The world is descending into chaos, turmoil, bankruptcy, hunger, and despair. The Deep State has gone too far. Every system (political, financial, judicial, social) is either dysfunctional, corrupt, or captured by vested interests. It can’t be fixed. It’s delusional to think we can change a corrupted system by working through that very same system. It’s like tilting against windmills.
Don’t even bother. We all know the collapse of the existing social order is coming. It will happen within the next decade. That is a certainty. The article below captures it perfectly. We all need to tend to our own affairs. We need to prepare our part of the world. It will be different for every person. But it is a useless exercise to think we can change what is going to happen. Pull back from the system as far as you are able. Starve the beast. Don’t believe anything your government or media tell you. Don’t even listen.
The times ahead will be difficult. Preparation today will pay off tomorrow. When things start to go South, they will go quickly and panic will engulf the nation. That will not be the time to prepare. That will be the time to hunker down, survive and hopefully build a better tomorrow.
Human Action: The Answer to a Larger Loss of Control
Published by The Daily Bell – August 15 2014
Study: You have ‘near zero’ impact on U.S. Policy … A startling new political science study concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control U.S. policy to such a degree that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact.” – Breitbart
Dominant Social Theme: If people were more politically aware, the US and the West would be in better shape.
Free-Market Analysis: This is a startling study that seems to tell the truth about regulatory democracy: Voting is merely a ritual; power is concentrated in the hands of a few.
We knew this already, and have written about it regularly. Still … it’s startling to see these sentiments expressed so bluntly in the mainstream media. And being fairly cynical observers of the modern scene, we wonder if there is not something more behind it.
Here, from the article:
The startling study, titled “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Politics and was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page.
Noted American University Historian Allan J. Lichtman, who highlighted the piece in a Tuesday article published in The Hill, calls Gilens and Page’s research “shattering” and says their scholarship “should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government.”
The statistical research looked at public attitudes on nearly 1,800 policy issues and determined that government almost always ignores the opinions of average citizens and adopts the policy preferences of monied business interests when shaping the contours of U.S. laws.
The study’s findings align with recent trends, where corporate elites have aggressively pursued pro-amnesty policies despite the fact that, according to the most recent Reuters poll, 70% of Americans believe illegal immigrants “threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs,” and 63% believe “immigrants place a burden on the economy.”
The solution, say the scholars, is a reinvigorated and engaged electorate.
While we are in agreement regarding the problem, we would tend to disagree with the conclusion. There are two problems with modern Western democracy that we can see: Corporate personhood and monopoly central banking. Get rid of legislative and judiciary support of these two concepts and you would have a much different US power structure.
What the US – and the West – needs is a fundamental discussion about how modern democracies have evolved. Unfortunately, in investigating this article, we found the solutions were a good deal less substantive and sophisticated than the analysis of the problem
The Hill article referred to above, authored by history professor Allan Lichtman, concludes as follows:
Ordinary citizens in recent decades have largely abandoned their participation in grassroots movements. Politicians respond to the mass mobilization of everyday Americans as proven by the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s. But no comparable movements exist today. Without a substantial presence on the ground, people-oriented interest groups cannot compete against their wealthy adversaries.
Average Americans also have failed to deploy the political techniques used by elites. Political Action Committees (PACs) and super-PACs, for example, raise large sums of money to sway the outcome of any election in the United States. Although average Americans cannot match the economic power of the rich, large numbers of modest contributions can still finance PACs and super-PACs that advance our common interests.
If only they vote and organize, ordinary Americans can reclaim American democracy and challenge the politicians who still echo the view of old Vanderbilt that the public should be damned.
Lichtman and presumably the authors of the study are likely moving in the wrong direction. The prosperity of the US in particular was not built on grassroots participation in politics but on the ABSENCE of politics.
One could certainly argue that this is yet another populist meme joining others we’ve covered of late: the “income inequality” meme and, of course, the “one percent” meme. The latter argues that mere millionaires are influential in the current disastrous course of Western societies when in fact it is evidently and obviously a very small circle of men who control the enormous power of monopoly central banking.
Put these developing memes together and you end up with a proscription for a certain kind of “solution.” It is one that features grassroots activism, populism and the threat of violence aimed at the “wealthy.”
This has always been the noxious brew of populism, the idea that the dysfunction of the political system can be remedied if only “the people” take back ownership of the socio-political and economic structure that is rightfully theirs.
It is, in our view, a misguided philosophy and one eloquently expressed in two “Claudius” books we’ve referred to in the past: I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Historian-author Robert Graves composed these books in the 20th century to explore issues related to ancient Rome that are, as well, compelling today.
The books are written from the point of view of crippled Claudius, emperor of Rome, who spent most of his life writing about the return of Republicanism to ancient Rome. Only after he becomes emperor does he more fully understand the difficulty of “going back.”
Graves surely wrote these books in part as a warning to a modern-day readership about the inexorable trends of post-war Western societies. The West in modern times – especially the US – resembles nothing so much as ancient Rome. Its emphasis on military force, regulatory control of domestic populations and creeping – or galloping – authoritarianism mimics to a considerable degree what went on in ancient Italy.
Graves’s conclusion is either pessimistic or optimistic, depending on how you look at it. While Claudius seems to realize finally that the Roman republic is never returning, there is also within the context of the books – an allowance for the readers’ knowledge of modern history. Rome did fall, but then there were the rise of the Dark Ages (that weren’t so dark) and a decentralization of power that culminated in the Renaissance and the reclamation of the science and the scientific method.
Societies seem to have a certain inevitable ebb and flow. Elites, ever more focused on centralization that enhances their power and control, drive their societies toward increased concentrations of power. The middle-classes go along with social restructuring because they have to, not because they want to.
It is certainly disheartening to contemplate a future in which the social infrastructure is continually degrading, but history seems to inform us that, for the most part, when negative trends are set in motion, they tend to continue and expand. This is why we try to emphasize human action, and to suggest to people that they tend assiduously to their own garden, as Voltaire suggested in Candide.
Whether it is attempting to prudently leverage wealth from the current Wall Street Party or to disperse and allocate assets via money metals and real estate, people need to concentrate on their own situations as best they can to benefit their families, friends and local communities.
It is saddening to think that American exceptionalism is ending and that nothing can bring it back. But one can turn instead toward human action and individual and local community fulfillment. Freedom starts, after all, with the individual and the determination, as Harry Browne put it, to “live free in an unfree world.”
Conclusion
If one wants to be involved in the great issues of the day, they are certainly there for the seizing, regardless, but tending to one’s own garden is increasingly important in unquiet times.
lly says:
Gotta love a shitfest! 🙂
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As far as laying in supplies of food, freeze dried, canned or otherwise – that’s just starvation insurance. Our grandparents did the exact same thing. I fail to see how it could be viewed as anything other than prudent… but don’t be stupid. Nothing lasts forever (however, tests conducted on a 100 year old cache of food from Shackleton’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition in the Endurance showed that canned food, so long as the can is not breached by outside air, was originally canned properly and remained at a stable temperature, it is fit to eat. It might not taste so great and I’m sure the nutrients are degraded, but it will serve if there is nothing else…)
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As long as the retort procedures were carried out properly, and the product is not so acidic as to erode the can and it’s lining, canned food is safely edible for many decades, even in temperate climates.
Every couple of weeks I get a call from a woman who runs a non-profit in our area. It helps to provide hospice services to elderly and dying patients in the region who prefer to remain at home until the end. This organization is supported entirely from donations and by a small resale shop where people can donate old furniture and household items and those looking to decorate a Summer home on the lake or a dorm room at the college can find a few pieces for a good price. I have a truck and a couple of trailers and a teenage son. That qualifies me as a good call for pickups of armoires and sofa beds providing they are on the third floor and heavy enough. This woman knows I will not tell her no and she is sweet and kind in that elderly, professional volunteer way that makes even her most difficult requests hard to deny. In exchange we always get first dibs on old tools that are donated but rarely sold and my son and I get to work on our moving skills.
If you have never navigated a large dresser around tight corners and down a flight of steps with another person it is hard to imagine just how much is going on in what seems like a simple task. There is the lifting aspect, sure. I am nowhere near as strong as I once was, but I have learned a few tricks over the years on how to use my body as effectively as possible in order to avoid injury. I can size up a piece fairly well and tell if a door needs to come of the hinges, if it needs to be inverted, which room it must be backed into before we negotiate the descent to the ground floor or if it must be taken apart before we begin. In most cases the home owners are of no use at all. Gray and frail now they were raising families when the piece was last moved, in some instance we discover that whole additions to the house were added since the breakfront went in through a french door that hasn’t been there since Lawrence Welk was still in first run.
The thing I enjoy about doing this is that my so and I get to work on our unspoken communications, our understanding of each other by the shift in piece as we descend stairs, how we can both look at a piece and sense how to angle it before we approach the door frames or how to best load the pieces into the bed of the truck without pinching a finger between the crown mold and the tailgate. Moving large objects with another person demands mutual effort and understanding and at the same time complete submission to the immediate needs of another person when the load shifts. One man can’t do it all and if any task ever proved it, moving furniture is the closest I have ever encountered.
We are always grateful for the donations, always patient with the donors. We often compliment their home, for its tasteful furnishings or its lovely view. We make sure to let them know about the farm and if they need fresh eggs or firewood this Fall that we are available. 9 times our of 10 they are glad to share some tip, compliment us on our youth, our strength or our enthusiasm or even offer something to eat. We make sure to say thank you again and then we return to the shop to unload and go about the rest of our day.
Several years ago when my mother was dying, she asked if we could take her home so she could die in her own bed. Hospice was arranged and we set her up in the downstairs overlooking the pond out back and I slept on the couch nearby. During the day a visiting nurse would come and tend to her most personal needs. They alternated- I can’t remember a single one specifically- but they all had a similar calm about them. These nurses were end of life specialists and they obviously had been trained in how to prepare not only the patient, but the family for the inevitable. On the last day that my mother was conscious she awoke just after dawn. The sun was pouring into the room at a slant, bouncing off the surface of the water outside and throwing flickering gold light across the bed and the wall. I was up already reading something by her bedside when she spoke to me.
“I thought I was in heaven.” she said.
“You are, Mom.” I said. “You are.”
When we do things for other people without being paid it doesn’t mean there is no reward. Some things you do because you can’t pay back a debt in any other way. Other things are paid out in efforts that others cannot give, but there is an ebb and flow in everything we do, good and bad.
Driving back from the drop off my son and I looked out at the landscape and we both remarked on the soft maples in the low spots, already showing bright red leaves. Fall is coming and Winter will be hard on its heels even though it ought to be the hottest part of Summer. It doesn’t matter what ought to be and it does no use to worry about it or be sad that it is rapidly disappearing from view, what matters is that we need to get ready for what’s next, to prepare for the inevitable even as we spend a few more moments enjoying the warmth of the sun.
When we got back to the farm we headed out to the garden and harvested haircot vert, carrots, cukes and sweet corn. We’d defrosted a filet mignon as a reward for the day and we decided to grill the meat and the corn, roast the carrots and make a cucumber and onion salad to go along with the green beans. My wife and our younger children are visiting family this week so it is just the two us in the house, often without lights except where we read, and a great deal more silence than we normally experience. We talked the whole time that we prepared our meal and when we ate we did it standing up at the cutting block as the last light of evening died outdoors.
We do indeed tend our garden and we enjoy the bounty that we receive and are grateful for it, but we’d be foolish to believe that it is the result of our work alone. Some one saved the seeds for hundreds of years so that we could enjoy the flavor of the beans and another someone cleared this land originally under far more primitive conditions than anything we’ve ever dealt with. I look at my son and remember how careful my wife was when she carried him, how many untold hours went into forming the character of this young man who is so helpful to us, so gracious towards strangers and think that at least some of that is a credit to the woman who raised me who will never see how he turned out. The people in those homes who dispossess themselves of their holdings to make way for what is coming do so with sadness, I’m sure, but they also do it with a sense of joy. They are often proud of each piece that they give away as if they had built it themselves and the woman who sells those pieces to other people for their use helps a lot of other people besides- people spending their last hours at home before moving on to somewhere else.
People should tend their gardens, but they should remember to share their harvest as well.