In 92 when Clinton was elected President, people think of it as the beginning of the end.
No my friends, it goes much further back than that. In 1980, the year before I graduated, my father was still making 20,000 dollars a year, enough to put us soundly in the middle class, although his decision to spend much of that putting his 5 children through Catholic Indoctrination ate much of that.
He deeply resented that my fresh out of High School eldest brother, living at home, was working for Detroit Diesel and out-earning him by far. He had started as a “chipper,” a sweeper, and within a couple years was on the line. He would make “production” in a few hours, then spend the rest of the time reading. 8 years older than me, he was my “book dealer” since I was 10. (We were all voracious readers) I was reading Heinlien’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “Future Shock” at 10.
By High School, he had made Electrician, and I was scoring his pot for him. By the time he moved out, his car cost more than my Dad’s house, and he and his girlfriend working also as an electrician at Wixom Ford, could barely scrape to buy an average house.
Suddenly my Father realized that their combined 80,000 dollars now bought less than his 20,000 did, then his lower one income ever could. These two could not POSSIBLY raise one child, let alone two on one income.
The slow boil of the frog had started.
My Shock Doctrine, my Future Shock starts then…. he only missed what Naomi filled in, the INTENT.
Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation” – future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also coined the term information overload.
By the time I entered the workforce, lying about my age to get a job waitressing, I was merely 14. Babysitting was no longer supporting the horse I had purchased with my own money, rent went up on his field, hay went up, sweet feed was astronomical.
Waitressing paid minimum wage then. Within a year, someone had sued, saying they paid all these taxes against our minimum wage, while the businessmen got all those lunches and dinners tax free. The result? We got paid 1/4 minimum wage, since that proved our tips brought us up to minimum wage. We paid taxes on FULL minimum wage, making $1.82 at the time, and had to “claim all our tips” and pay full taxes on them as well. DOUBLE taxation. They kept their tax free lunches, only now, we had to sing their receipts.
The slow boil of the frog was already on.
Unions had already been pegged as getting ahead of themselves, and in all truth the UAW did. Hell, Hoffa was already missing, and there was backlash about people being paid for lay-offs, getting almost full wages for being off. What they never mentioned in THAT info-campaign, is that they paid over a $100 weekly into subpay (IIRC) that was an “investment” account OWNED by the factory, from which they supplemented unemployment. Michigan unemployment had a cap that nowher near reached the mortgage payers, and they foresaw the collapse, and negotiated for another way to supplement it. They PAID for it.
By the time I entered the Corporate World, benefits were almost as important as the pay. Health insurance had skyrocketed.
They had already incorporated, even in my college, bar-bistro-chain days it being mandatory to be drug tested and lie-detected. I passed both easily, I’m not a liar, and just refrained while job searching. I never even had to use the “Golden Seal” and other things they test for now. The TV was rampant with stories of that one bus driver who crashed a bus high, and they were pushing HARD on the war on drugs… “Just say NO!!”
Iran/Contra was in full force, or over, and the damned paraquat got us all trying coke.
They had only just begun. There had to be a way to slowly turn the heat up, for Americans held huge amounts of assets in the Middle Class, and were well armed and far too Cowboyish in nature to be suddenly thrust into poverty, as worked in Chile in the 50’s.
Enter 401k’s. Yeah, they convinced many they were BETTER than retirements, had higher returns, and flooded the already bubbling dot com market with more instant cash. Greed is Good became mantra. So many thought it was their ticket to forever, but a few of us wary said NO. The stock market is not a real thing, and gambling is as easily gained as lost. But they pressed. We could not compete on a global level with all of the money spent on benefits… retirements and soon Health Care had to be privatized.
The boil just got hotter, and the propaganda fiercer.
Clinton was an aberration they didn’t expect, but they co-opted him easily enough. We were living in the falsely propped high market flooded by 401k dollars and internet sales. They sold him and us globalization without a shudder.
The easiest time to sell people anything is when they have a false sense of security, and boy howdy, that get rich quick dream had everyone clawing into the market with fervor.
It could not sustain.
Of course, it was time to take it out of all those private hands that so willingly put it at the mercy of the market, to take it back.
Enter GWB and 9/11.
You cannot jump out of the pot on boil when you’re under attack can you?
The long range plan was under way… Now, a war, an enemy to unite us. Gross expenditures with no oversight to move the assets into the hands of the designers.
Finally, after luring the populace into a false high market, to bring earnings back to where it was in my father’s times…. but!!! At todays prices.
The market collapse was not by accident. This is the long pork pull of planning, the ultimate design.
We WILL be impoverished, but we will think it by accident, exactly as planned, we will think it the fault of enemies and inevitable economic weirdness, and the fault of those we are at war with, and our own idiocy of overspending. Just as planned.
But it gets scarier, if you will bear with me a moment longer.
This attack, this war has lead many to believe that not only is it the fault of others that our monetary system failed, it has inured them into the very shredding of their rights… rights they think they are PROTECTING by GIVING UP to keep themselves from further monetary and physical harm.
The genius in that is supreme.
This media? The electronic age, the one that allows me to speak of this? It has been compromised. Not only by our enemies, by ourselves. They know that this media has over written theirs, the MSM, so there are now legions of paid bloggers, or formerly independent bloggers now on the payroll.
We all know that.
They let us know that.
But we ourselves, me included, add to that noise to signal ratio, each of us sure we have the message, that nothing gets truly through. I can think of at least three worth campaigns I have started that went nowhere.
The internet is not the “only place people have community anymore,” it can and may become exactly what divides us. Now, instead of opining about one writers words we opine about millions words…. and as such FIND division.
And here I am asking you to read me, and I am part of the problem. We are all more interested in what we write, and the reactions to it than the solutions, me included. We are at fault too.
Trippy.
This, watching Iran, and what has happened with Obama’s electronic victory (not unlike Kennedy’s TV victory… without comparing the men, just the media) has me convinceed we are doing it wrong.
This is a long plan. Theirs has been along plan and we are playing into it every day, even I, with these words which will do nothing.
We need to relook at ourselves.
We need to find a way to unite.
I am totally lost on how.
But I am wide awake and aware of what I am up against, I have been since I was 10.
/ Part One
I have no idea whats next, I want your help….
They are miles ahead of us, and we need a new strategy.
excuse the typonese, long day at work, and heading for bed, drained…
I have no idea whats next, I want your help….
They are miles ahead of us, and we need a new strategy.
BEST DIARY I have read in months.. thanks for sharing.. it appears our paths are similar.. my dad was a UAW member (non-auto industry).. I think he topped out at $24K per year before retiring.
I worked a temp summer job in the factory where my dad worked.. gave me a new level of respect for what he did to support us.. his buddies who knew we were related advised me to not make a career there.. I took their advice.
I very much share your concern and desire to DO SOMETHING
tangible. unfortunately, I think the overall desire for change is tepid at best and provides more or less zero foundation for the amount of work/effort required to achieve positive change.
Thanks…
I think right now, people are panicked trying to protect the little they have left.
They work through lunches, overtime for free, anything to keep their diminishing jobs … eventually they will realize their life quality has degraded to a point they will either give up or fight back.
Tipping point… yeah, I wonder when/where this point is. it seems we have much more patience, complacency? compared to say, our French counterparts.
I agree, that people are panicking. And they are clinging: Unfortunately, clinging will fail.
What people are reluctant to understand right now is that EVERY benefit that the system has offered or given in return for their life and labor is soon going to be taken away.
The system will reneg.
This cannot be changed.
The reason it cannot be changed is that the system itself is unsustainable–uses up non-renewable resources forever and renewable resources at a rate far faster than they can be replenished–and is now, after a run of several centuries, hitting the wall. Oil is the most obvious–and the key– resource that is coming up short, but it is not the only one. We have now entered GAME OVER. The elites know this, and have known it since at least the late 1970s, and this is the basis for their behavior. They are not trying to save the system–which cannot be saved–but keep it going as long as they can WHILE they LOOT IT OUT. The reason for looting it out is that return on productive investment is no longer possible. Only looting can yield a return. This in turn is why the system is corrupt and can only get more corrupt.
I have written on the context of this in several (old!) diaries. What about action, in the present?
Now, reargarde actions–such as politics–are important, but they are also discouraging, because the nature of the reargarde is defeat and retreat. To do that kind of work you’ve got to learn how to stomach that. If you are doing this work, remember: Success consists in slowing the enemy down.
Once you stop trying to fix the system, you will see plenty to do. America is unsustainable. It will end. Then what?
Think food. Local food. Local organic food is possible in a sustainable way in many areas: Gardens can be far more productive than farms–though small, local farms are good too! If your own garden is up and running think who you might encourage to garden as well. For most people, food travels thousands of miles. One calorie of corn is grown using ten calories of petroleum. This is a system that will soon be over–by next year food will become short. After that, it will get scarce. Price gouging and speculating will be the norm. If you don’t have access to local food you will starve.
Think water. Water is more of a problem in some places than others, but everywhere water will be a vulnerability for one reason or another. Public systems won’t last, private systems provide another avenue for exploitation and slavery. If you want to be free of that you have to find other ways. They exist.
Think shelter and security. We may have longer time-frames on these but the numbers of homeless are rising, and in America essentially everyone but the elites can expect to become homeless. This is sure. So you have to start to create a counter-plan. You may have a few years for this–but it is coming!–so start working on that counter-plan.
The details of these things have to be done locally, with people you know. Blogs and the internet are great for sharing information and that may be their key purpose. Local organizing may be possible through locally oriented blogs. I know of e-mail lists that function in more or less this way.
There is a point that should be kept in mind, though. The NSA logs all electronic communications, and records all text communications–including inside the US. (Yes it is illegal, so is torture, and about half of what the government is doing these days!) They do not do this for your benefit. You might want to be careful about anything that will cause their computers to draw down too much human attention on you.
It is not just the media, but fully half the internet is now part of the propaganda machine. The propaganda machine is the biggest enemy, because people who are enslaved to it do not want to be free. Freeing people is difficult, but sometimes the media tells a lie so contrary to what a person is experiencing that it provides a lever for waking them up. All of us need to learn how propaganda works so we have some immunity to it. After watching the recent fuss over the Iranian elections I can say (without knowing what is going on in Iran, which is a whole other problem) that the media has all portions of the US political spectrum under pretty firm control.
Who are They? Actually it is pretty obvious if you have the information. Follow the money: Who has money, and who controls money? The big players work in the trillion-dollar range. They do not like to advertise who they are, but the concept is straightforward enough. Knowing who They are is not the problem.
The problem here is not They. A new They can replace the old They–and will! What keeps the system going is money. And people wanting the things that money can buy. This is the heart of slavery.
There is a moral issue here: Money maximizes the distance between an action and its consequences. How many of your friends use cell phones? (Plenty of mine do!) How many of them realize that their cell phones are the reason for the genocides in central equatorial Africa? How many would give up their phones if they knew? How many are even WILLING to know? This is a deep-seated moral problem: It is not just our Masters who are corrupt.
If you want to be free, you must learn to stop wanting the things that money can buy, and learn to prefer the things that you and your friends and neighbors can make.
Start learning about sustainable systems. They existed before white people arrived in North America, and will exist in the future if humans survive in North America at all. The idea is to try to be part of that, to navigate toward it.
How to sell all this to your friends and neighbors who are right now going broke? I am not a good student of Lakof–how to push the emotional buttons of people’s fantasy! But all of the stuff of our civilization is really addiction. It’s structure and role in our lives is no different than addiction to alcohol or crack. In dealing with addiction we do not try to sell: A program of spiritual recovery works by attraction, not promotion. This is hard, for we have been taught that everything can be sold–even the truth!–and moreover must be. But this is just part of the addictive thinking. It is not so.
It will not be possible to get everyone on board, and thus not possible to prevent the great chaos that is coming. It is just barely possible that the US will not go nazi: The corporate state has long since arrived and the military foundation is right now being ramped up. Will people buy it? What they will be buying is a chance at the dwindling industrialized food (not quite Soylent Green, we hope!) in return for joining a killing machine (that is busy killing, at home and abroad). Can people be persuaded to turn away from this? This is the key political fight we need to win. But without local food, this fight will surely be lost.
Navigating the coming chaos, then, is the central task.
Your point about Toffler is surprising and good. I had never thought much of him, but viewing him as a grandfather of the Shock Doctrine pulls it into sharp focus. It would be interesting to go back and see if he knew what he was doing. His accolytes surely did!
Step back from the edge. Breathe, slowly, inhale to the count of ten, exhale to the count of ten…
Now. Think calmly and clearly: First, define “they.” It’s easy really — don’t “they” all fit in a ballroom? The ultimate destination for “us” confronting a “they” is not uniting. It’s dividing into secret cells of snipers and guillotine builders. That’s been done before. The frogs jump out of the boiling water into the fires of anarchy and tyrants arise… or “Democratic Experiments” that eventually devolve into tyranny, as we have now seen. The cycle of civilization spirals as it always has…
Now. Define “plan.” More money/more power is not a plan; it’s a motive… a self-defeating motive. Sure, there are plans that arise from that motive but every single one of them ultimately lead to dead frogs and dead aristocrats and the “plan” collapses. It could be that “they” have put together a really “long con” this time and it always sucks to be one of the dying frogs…
So. There’s your choice: peaceful dying frog or murderous revolutionary. But realize: IT DOESN’T MATTER WHICH CHOICE YOU MAKE! The fucking spiral will roll on… a new “they” will take control. (Hey, maybe YOU could be one of “they”.)
The essential dilemma is not “they.” It doesn’t matter how we humans organize our collective endeavors, the Few end up controlling the Many. This result appears to be hardwired into our DNA. A Few are born to Lord and Many are born to Bow. It’s not just the nature of humanity… it’s the friggin’ nature of NATURE! Show me an egalitarian lion’s den or the wolf pack without an alpha-dog! Or the cud-chewing cows without a bull lording it over them! And the old bull gets beaten by the new bullshit. So it goes…
Now, now. What were you saying about uniting and being awake and aware? Make your individual choice: frying pan or fire? This situation isn’t shocking; it SNAFU.
Wow, depressing as hell comment, but it rings of truth.
I can only hope, with our slightly bigger gray masses, and evolution, we can start to think more like bees… yeah there may be a queen but its always about whats good for the all…..
I am sorry about it being depressing but it is the truth that I’ve observed during my sixty years on the planet and from my exhausted search for exceptions in history. But, do have hope because it is a SPIRAL not a vicious circle. This “Democratic Experiment” had a long run and next time maybe it will last even longer before the corruption part sets in.
Sucks to be a worker bee or a short-lived drone… You sure about them feeling okay with their part in what’s good for the all?
As hyperbole it didn’t quite make it; but we need to advance to the point where we see ourselves as part of an ecology, and that all humans are family, making exploitation and degradation unthinkable… of course I mean it in a more advanced way….
Combining small groups into large societies creates avenues for corruption leading to self destruction. There may be no cure for this.
Currently I think the key difference is between societies oriented toward sustainability and those that are not. The latter fail, always.
Our Main Scenerio approximates Easter Island, with plagues filling in (at least partly) for cannabilism to achieve population reduction. The problem with this scenerio is that it is an infinite downward spiral: We destroy the resources in the present that we need to survive in the future, so that population shrinks endlessly while the land turns into desert. The process ends when the population is too small and debilitated to have further impact on the ecosystem. Subsahara Africa is doing this right now. There is no cure.
Our fate was built into our attitudes at the outset. If we would survive, we must change our attitudes.
Literally, this is a matter of spiritual recovery from addiction.