.

Here's a really good analysis on the idea:
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"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." So said Lord Acton, and most anarchists would agree. Any hierarchical system provides positions of power which are sought by the worst sort of people, namely the ambitious, unscrupulous and ruthless. Furthermore, even if by some chance sensitive and honest individuals obtain positions of power, they can quickly become corrupted. This is the experience with governments, corporations, churches, political parties and other institutions.

But why does power corrupt? For the answer, it is worth consulting the excellent work by David Kipnis, a professor of psychology at Temple University. He has carried out numerous experiments showing just how power corrupts.

For a person to be autonomous is widely considered to be a good thing. It is a feature of being fully human. When a person exercises power over others, the powerholder gains the impression that the others do not control their own behaviour or, in other words, they are not autonomous. Hence, they are seen as less worthy. In short, a person who successfully exercises power over others is more likely to believe that they are less deserving of respect. They thus become good prospects to be exploited.

For example, Kipnis organised experiments in which a "boss" oversees the work of "subordinates" in a simulated situation. The experiment is contrived so that all subordinates do the same work. But the subordinate who is thought to be self-motivated is rated much more highly -- for exactly the same work -- than the subordinate who is thought to have done the work only under instruction. As well as laboratory studies, Kipnis examines the effects of power on the powerholder through studies of couples, managers and protagonists in Shakespeare's dramas. The results are always the same.

Kipnis follows through the implications of such evidence in a number of areas involving technology, including medical technology, workplace technology and the technology of repression. For example, technologies for surveillance or torture serve to control others: that is the obvious effect. But in addition, the psychology of the powerholder is changed when the technology promotes the reality or impression that others lack autonomy. Those
subject to the technology are treated as less worthy, and any prospects for equality are ruled out.

Kipnis rightly points out that few studies have looked at the effects of power on the powerholder. He has done an admirable job of redressing this imbalance.

As a result of his investigations, Kipnis is quite pessimistic about solving the problems of power and the technology that reinforces it, precisely because the usual prescriptions ignore the effects of power on the powerholder. It seems, though, that Kipnis is unaware of anarchism and the longstanding anarchist critique of all forms of hierarchy.

However, this gap need not detract from the value of Kipnis's studies for anarchists. Besides the points mentioned above, he deals with tactics of influence, use of rewards, inhibition of the exercise of power, motivations for power and other corruptions of power. This work bears close study by all who want to understand better the psychological dynamics of power."
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Raising people's awareness of how power changes the soul is not an easy task. But I believe unless human nature is understood and kept in check government will always reduce to its lowest form or what we have now. You would think with all our space-age technology that we would be able to design a system of government with all the necessary checks and balances to ensure corruption does not become the norm. There is a very strong reason why most of the cameras in a casino are pointed at the money handlers and not the customers. If casinos are able to develop an effective system of self-governance I have to imagine the government can do it also.

The next problem I want to talk about is local government corruption. In my town, the local government is so corrupt I'm amazed the different families don't have gun battles over which relatives get hired. In my town we have 3 police departments. One that works and the other two are retired. The guy across the street is a retired policemen in his late 40s with a huge pension. Most if not all the people in my local government are Republicans. They are very outspoken against socialism. They want to cut all social spending. BUT THATS BECAUSE THE CORRUPT EFFING A HOLES WANT TO PUT ALL THE GOVERNMENT MONEY INTO THEIR OWN POCKETS!!! They are not communists. What are they? They are Republicans who are making a huge killing running the government. What do you call the effing a holes??? Our local taxes are high because of the insane costs of government privatization. You need to pay a permit fee for everything. The corruption is completely out of control, insane, and nobody ever goes to prison for it. I think part of the solution is we need FBI resources to stop focusing on terrorism and return to fighting local and state government corruption.

a reply to: dfnj2015

So local government corruption is a big problem. The FBI not having the resources to fight corruption is a big problem. But fixing those problems means nothing if you do not resolve the problems of our fiat currency and the Federal Reserve:

"Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws". Mater Amschel Rothschild

If the home of the once brave ever finds enough courage to become free again Lincoln showed us the way:

"During the Civil War (1861-1865), President Lincoln needed money to finance the War from the North. The Bankers were going to charge him 24% to 36% interest. Lincoln was horrified and went away greatly distressed, for he was a man of principle and would not think of plunging his beloved country into a debt that the country would find impossible to pay back."

"Eventually President Lincoln was advised to get Congress to pass a law authorizing the printing of full legal tender Treasury notes to pay for the War effort. Lincoln recognized the great benefits of this issue. At one point he wrote: "
"(we) gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they have ever had – their own paper money to pay their own debts..."

"The Treasury notes were printed with green ink on the back, so the people called them "Greenbacks". "

"Lincoln printed 400 million dollars worth of Greenbacks (the exact amount being $449,338,902), money that he delegated to be created, a debt-free and interest-free money to finance the War. It served as legal tender for all debts, public and private. He printed it, paid it to the soldiers, to the U.S. Civil Service employees, and bought supplies for war.
Shortly after that happened, The London Times printed the following: "If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

Our fiat currency and the Federal Reserve system guarantee our country will always be in debt and never get out of debt. Will will always be slaves as long as fiat currency exists. Every president that has created interest free money in this country by getting the Treasury Department to print legal tender has been assassinated. Maybe that's why they fear Trump getting elected. He's so crazy that he just might sign that executive order! It is important to understand that the Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation. Since the Citizen's United ruling, the Federal Reserve can print any amount of money necessary to ensure that political candidates who are favorable to the preservation of the Federal Reserve get elected. That pretty much puts the a slight damper of changing the status quo in this country.

The last thing I want to talk about is BIG government. Anytime you hear someone say something bad about BIG government what they are really saying is "we run the government, you don't, shut the eff up!" We the people ARE the government. The people may be BIG, but there's nothing wrong with the people running the government. It think it is important to understand that solving our day-to-day problems require some flexibility. Some parts of government need to be privatized. Some parts of society need to be nationalized. I think the tactics should not be the issue but the goals involve. With that in mind, here is an excerpt from a speech during the Great Depression. I think it is important to understand that without BIG government, our lives will be ruined. The cartels and monopolies will crush us. And every year the middle class will be driven deeper and deeper into poverty until we actually do have a civil war.

"An old English judge once said: 'Necessitous men are not free men.' Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government."

The problem with any other approach than we the people running BIG government is the current government has way bigger guns than any of you blokes!

originally posted by: Byrd

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: Aazadan

Though my ideal world would have a weekly voting procedure where citizens can login to their voting account and vote on issues. Then their representatives simply implemented those decisions, with the courts ensuring those measures are constitutional. But that's a long way off.

Sadly, few people take an interest in this kind of issue. Voting turnout on local issues is abysmal, and even on hotly contested presidential elections the turnout is nowhere near 90%.

If that is the case in your area, your task would seem clear. Make people aware of what is being debated and stir up interest. It's hard work to get people's attention unless sex and/or blood is included but it can be done. All government begins at the local level so it is most important to be active on a local level.
Sponsoring or organizing local forums or debates is a lot of work but it is worth doing if good government is your goal. It will drive up voter turn-out. I've seen it work on a local and regional level.
Be prepared to spend most of your leisure time for the next four to six years organizing, networking and learning to work with other community leaders. Be prepared to have days when you feel as though you will just throw up your hands and give up. You'll be uplifted at times and deeply depressed at other times. But I promise you, in the end, when the corruption is exposed and punished, the work will have been worth it if the criminals are replaced by people of integrity.