What's It Gonna Be USA?: Empire or Republic

I understand where you're coming from, but our economic and cultural influence is largely welcomed. I mean, you don't see the military invading foreign lands to push Britney Spears or Coca-Cola on them. Our economic influence, a tad more iffy, but not too bad - we've funded and given enormous aid to destitute lands, and we've never gotten it back *cough* *cough* even the interest on the money given through the Marshall Plan would be nice *cough* *cough*

Why do people pay so much attention to Rome when the information revolution is happening all around us RIGHT NOW? The whole point of Republics and Sentators and so forth is because the farmer in the field could not get into town and vote every little issue. He hired a politician as a sort of proxy-voter --a proxy voter he no longer needs thanks to the invention of two computer networks:

1) the World Banking Network (FEDWIRE/CHIPS)

2) The Internet (TCP/IP)

Look, we all have ATM cards, right? We all have a PIN number and our banks will not miss so much as a penny of our transactions. In fact, FedWire is so exact, their site says this:

In 2002, some 115 million funds transfers with a total value of $405 trillion were made over Fedwire -- an average of $3.5 million per transaction. About 43 million transfers, worth $240 trillion (about $1 trillion per day), were originated by banks in the Second Federal Reserve District alone, which is served by the New York Fed.
[...]
As a fiscal agent of the United States, the Federal Reserve Banks provide electronic payments services for the Treasury's ACH-based program for direct deposit of federal recurring payments. These payments include Social Security, Veterans Administrations benefits, and federal salary payments.

www.ny.frb.org...

See that part about direct deposit of all federal payments, social security, and federal paychecks? That's a lot of data to process and is far more complicated than what the house or the senate do. FedWire and CHIPS make up the larger network which is then branched down to your local bank or credit union who can choose to participate in ATM fraternities and charge you the whopping fees (the logos on the back of your ATM card). This network is a robotic moneymaking machine for the Fed and it's member banks. If we seized these machines, we could have world peace.

Why do we use these archaic Romanic voting/governmental systems anymore? Why can't humans spend all their time from this point forward figuring out how to have the entire world and its resources devoted to tying the major world decisions to our bank ATM terminal? Send the warlords to the beach or the old folks home (or the gallows) and the administrators and thieves with them. If we were to hold these two networks, the people of th world could demand a peaceful world in which we vote directly on every issue and on a regular basis. We would have what our founding fathers REALLY wanted: A fluid government at the fingertips of the people.

Imagine if you could vote on global issues as easily as you get cash from an ATM. You are being kept from that paradise by the forces that keep you looking into the past. The past is dust-covered. Indigo_Child has yet to convince me that the ancient indians had anything like the Internet or the global telcom network. Rome seems like a bunch of childish nonsense, personally. I'm more impressed with the fact that I can tap on this keyboard and be heard all over the globe and tons of search engines. Did Leonardo ever come up with a "Search Engine", perhaps made of wood or something? No, he did not.

We are smarter than our fathers. We live at a time when the globe could be seized by the people in a bloodless coup without any of the bankers complaining. If they get their percentage, they are happy. If We the People of planet Earth just insist, politely and peacefully, we could have control of our planet and words like Republic, Empire would become archaic.

Here's a bit about ATM machines from PBS. They are robots. We can force the bankers of the world to place these robots under our control.

Automatic Teller Machines: Robots of the Service Sector – Although electronic transfers between banks were commonplace a decade earlier, it wasn't until the 1970s that computer technology allowed bank customers to get enhanced access to their accounts. Automatic teller machines (ATMs) can process a growing number of routine transactions for bank customers: withdrawing or depositing cash, getting balance information, transferring money between accounts, making loan payments, etc. The biggest advantage of ATMs for the consumer is that they are open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. For banks, ATMs are much cheaper than human tellers for the kind of routine transactions they can perform. In the 1990s, most banks joined ATM networks which made banking even more convenient by allowing consumers to access their accounts from ATMs other than those operated by their own banks.

www.pbs.org...

Imagine if you could log onto a website and have a minute-to-minute output of a people's thoughts on the world based on their having punched a few keys at their last ATM visit? You would have such a sublime, proactive world, we probably would not recognize it.




[edit on 1-4-2005 by smallpeeps]

Not saying that I entirely disagree with you, but as Winston Churchill once said, "The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter." Plus, we have the electoral college because, as the founders reckoned, the average voter cannot be trusted by himself. I mean, ever see Leno's "Jaywalking"? Parliamentary governments of foreign countries don't trust their people to vote for their premier... their executive is tied directly to who controls their legislative branch. We have the electoral college, established by our founders, because they also realized you cannot trust the daffy masses (the electoral college members can essential vote for whom they choose, but this has happened only once and these days it will not happen again - the electoral college nowadays is more essential for a population-equity concern that is entirely justified)... Also, one cannot forget that like foreign parliamentary systems, long ago our senators were not elected but chosen by the states' legislature.

because they also realized you cannot trust the daffy masses

Is that the way you feel, AH? I don't see humans in that light. I believe every human can be put to purposeful and happy work if he or she feels that there is hope of a better life for their kids. I don't see the masses as idiots, just momentarily sleeping sheep (sheeping? shleeping?)

The electoral college. It's all a bunch of old white dudes. BORING. I have the internet which is way more interesting than those old farts or their affairs. They (and their forebears) see the masses as idiots to be sacrificed in wars, but the banks only see us as bloodletting targets, so I will choose the banks. I'm saying we can cut a deal with the banks to place the majority of governmental (and specifically foreign-policy and economic issues) drectly in front of us, specifically at our ATMs.

These rusty old battleships called governments have no meaning now that we have the Internet. An information-level civilization needn't have war or corruption. Politicians corrupt democracy.

Originally posted by the_oleneo
You don't really know what the GOP is all about. Supposedly if the Democrats have the controls of the White House, the Congress and almost the Supreme Court, I can guarantee the wealthy and the powerful will have the Democrats in their pockets, implement favorable laws and keep the Republican minority to distract the public with rhetoric talks and partisan infotainment.

Your view seems pretty one-sided. I've been in the GOP for almost 20 years and supported it as long as I've been able to think for myself. Today's Republican party in no way reflects what it once stood for. It in no way resembles Reagan's GOP. And yet, they act like Bush is Reagan Jr. It's beyond absurd. Ronnie Reagan Jr. excoriated the administration for glomming onto his father's legacy, calling that preposterous. Reagan would be spinning in his grave if he could see what has gone on and that they have tried to co-opt his legacy. It's shameful. What can we expect, though? These guys have no shame. Reminds me of another political whore who's hallmark is NO SHAME: Bill Clinton.

Btw, why don't you tell us all what its about? I can't wait to hear this.

As for the Democratic party, if you think I support it, you're crazy. I never have. I am much more willing to support Democrats these days who are willing to speak truth to power. And those are few and far between. A couple who have impressed me lately are Robert Byrd (post-9-11 statements on the floor), Barbara Boxer (vote fraud) and Cynthia McKinney (post-9-11 warrior-ess). Overall, though, the majority of Democrats are just as bought off and controlled as the majority of Republicans. Both parties are corrupt. The Dems are willfully irrelevant. Until this changes, until we are able to elect representatives who refuse to be compromised through their own hedonistic behavior, it will only get worse.

It's terrible.

Originally posted by AlphaHumana
I understand where you're coming from, but our economic and cultural influence is largely welcomed. I mean, you don't see the military invading foreign lands to push Britney Spears or Coca-Cola on them. Our economic influence, a tad more iffy, but not too bad - we've funded and given enormous aid to destitute lands, and we've never gotten it back *cough* *cough* even the interest on the money given through the Marshall Plan would be nice *cough* *cough*

Yeah, nobody took anything from Africa or the Middle East...let alone South America. God Bless how kind we all are. -sarcasm-

Originally posted by Gools
So is Bush Caligula or Nero?

Caligula, definitely.

Originally posted by the_oleneo
You don't really know what the GOP is all about.

I guess Republican party stallwart Sen. Danforth doesn't either.

Bush is hostage to religious right, says top Republican

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday March 31, 2005
The Guardian

One of the most respected figures in the Republican political establishment turned on his own party yesterday, accusing the leadership of falling hostage to the religious right.
In an opinion piece in yesterday's New York Times, John Danforth, a former senator and US ambassador to the United Nations, writes: "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians."

Mr Danforth's credentials in the party, as a three-term senator from Missouri's heartland and as the minister chosen by Ronald Reagan to officiate at his state funeral in June 2004, are well established.

Go figure!

Here's another article referring to how the Republicans have turned their backs on GOP principles.

Will the GOP Need Life Support?
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Salon.com

Thursday 31 March 2005

A prominent conservative blogger says Republican leaders have abandoned the traditional principles of small government and federalism -- and warns they may soon come to regret it.
The Terri Schiavo story is a tragedy in the truest sense. It is a case in which there are no happy endings and in which the mighty fall. One thing that has fallen is the notion of the Republican Party as a bastion of federalism and limited government. Some might argue that this notion was already in doubt, in light of the Bush administration's less-than-parsimonious budgeting, but pork is part of politics, and you have to expect a certain amount of give in that department.

Widespread Republican support for legislation taking an individual case away from state judges and placing it in front of the federal judiciary is another thing. The "if it saves just one life, it's worth it" argument has more typically been associated with gun-control activists, and other groups that are generally looked down upon by Republicans, but now many in the GOP seem to have picked it up as a slogan. Indeed, the entire notion of the "rule of law" -- itself once a favored slogan of conservatives -- seems to have fallen into disrepute. Quite a few conservatives are unhappy about that state of affairs, and I wonder if it doesn't presage a realignment within the Republican Party, and the fracturing of some alliances on the right.
www.truthout.org...

The Republicans only had to lean more towards the left in the past years because the Democrats have been moving further and further left. Sure, we'd like smaller government and getting rid of a lot of wasteful social programs so we can bolster national defense and be able to maintain tax cuts, but then with all this leftward trending we've been unable lest we lose votes. The Democrat's death knell will be if all they can muster for '08 is Hilary Clinton, who will lose even if all the Republicans can run is Alan Keyes Then maybe we can start taking the nation on its rightful track towards smaller government... especially since by then the Republicans will control the courts too.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Your view seems pretty one-sided. I've been in the GOP for almost 20 years and supported it as long as I've been able to think for myself. Today's Republican party in no way reflects what it once stood for. It in no way resembles Reagan's GOP. And yet, they act like Bush is Reagan Jr. It's beyond absurd. Ronnie Reagan Jr. excoriated the administration for glomming onto his father's legacy, calling that preposterous. Reagan would be spinning in his grave if he could see what has gone on and that they have tried to co-opt his legacy. It's shameful. What can we expect, though? These guys have no shame. Reminds me of another political whore who's hallmark is NO SHAME: Bill Clinton.

I'm not being one-sided. Just observational. I'm an ex-Republican and an Independent. I'm disappointed with the current state of the Republican Party. I have no love for the left and extremely disappointed with the Democratic Party, just having too many partisan, infantile-minded shills infecting and screwing up the American political/electoral system. The final straw was their demands to get international observers and international law to "intervene" the last year's Presidential election. Such demands are a clear violation of the state's sovereignty, since every state in the union is a electoral participant in a Presidential election. It's unconstitutional.

Remember what Reagan once said? "The federal government doesn't create the states. The states created the federal government."

Get international observers and international law involved, you violate the states' sovereign rights.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Btw, why don't you tell us all what its about? I can't wait to hear this.

You know I can't hear you well.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
As for the Democratic party, if you think I support it, you're crazy. I never have. I am much more willing to support Democrats these days who are willing to speak truth to power. And those are few and far between. A couple who have impressed me lately are Robert Byrd (post-9-11 statements on the floor), Barbara Boxer (vote fraud) and Cynthia McKinney (post-9-11 warrior-ess). Overall, though, the majority of Democrats are just as bought off and controlled as the majority of Republicans. Both parties are corrupt. The Dems are willfully irrelevant. Until this changes, until we are able to elect representatives who refuse to be compromised through their own hedonistic behavior, it will only get worse.

It was people like McKinney, Boxer, Byrd, in the Democratic Party that made it the most partisan, hypocrite political party in the nation, more partisan and hyprocrite than the Republican Party. There was a funny saying going around the Net last year:

"If a Democrat farts in front of the American people, that's okay, the people will forgive him. If a Republican farts, it's an outrage and the people will condemn that Republican."

It's all freaking double standards and hypocrisy with the Democrats. And the Republicans ain't no better either, IMO.

[edit on 4/1/2005 by the_oleneo]

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
"If a Democrat farts in front of the American people, that's okay, the people will forgive him. If a Republican farts, it's an outrage and the people will condemn that Republican."

Just like when a liberal says something people don't agree with it's "Freedom of Speech", but when a conservative says something people don't agree with it's "Hate Speech."

edit: oops, my mistake, that was Oleneo's joke... sorry.

[edit on 1-4-2005 by AlphaHumana]

Originally posted by the_oleneo
Such demands are a clear violation of the state's sovereignty, since every state in the union is a electoral participant in a Presidential election. It's unconstitutional.

Like Bush's attempt to stomp on Florida's sovereign right to judge the matter of Terri Shiavo.

Republicans have gotten very confused. They should go cold turkey off the Rovian kool-aid.

As the "United States of America" has not been the united states of America since before the Civil War, but a democracy (military mob rule), your question, ECK, is again moot.

I'd again suggest learning how the nation and the country was meant to be; a learning experience that will upset you as you'll find much of it disagreeable with your liberal mentality, but the truth just the same.

As far as the empire assertion, you are view is a bit myopic. This nation is not the evil villain, but is being controlled by the same evil villain that is contolling not only the Western world but just about every Industrialized, post-industrialized and service-oriented nation on the planet. We, the people, are in no way in control.

The question is, when will there be enough people awake to force the issue?

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
I'd again suggest learning how the nation and the country was meant to be; a learning experience that will upset you as you'll find much of it disagreeable with your liberal mentality, but the truth just the same.

Uh, so.. if the writings of the founding fathers are meaningless, as you suggest, where should I look for that "education?"

Liberal mentality? Can someone come up with a YAWN character?

Here's the Webster's definition of liberal..

liberal
adj 1: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad
political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a
liberal newspaper"; "tolerant of his opponent's
opinions" [syn: broad, tolerant]
2: having political or social views favoring reform and
progress
3: tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism,
orthodoxy, or tradition [ant: conservative]
4: given or giving freely; "was a big tipper"; "the bounteous
goodness of God"; "bountiful compliments"; "a freehanded
host"; "a handsome allowance"; "Saturday's child is loving
and giving"; "a liberal backer of the arts"; "a munificent
gift"; "her fond and openhanded grandfather" [syn: big,
bighearted, bounteous, bountiful, freehanded, handsome,
giving, openhanded]
5: not literal; "a loose interpretation of what she had been
told"; "a free translation of the poem" [syn: free, loose]
n 1: a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and
reform and the protection of civil liberties [syn: progressive]
[ant: conservative]
2: a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and
self-regulating markets


Scratching head.. I'm not so sure being accused of being liberal is such a bad thing.. tho pre-9-11 I would have flamed you for suggesting it.

I do not suggest the writings of the Founding Fathers are worthless, by any stretch of the imagination. I simply suggest you learn the exact thing you say I suggest are worthless. Then see how the Republic was destroyed when it dissolved by what is called Sine Die. Then, see how this circumstance was taken advantage of by the bankers, the judicial branch and the executive branch, in conjunction with big money families. This is still the case, all of these parts controlling the world, in no small part, through the military/industrial complex.

Thomas Crown, I'm quite aware of that stuff you speak of. You do realize that BUSH and his family are of the worst among them, right? Afterall, it was Dubya's grandad that congress went after by enacting legislation barring traitors doing business with the Nazis before and into WW2. Bush and his ilk (of all political stripes) don't give a damm about this country; they serve the Gods of profit and war. Beyond being cannon fodder and tax slaves, we the people mean nothing to them.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid

Originally posted by the_oleneo
Such demands are a clear violation of the state's sovereignty, since every state in the union is a electoral participant in a Presidential election. It's unconstitutional.

Like Bush's attempt to stomp on Florida's sovereign right to judge the matter of Terri Shiavo.

Uh, Pres. Bush stays out of that. He lets his brother handled the matter in Florida. He didn't enacted any executive order to save Terri. Unlike Clinton who did enacted an executive order per requested by the Attorney General Janet Reno to get the Feds grab Elian Gonzalez out of that family home in the late 90s and returned him to Cuba.

Clinton was a far more dictatorial President than Bush.

ECK, something to look into, in a loosely related topic, is Peak Oil production.
I don't think there's going to be a question of republic, empire or anything else.

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
ECK, something to look into, in a loosely related topic, is Peak Oil production.

Yeah, I've actually written on that out here in the real world. I would encourage anyone seeing this suggestion to look into it.

My belief is that we actually seized Iraq to keep our boot on the neck of OPEC (to keep them from switching their oil currency to the Euro). That would be our death knell.