The Fasces. A bundle of sticks with a protruding axe. The symbol of Fascism. |
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Introduction
The current left-wing right-wing paradigm that pervades our political system is polarizing more and more people every day. The tribalism in man drives us to choose sides in battles, and wave that side's banner, which backs up this false-paradigm. Choosing a political party is about much more than choosing something mundane, like a football team, but the concept is basically the same.
There are few righteous individuals in politics these days; used to be that's where you'd go to be a champion for your fellow man. Now it seems politicians all have a horse in the race, or are jockeys themselves. See, they get horse races, we get the rat race.
Many people find themselves on one side of "the aisle" or the other because of rhetoric regarding income inequality and wealth disparity. Others are polarized because of social justice issues. Some from climate beliefs. Guns. War. Etc.
House Chamber of Congress - fasces flanking |
Once all these dots begin to be connected it becomes clear that it's not the government being too large or corporate power being too vast that is the problem with our country, it's both! They are one in the same at this point! We are living in what can only be called corpo-fascism: the merger of the deep-state and big-business. This has bred marginal at best, and destructive, sometimes deadly at worse, policies and outcomes.
From the Library of Economics and Liberty: "As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax."
Fascism is not strictly socialism, though. More from the LEL:
"Where socialism sought totalitarian control of society's economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the "national interest" - that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state). Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions."
Well, that is a fairly succint portrayal of the current political climate we are weathering. This has been a long time coming, guys like George Orwell - who were/are "insiders" - have been well aware of the agenda to take us this direction; Orwells's novels were confessions and thought-experiments more-so than works of fiction.
The ranking members of the armed forces know exactly what they are fighting for. |
On September 11, 1990, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the New World Order as a forgone conclusion - backed up by a "credible UN," and their "peacekeeping force" (military funded by American tax dollars). "When we are successful, and we will be..." Bush said with a sneer across his lips. "We have a real chance at this New World Order."
The New World Order is global corpo-fascism. And it's here already.
Many people have come to grasp this, and are doing their best to fight it everyday. There are still large swathes of the population living in blind ignorance to the facts, who believe everything they're fed through the mainstream mockingbird media. This manifesto is for those people.
Online there is a vast network simply into the idea of seeking truth... no matter where that leads them. Information comes in at 2/3 the speed of light, and a lot of people are beginning to consider themselves "awake." It's heartening, but there's still that gap of people just either unwilling or unable to listen to fact based evidence and come to rational conclusions.
The concept of discernment has become confused with skepticism.
One man's awake is another man's enmity. The scale of "wokeness" can range from New-Nazis to Black Panthers/Lives Matter, from Orthodox Christians to Satanists, from Anarchists to Communists. All these groups would surely consider themselves awake, so why such the massive divergence in opinions and beliefs?
Over a quarter of each party views the other as a threat to the Nation's well being. |
The info wars are real, and the deep-state power-brokers are out there peddling their own "facts," writing history in a way that most appeals to their interests, and selling it to the American public on the corporate news. Meanwhile, the alternative-media is slowly but surely hacking away at the media monarchies of old, carving out larger and larger chunks of the audience's attention. respect, and money.
More than half of the country still align themselves with either the Republicrats or Democrans. The blame, admonition, and abuse dished out by one side to the other is constant. Battle lines are drawn. Arguments are boiled down to their most base assessments, and the memes associated with the arguments (as well as the people who have made them) are bannered around by the red and blue camps.
While those who identify with a particular party are rapidly adding distance between each other on the ideological scale, the kowtowing by the politicians and media that propels that divergence has left many Americans identifying as Independent. Libertarians are gaining a foothold on the face of the political mountain, be it an unstable one. The dearth of political parties and the incessant pandering politicians has left many Americans without a harness on their climb.
If you think abortion should be illegal but you think the impoverished need subsidies to subsist. sorry there's no party for you to join. If you think gay marriage isn't worth an argument, but you don't think the government should force you to buy insurance, sorry no party for you. If you think federal spending needs to be reeled in, but corporations still need to be regulated, no party. If you think man-made global warming is an utter sham, but think immigrants support vast sectors of our economy, party ain't happening. If you want the Federal Reserve audited or shut down, like guns but don't think automatic weapons are necessary, want the "troops to come home," don't want the NSA spying on your every key-stroke, sorry, dude, no party! This could be continues on and on, and just typifies the false choice that we are given in electing "representative" officials.
Through the "internet reformation," factual information is finally becoming readily available without having to sift through and aggregate 60 channels of propaganda to find it. There are far too many people who still rely on purely CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and their ilk for their information. These people get fed half-truths through a number of filters (networks, owners, newscasters, editors, etc.); more and more they are being straight lied to. This has caused many of the conflicts of opinion in our current media-dominated culture. There is an information gap.
The major news networks stir up their audiences by pandering to their biases. |
The information gap includes people either not interested or unwilling to seek the truth. It includes those who lack the means to obtain facts. It includes people who have been taught mis/dis-information - indoctrinated, or have been victims of those with financial incentive to obscure the truth - propagandized (Big-Daddy Gov., Big-Pharma, GMOs, NGOs, Tobacco, DuPont, etc.).
Information is a tool. As such, it can be and is used to construct ideologies and dogmas. What concerns me is that the current "awakening" man of this "new age," who has the ultimate tool in the internet to consume information at our whims, is being deceived. Information is being used as a weapon, and effectively so.
The systemic disseverance of information into false-paradigms and hegelian-dialectics has caused rifts and divisions in societies around the world, throughout domestic political discourse, within our own social circles, and could very well lead to a civil war and/or a world war.
"Order out of Chaos" has been the mantra for controlling the masses for millennia. Chaos is being created in front of our eyes. If we the people can recognize it and organize our own solutions rather than relying on the government to do that for us, then we may actually have a chance of resuscitating our unconscious American values.
No matter how awake you think you might be, the facts on the ground don't change. What is real and tangible will always have more efficacy in shaping opinion and spurring action than philosophy or dogma.
Part 1: Pawns
That's you and me. The lowly proletariat. The one's so easily manipulated and swayed into patterns of thought or behavior. A person is smart, people are stupid. There has been a myriad of socio-psychological experiments conducted that show the frailty and malleability of the human mind. Some examples just off the top of my head include the Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram's obedience to authority electro-shock experiments, the skinner box, and MK Ultra mind control - the Monarch Project. That last one is particularly conspicuous.
Public-Private Partnerships continue to be formed on larger and larger scales, which will soon morph into global corpo-fascism if the UN's plans for "sustainable development" succeed, which they very much are on the local level in many regions. A vote for a political candidate no longer accomplishes anything in a global economy that has and will continue to usurp many aspects of the Constitution, therefore, the new votes are made every single day of our lives, in the form of dollars.
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Family
The family is supposed to be the basic unit of society. From whatever biewpoint you wish to look from; soci-economic, psychological, religious/moral, the underlying philosphies of many of the world's great-thinkers have always been rooted in the family.
Where philosophy becomes dogma you have culture.
How can we describe American culture? Is it rooted in the family? It certainly used to be, but it seems to be a dying concept... though, not one that can't be revived. The break-down of the American family structure has been systemic, and taken decades to unfold. I'm not saying this has been intentionally done by the "powers that be," just that this is the current state of the Union, pun intended.
The biggest factor in the subsidence of the American family has been divorce. Once a rarity (especially in the church), now 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. 67% of second marriages end in divorce, and it's even worse for third marriages.
This undoubtedly has to do with the un-sanctification of the practice as a whole. Marriage is hardly thought of anymore as an affirmation of a couple's unity in the presence of God. Now it seems the sole purpose is to receive tax-benefits.
Divorce has become a multi-billion dollar market. Companies like Start Over Smart have pioneered the break-up business. These divroce-companies aggregate all the pieces needed for a nice, clean split. Lawyers, movers, councilors, real-estate agentcies, insurance agencies, everything you need to start a new life - for a fee. Indeed, there are many people getting paid in the now streamlines process of breaking up a family.
People have been trying to get marital law reformed for years, as there are problems with alimony, child support, and many other confrontational aspects of the process, which requires hiring of "experts" to settle, as the laws have become egregiously convoluted. This leads to combative separation instead of amicable ones.
The reasons for divorce always vary. Sometimes people just truly would never work together, and it is better for all parties involved. There is no incentive for couples to stick it out through the rough patches anymore, though, since there is abundant tax-payer money to support single-parent families these days.
The median household income for a married couple is $84,000. The median household income for single mothers is $26,000. Half of single mothers are divorced (I use mothers because they receive the child over 80% of the time in a split). That leaves single mothers with large financial burdens while trying to raise their children. Single mother statistics.
The financial disincentives of separation used to keep some couples together, but now there are numerous programs set up as a "safety net." 90% of food stamp beneficiaries are single mothers. There are child-care subsidies. There is health coverage through Medicare. There's Title X: The National Family Planning Program - which funds Planned Parenthood. Section 8 housing vouchers. Cash assistance programs. Cell Phone and Internet Services. Free and Reduced Lunch programs. The Weatherization Assistance Program. And still more...
Altogether we spend about a trillion dollars every year on entitlement programs that prop up the ever-expanding welfare state. What is unfortunate is the number of divorcees that are stuck in the welfare system feedback loop. What's the best way to get out of poverty and off welfare? Education, right? Well if you want to go to school you cannot receive welfare of any kind, because you are not "working" or "looking for work." Never mind the fact that you are trying to go to school so you can gain skills so you no longer have to rely on subsidies.
One of the major factors contributing to the dramatic rise in divorce rates is the ease of access and tolerance of drug use. This includes the corpo-fascist versions as well, known as prescriptions. This also includes the most psychologically-benign, yet extrinsically affective drug of all, alcohol.
Bent perception is just that.
It's a wonder why some drugs can have a positive connotation to people, while other drugs can make them cringe and shudder at the thought of using them. Drugs are drugs, it doesn't matter if the government has allowed a corporation to patent the chemcial formula and sell it or not. Often times companies will take compounds naturally found in plants, change one or two molecules, patent it, and sell it for billions.
The fascism comes into play when government outlaws, bans, and criminalizes the naturally growing substances, to force consumers to buy the products that have been patented to replace the natural ones.
For older Americans, particularly the baby-boomer generation, a "drug" such as cannabis still carries with it a reputation of a negro-enraging white-woman-raping illicit substance. It's a joke that cannabis is still a Schedule 1 controlled substance according to the federal governmenet, even though more than half the States have legalized at least medical use. VA doctors aren't even allowed to discuss the treatment option with their patients, let alone think of prescribing it for disorders like PTSD (something that has been studied).
The typical excuse given by ignorant physicians and talking heads for not supporting the use of cannabis is that it "hasn't been studies enough," well then un-schedule it so it can be studied... it's that simple. Why do that, though, when drug companies can patent the individual compounds in the cannabis plant (or any other "illicit substance") and subsequently market them?
With billions of dollars at play in the ubiquitous Rockefeller Medicine scheme, which has successfully monetized disease, there are really no limits to how far cronies will go for profits. The American Medical Association even censured a doctor who cured cancer... seriously. Can't have cures for stuff, then the marketplace loses its customer base.
The petrochemical-driven drug industry has been propped up by endless legislation and requirements for licensing since the early 1800's. They have, unfortunately, won the battle for hearts and minds when it comes to modern-medical practices.
There is ceaseless marketing campaigns to pimp the newest and most improve-est penis pumpers, fat shredders, weight gainers, heart regulators, blood flowers, allergy alleviators, put-to-sleepers, waker-uppers, downers, side-to-siders... and we find this normal. Meanwhile, endless propaganda programs persuade the public against the use of anything deemed "quack-medicine," or "hippy-science," or anachronistic.
For an example of how this psychological bemusement directly affect the public, we can look at the rates that people die within the first thirty days of chemo-treatments; they are staggering. More often than not it's the "therapy" that is killing patients, not the actual disease. Yet people have been taught to believe that this is the only option, it's not. There are countless stories of chemo-less cancer conquerors. There are a plethora of remedies, so why rely on only one, that's literally poison, that makes somebody money?
There is an old adage that was prevalent during the takeover of Rockefeller Medicine (allopathy) from the Asian-rooted homeopathy in the 1800's. "With homeopathy the disease kills you, with allopathy the cure kills you."
Lobby dollars spent annually by Pharm/Health Prod. |
What makes the pharmaceutical industry so lucrative is the leveraging of the patent system by corporations. We'll get more into the patent system scam and intellectual property rights later. For now, it will suffice to say that government policies created a monopoly for drug companies, which is fascism.
The government helped create the current medical industry -> The industry spends meager amounts of money on lobbyists -> Politicians see to it that corporate-friendly policies get advanced in exchange for gifts and favors -> They both come away "winners," and the people in actual need of effective healthcare inevitably come out the "losers."
And look at the average return on investment from those pharma-lobbyists, an unfathomable 77,500%! That's called fascism, folks:
Click to Enlarge |
United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch correctly stated the obvious, that it's not marijuana that's the gateway drug to anything, but rather the pharmaceutical industry. Patients often become hooked on the pills prescribed to them by a doctor, the scrip runs out, or they seek something a little more potent, and they turn to harder alternatives. "In so many cases, it isn't trafficking rings that introduce a person to opioids," Lynch said. "It's the household medicine cabinet. That's the source."
There are more than 190,000 federal inmates across the country, and nearly half of them are incarcerated because of drug offenses. More than 80% are locked up for victimless crimes. In total, therea re roughly 300,000 inmates in the US charged with drug offenses. The infamous and draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws were instrumental in shaping the 15 years to life policy adopted by many legislative bodies around the nation. These were the ostensible foundation of the Mandatory Minimums so frequently opined against.
As Governor of New York in the 70's, Nelson Rockefeller decided to take a hard stance on the perceived drug crisis in his State. He took an about-face from the State's previously held position, which was to find treatment programs for drug-abusers, rather than throw them in jail. Rockefeller was quoted as saying in a cabinet meeting, "For drug pushing - life sentence. No parole. No probation. No plea bargaining." The law was passed with assistance from fear-mongering and propaganda films such as "Panic in Needle Park," and "The French Connection."
Lawmakers and civil liberties activists felt regret for passing the law, especially after seeing the disparity of poor and black arrests that immediately followed. Governor Rockefeller would go on to serve as Vice President under Gerald Ford.
Today, mandatory minimums have started to be reeled back some, but prison is still the wrong action to take to actually help drug-abusers.
Needless to say, when the drugs peddles by and criminalized by our own country contribute to an overwhelming number in the prison population, it is going to have an undesirable affect on the unity of the family.
The direct costs to detain, house, clothe, and feed "inmates" are nearly $400 billion a year. This number is given to us by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but completely neglects the over 700,000 families that currently have a relative incarcerated. The costs to the family include travel costs to visit the relative ($500 million/year), burdens of moving expenses as a result of eviction either from loss of income or release of a felon - some places will not let a felon live in their property (average of $1,635 in expenses per eviction), and of course the propensity for divorce, which brings with it a whole slew of side effects ($17.7 billion).
Family Burdens of Incarceration Study done by Washington University in St. Louis |
The US has a disproportionate number of people in it's prisons. We have roughly 4% of the world's population, but house 22% of the world's prisoners (2013). Half of those prisoners are behind bars because of drug offenses. Those drug offenses carry such strict sentences because of draconian drug laws initially instituted by Nelson Rockefeller. Those drug laws were enacted to help prop up the patent-driven industry of consumer-medicine, which was pioneered by the same Rockefeller family.
The basic unit of society (family) has taken a back seat in directing the evolution of culture to corporate policies and government legislation enabling those policies.
Solutions:
Understand the emotional manipulation undertaken by our government and their corporate sponsors.
Value the sanctity of marriage as a religious practice instead of a governmental one. Better yet, sever the religious practice of marriage from the civil practice of marriage altogether. Let's have separate ceremonies; one for an affirmation to God - and then another to the state if you so choose. The government shouldn't be giving out tax-incentives for private-unions between people, or providing a safety net when those unions crumble into pieces.
Realize pharmaceutical companies are not in the business of curing anything. A one-time drug that cures does not keep the customer coming back. Also realize, this is the way the industry is viewed by those who finance and control it; as a business model. Research alternatives to the phony knock-off pill-forms of many natural herbal remedies. There are alternatives, you just have to be willing to look for them yourself, they will not be given to you by a corporation.
Support the decriminalization of drugs. This may be a hard pill to swallow for some, but there are already examples of this being an effective strategy for stemming the tide of drug use.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs 15 years ago, and instead of spending money to imprison drug users, they used it to set up programs to give abusers treatment and counseling. Portugal's rates of drug use have declined substantially. There has been a decline in youth drug use. The percentage of drug-offenders in the Portuguese prison system declined from 44% to 24% in four years after decriminalization. It has reduced drug induced deaths. It's reduced social costs. More people in treatment. Reduced rates of AIDS/HIV. There really has been no negative consequence of Portugal's move to decriminalize.
It is a slippery slope from a prescription to an addiction, and many people can't tell the difference.
Adopt the moral stance of "No Victim No Crime." If somebody is doing something stupid that is going to hurt themselves, be it riding their bike with no helmet, or shooting their veins full of opium, that person is harming nobody but themselves. If you take the argument that drug-racketeering causes victims, well again, our government has been complicit, nay, active participants in the drug-game for decades. Sometimes simple concepts can carry the most value when it comes to consistency of principles; no victim no crime stands up time and time again to philosophical or moral scrutiny.
Eat healthy foos and avoid trans-fats and simple sugars. I know nobody wants to hear it, but the best way to stay out of the doctor's office, and avoid being prescribed something is to maintain a healthy diet - that dead horse cannot be beaten enough. The only thing you have to do is count your macros, bro!
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Food
Many Americans ket their diets choose them, instead of them choosing their diets. They let cravings dictate their meal substance and schedule. In our consumer culture we have limitless options for food, but most of it is actually complete shit. It is getting harder and harder to find healthy options at an affordable price; everything used to be "organic," now that is far more rare and much more expensive than non-organic.
With booms in population it is easy to understand the need to increase the size and frequency of yields to continue feeding hungry peoples. Corporations' choice to go with Genetically Modifies Organisms instead of finding natural ways to deal with problems like weeds, pests, and quality/quantity of yield - as well as the government's promulgation and proliferation of those corporate policies - have had sever and even fatal consequences.
We can choose no to buy GMO foods, but even getting the government to label these foods as such is worse than pulling teeth.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that the active chemical (Glyphosate) in Monsanto's weed killer Round Up is probably carcinogenic. When the State of California moved to have Glyphosate added to the list of known carcinogens (as required by California state law), and in turn force Monsanto to clearly label it on their products, Monsanto sued California to prevent it.
Monsanto's basis for the lawsuit was that California was ceding regulatry control to an "unelected, undemocratic, unaccounatble, and foreing body" that is not subject to oversight by any state or federal entity. Kind of sounds like the UN, or the EU, or NATO. Really all California was trying to do is warn consumers of a carcinogen in their food... The majority of American fruits, vegetables, and nuts are grown in California. 99% of walnuts, 97% of kiwis, 97% of plums, 95% of celery, 95% of garlic, 89% of cauliflower, 71% of spinach, 69% of carrots, etc., etc.
Monsanto has a fat team of super-corpo-lawyers, and they use them at every opportunity. As of 2014 they had sued 145 farmers for "improperly using their patented seeds." They sued the State of Vermont for "violating their freedom of speech" by passing a GMO labeling law. They sued the State of Hawaii for passing a ballot initiative to place a moratorium on all GM foods. They've even sued farmers for saving seeds from the previous year and planting them the next, instead of buying new seeds. The litigation goes on and on in a continued effort to obscure any information regarding the hazards of GMOs, and to keep the profit pipelines pumping.
The US military, under the direction of L. Paul Bremer, successfully opened up Iraq and Afghanistan to imperialism, and Monsanto capitalized on the opportunity. Under the guise of eradicating the poppy field, something the Taliban had nearly done prior to the 2001 invasion, Round Up was indiscriminately sprayed throughout the regions. Since the seeds Monsanto has engineered are resistant to Round Up, this has forced many farmers - in Afghanistan/Iraq as well as here in the states - to rely on these patented geno-monopoly seeds. Most of these seeds have also been engineered to not produce new seed, meaning the farmers have to keep coming back to Monsanto year after year, instead of where the seeds actually came from - God.
Monsanto has long been in the war-profiteering business, going back to the manufacture of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.
We the people have began pushing back. 89% of people in the US wanted GMO labeling to be required. In the face of states (like the one's mentions above) taking their own direct action against the corporate-deception, the Senate passed a bill to federally mandate GMO labeling.
Here's the catch, instead of actually printing on packages which ingredients have been GMed, companies can just put a QR code that will take them to a website with all of the information. This entirely misses the point, as the people most in need of the labeling will not take the time, have the means, or the know-how to scan a QR code. Let alone have to do so with every single product they handle in the grocery supermarket!
The foundation of the processed-foods industry, which is the staple of the America diet, is corn and soy. 92% of corn and 94% of soybeans are currently genetically engineered. It has been conservatively estimated that 75% of the processed foods on supermarket shelves contain GE ingredients.
GMOs have been linked to cancer, liver/kidney disfunction, and severe hormonal disruption. They've been linked to allergic reactions, obesity, Celiac disease, infertility, and autism. As the use of GE crops and herbicides/pesticides has increased, the instances of all these ailments and diseases have increased as well. There is such a thing as false correlation, but there is too much evidence for anybody to say that there is not a link between overall human health and GMOs.
There is so much more than can be said about Monsanto and GMOs - like the fact their scientists have known for years that Glyphosate causes birth defects - but this is just one spoke in the wheel that continually rolls over us pawns. Some might ask, "How is there no government oversight on this?" Well, this spoke has been faceted via public-private partnership, more fascism at work.
Monsanto-Government Conflicts of Interest THIS IS JUST A PORTION OF THE CRONY FASCISM |
For a thorough description of how and why Glyphosate is so detrimental to bio-chemical functions in the body, take a cursory viewing of this talk by Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Senior Research Scientist at MIT. She explains how Glyphosate, along with fluoride in our water, and aluminum in an array of products, all combine to have a synergistic toxicity. She describes how this synergistic toxicity affect the pineal gland, and how sulfate deficiency is connected with the sun. Dr. Seneff has declared that her research into Glyphosate readily explains our country's explosions in rates of Autism, Alzheimer's, and many other neurological diseases. She has much more experience with biology than I ever will I'm sure, so I will let her explain the science. It is a lengthy lecture, but well worth viewing.
Bayer is in the process of buying Monsanto to create the world's largest chemical pesticide and seed producer. This is in response to the consolidation of other big-ag giants into global juggernauts. China National Chemical Corp. will acquire Syngenta AG, while Dupont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. plan to merge and create a new crop-science unit.
These mega-corps' MOs are to control the food-production process from seed to able. A scary proposition, giving too big to fail a whole new crunchy caveat.
"Round Up Rats" Effects of a study to determine affects of Glyphosate |
For another layer to the onion, which we will peel back further later on, the European Central Bank may very well end up funding the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer. Bayer, a German company, has said it plans to pay for the cash-bid of Monsanto with a combination of equity and debt. The ECB has recently started purchasing corporate-debt en-masse in order to "stimulate the economy;" as much as $90 billion per month in asset purchases. This begs the question, how much debt will Bayer issue to purchase Monsanto, and how much of that debt will be purchased by the ECB?
One of the suggested premises for the sale of Monsanto to another flag ship super-company is to cleanse itself of the hatred and protest from the ever-growing population of aware individuals. With the company absorbed into Bayer, all semblance of it will be lost, and people will now have to contend with even more lawyers, crooks, and political red tape on an international level to protect themselves from literal poison.
This commingling of pharmaceutical giants and agriculture minotaurs with legislative krakens and banker whales epitomized fascism, and recognizing the name of the demon is the first step to driving it out.
Solutions:
We must be vigilant in the foods we are putting in our bodies. If something has a QR code on it at all steer clear. While not all GM foods are going to give us tumors or a neurological disease, there are some that could. The level of deception big-ag is willing to go to in order to keep their profits high in spite of viable health concerns should be a red flag to anyone. Vote with your dollars.
Press for transparency in food regulations. This QR code system is a mockery and an insult to the public. There is a reason big-Ag supported this legislation so vigorously, literally called the DARK Act (Deny Americans Right to Know). There should be absolutely no secrets in the foods we are being given.
Grow your own food. Start community gardens in an empty field in your neighborhood. Convince the city that useful public space is much more profitable for land-values than empty fields; governments can't resist monetary logic!
Get chickens, eat their eggs. If you live in a city, get city-chickens.
Try to limit the amount of tap water you drink. The levels of toxicity from pipes, fluoride, petrochemicals and other contaminants are doing untold harm to the physiology of our bodies. If you drink bottles water, go with Spring water.
I know people don't like to talk about their diets, but there's a reason you feel guilty when you eat something unhealthy, because you know it's bad but you do it anyway! Our bodies are our vessels/temples, we should probably treat them as such. Once we start doing that, these GM and chemical corporations will have no choice but to change their business models.
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Work
It can be hard to focus on family and health when people spend 40+ hours a week just trying to keep a roof over their head and anything in their belly. There are jobs out there, they are being made every day... but these are service-sector jobs. They are minimum-wage/tip-based occupations like bartenders, waiting tables, and retail workers. There is also need for care-based occupations, such as Nursing and Personal Care Aides. According to 40% of the US workforce is made up of contingent workers, meaning people who are not in what is traditionally known as a "secure" job.
In 1960, 24% of the US labor force worked in manufacturing, in 2016 that number is only 8%. Since 2000 the US has lost more than five million manufacturing jobs. With the average manufacturing job today paying $20.17/hour (three times more than the federal minimum wage), and often coming with benefits packages, it is reasonable to see why "blue collar Americans" are so upset about the outpouring of industry to overseas labor-markets.
The loss of these jobs are a direct result of the US granting permanent trade relations with China in 2000, as well as consequences of NAFTA. Free trade, the way the words are intended to be understood by the dictionary is all well and good. These so-called "free-trade" agreements (Orwellian newspeak) are anything but.
Yes, the agreements lift tariffs, but they condemn the countries involved to shared economic burdens. They open up those sovereign nations to legal obligations under unelected centralized "governmental" bodies. They regulate everything from cocoa and coffee beans to intellectual property rights. That's not free trade! These agreements do not give the freedom of trade, but they do make trading free - as long as you follow the very specific rules and procedures.
NAFTA served as the prototype for more than 20 different trade deals we currently have. In most of these agreements, and TPP/TTIP, if countries have a grievance or disagreement about anything that has to do with the trade limitations outlines in the initial agreement, they must go to what is called Dispute Settlement, or Investor-State Dispute Settlement.
Here's an excerpt from the NAFTA ISDS guidelines (emphasis added):
A NAFTA investor who alleges that a host government has breached its investment obligations under Chapter 11 may, at its option, have recourse to one of the following arbitral mechanisms":
- The World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)
- ICSIDs Additional Facility Rules
So under NAFTA, and all these other "free-trade" agreements, the only way to mediate a dispute is through unelected international organizations. What makes these truly fascist deals is the mediators themselves are actually the members of the very corporations that helped the draft the "deals!"
- The rules of the United Nations Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL Rules)
Also, per these deals, private corporations have the authority to sue sovereign governments for policies detrimental to profits. The fear of litigation from these arbitrarily selected individuals in charge of these "arbitral mechanisms" has already affected some countries' policy and legal decisions.
This lede from an outstanding piece of journalism by Chris Hamby from BuzzFeed articulates the situation vividly:
"Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.That article goes on to discuss in great detail just three examples of ISDS cases that throw sovereignty, as well as morality out the window. One such case involved a former business partner of Donald Trump, a Dubai real estate agent, who tried to swindle Egyptian people out of millions of dollars. He was sent to prison, but later had his case overturned through ISDS. The unelected legislative body was used again to help a company in El Salvador escape criminal charges and liability for medical care and clean up costs after it was found they has poisoned an entire village. A third "dispute settlement" nullified any punishment and shielded the assets of two men that were convicted for embezzling more than $300 million from an Indonesian bank.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify."
Unions are against these "free trade" agreements, especially TPP, for a litany of reasons. Here's a few from the AFL-CIO; the TPP:
- Allows currency manipulating countries to kill jobs.
- Lets foreign corporations bypass US law (International Dispute Settlement).
- Doesn't strengthen international labor rights protections.
- Could allow public services (sanitation, transit, utilities) to be permanently outsourced.
- Allows foreign state-owned corporations to undermine small business.
- Weak rules of origin benefit China and other non-participating countries.
- Takes America out of "Buy American" rules restrictions - tax money will be sent overseas for goods that could have been bought at home.
- Gives global banks even more power.
- Makes affordable medicines hard to find.
Unions are viewed by many people as upstanding organizations with only their workers' rights in mind. They are indeed interested in bringing, creating, and keeping jobs in the states, and their arguments against crony trade "deals" are factual and poignant. However, they are anything but benevolent, altruistic institutions.
Unions have had a scary history of Mafia corruption, drastic violence, and blood shed to garner their power. In 1986 the President's Commission on Organized Crime concluded that the Mafia "controlled and corruptly influenced certain major labor unions in the United States" for decades, going back to the 30's. Some of these unions included the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers International Union of North America, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, and the International Longshoreman's Associations.
In the years after the President's Commission, over 20 mob bosses, and many more underbosses were prosecuted and convicted for various crimes related to racketeering and fraud. This action seemed to quell the problem for a few years, but it served only to drive the problem further underground. There are still gross abuses of power among union bosses to this day, and it calls into question the efficacy of unions for the worker in the first place.
Here's the scheme, it should be familiar to everybody: paint the corporation as a malicious, predatory institution that would do anything to their employees in the name of profits )true in some cases, childlike perspective in others), convince the workers that they are strong in numbers (true), further convince them that they need representation in order to protect themselves (false), then somehow get them all to agree to actually pay money for this protection. The protection racket; classic mob-scheme, adopted in many cases by our government, and now protected by the government's laws in many states.
Many states don't give employees an option whether or not they will join the union for their particular industry. The unions take dues from their paychecks even if the employees would rather they didn't.
About half the states in the country have "Right to Work" Laws (not obligated to pay forced-union dues) to prevent this kind of theft from taking place. Many of the companies in those states, however, will simply fire the worker for refusing to join the union, and prevent any kind of headache from occurring.
Unions have "won some battles" for the average worker (wage increases, 40 hour work week, child labor laws), those battles come at the detriment to the companies (objectively), as well as the other workers that gladly would have stepped in and worked those jobs had the union not threatened or used violence against them,
Unions' sole method of negotiation is coercion, "Either you give us what we want, or we go on strike." With a position of bargaining such as this, there can never really be any fair negotiating.
Only 11.1% of the US workforce belongs to a union, but those unions "represent" most of the vital infrastructure, logistics, education, and healthcare fields. Of course, unions maintain this monopoly on vital labor through none other than fascistic lobbying practices.
A researcher for the National Institute for LAbor Relations Research, Stan Greer, said, "Union officials are steadily increasing the amount of money they spend on politics to protect and expand their government-granted power to force workers into dues-paying union ranks."
The NILRR calculated that unions spent $1.3 billion during the 2010 midterm elections, and another $1.7 billion during the 2012 presidential (s)election on lobbying.
"The numbers show that Big Labor is turning its focus further from workplace representation and more and more toward electioneering," Greer said.
While unions continue to shift their attention towards preserving their power and away from actually benefitting workers, they are disrupting many people from moving up or stepping onto the income ladder.
When you force a business to raise the wages for union-employees , the prices for the goods those employees are making, or the service they're offering goes up. When those prices go up, other prices in the community go up with them (food, healthcare, energy, rent), this is called Wage Push Inflation. Often times the business will the proverbial middle finger to the unions altogether, and hastily move those same jobs to a different community, or overseas. When you force overtime pay after 40 hours, the worker often times is actually hurt. A lot of businesses will do everything they can in order to keep employees under the 40 hour cap. When you take away child labor you take away another source of income for a family... only kidding on that one.
This is where the false dichotomy in our political system often trips people up. A group of workers coming together and offering their services as a package, signed as a contract with negotiated benefits is all great! Forcing somebody to have to pay another person for that representation is not great, especially if that other person holds up your end of the bargain with coercion and violence.
There is ample debate over whether or not unions are good for business as a whole; or if they only serve the workers and those who have the power to control those workers. If you remove the people in the power positions, but still assembled as skilled workers into "teams or "brotherhoods," you could still achieve the sane goals, without the risk of greed, embezzlement, fascistic lobbying practices, and violence.
When union win a battle it's good for the worker, when they lose a battle it's often bad for all parties involved.
Anytime there is direct human action involved in market forces there will be unforeseen consequences, the "invisible hand" always makes a correction. The labor market is no exception.
If we allow consumers to dictate the market, instead of coercive conglomerates of cronies enforced by government policies and regulations, then we can find the true value of goods and services. When the value of those goods and services are set by something other than natural phenomena (laws, hour-caps, money-printing), it inevitably affect many other aspects of the economy.
Unfortunate;y, the information the public is given about the disposition of the country's economic standing is flawed, flummoxed, or even fraudulent. The numbers get manipulated to make us look good, no matter how bad we may actually be sitting.
The main piece of manipulated data we're most concerned with here is that of unemployment. Under the Obama administration, we have been told time and time again by the corporate media that the economy is doing great, and unemployment is at its lowest number in years (-4.9%). The "recovery" we have been experiencing since the "Great Recession" in 2008 has plainly been felt on Wall Street, and nowhere else.
We could talk about Quantitative Easing and ZIRP/NIRP here, but we'll save that for another section entirely, let's keep focus on the pawns. The main driver of the stock market is not the average American hitting the stores, it's aggressive corporate stock buybacks. Companies have been excessively buying back shares in effort to drive up their share price and increase their per share earnings. This isn't real growth.
The unemployment rate that we are given is purely a political one, and doesn't truly reflect how many people are without jobs. Instead of using hard data to compile a working synthesis of actual job creation and loss, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other like-tasked agencies seem compelled to guess at numbers. Guesses include how many people have become "discouraged" and quit looking for work (no longer counted as unemployed), how many businesses were started or closed (the birth/death model), and how many people were hired or laid off because of birth/death.
These agencies like the BLS rely on self-reported data, which is also rampantly manipulated to show the numbers in businesses' favor. Businesses often report exaggerated numbers and withhold bad numbers to make themselves look better.
The PhD economists at these agencies count people who may earn $1,000 a year selling fishing reels on Ebay as being "employed." There are many people in such a position, or working part-time with no benefit of any kind, that are added to the "employed" number. Sure they're employed, but his completely neglects the fact these people are not truly "bringing home the bacon," and many wish they were.
Labor Force Non-Participation Rates are soaring. |
This guesswork gives us a ridiculous unemployment number of 4.9%, when there 93 million people who are not in the labor force at all (referred to as zombies)! All you can do is shake your head this "unemployment number" and move on. It's an utter sham. So is GDP. So is the Median Household Income.
These are politicized numbers that don't illustrate the true circumstances of the populace. This is deeply concerning considering the dependence the Federal Reserve has on these traditional indicators for setting policy. We will destroy discuss the Fed in depth in another chapter.
Many people, especially among Millennials, blame capitalism as a whole for the plight of the masses. Hopefully it is starting to become clear to anyone reading this that we are not living under a capitalist system.
Solutions:
We have to fight the TPP and the TTIP, the trade deals for the Asia-Pacific and European-Atlantic regions respectively. They have nobody's interest in mind, other than those corporations and their lawyers who "negotiated" the so-called deals behind closed doors. There is a reason the public has not been allowed to know what's in these trade deals. There's a reason why congressmen and women are only allowed to view the document in a room a the capital. There's a reason why they are not allowed to take any notes about the TPP outside of that room, or discuss it with any of their constituents. The reason is because these are government created monopolies, it is socialism with a capitalist veneer. it is fascism...
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These deals are bull shit. It seems like most everybody who looks just a little bit into them realize this, yet they still get shoved down our throats and given validity even over "the law of the land." This is why voting with your dollar is the only way to show your dissatisfaction or animosity towards these corporations. Don't buy their products and they can't continue to subjugate the people.
We deserve, and should demand, that these deals are done with full transparency, as we are the ones affected by them! The German people have shown that they are against the deals, with 300,000 people protesting them on the same day. The Brits showed where they stand on the issue as a part of their Brexit decision. Hopefully the Americans can pry their attention away from Trump's spray-tanned pussy-grabbing antics and the media's phony fomented racial tensions long enough to let our voices be heard too.
Getting the trade deals absolved isn't going to suddenly solve all our problems, we also need to lower taxes across the board, from individuals to corporations. This will have the inevitable consequence of putting more money in the pockets of corporations to use on their business infrastructure, which will produce more and better good for consumers, who would also have more money to spend on the goods.
A major issue we face today is that the purchasing power of the dollar is waning, and consumers are nervous about spending those dollars. Instead of investing back into existing business infrastructure, corporate profits are going right to stock buybacks, asset purchases, and corporate acquisitions. This looks great for share-holders, but terrible for customers and employees.
Instead of competing between each other, businesses are merging into larger and larger conglomerates for greater percentages of market-share; or in some cases colluding together to not "step on each others toes" in markets around the country (cable and internet providers) - this prevents competitive pricing, and hurts the consumer.
Lowering the tax rate would put many failing and soon to be acquired businesses back into the green, which would allow them to continue offering services to customers - this creates competition, and competition drives down prices. Customers with more money to spend would often be willing to pay slightly more for better products and services, thus still providing value for specialty goods and luxury items.
Better than lowering the tax-rates would be to abolish the practice in whole. Allow people to put their money into lotteries specifically denominated for various government services; that way you know where your money is going. There could be a lottery for military spending, a lottery for roads, a lottery for feeding the needing, one for education, and so on. The people who want to contribute in their way to society could do so, while at the same time have an opportunity to win some money back.
That's just an idea, but we shouldn't work three and a half months out of the year for the government to be spending our money on mind-numbingly stupid things, bombing other countries, and supporting NATO's military. Of course, federal income tax is entirely voluntary, and was only supposed to support government spending for a short time after WWII, not indefinitely. The IRS prefers for us to live in ignorance and therefore fear.
The union dilemma really boils down to a moral argument... or an argument of morals. There are those who typically dislike unions, who believe what's theirs is theirs, and what's yours is yours - private property. Then there are those who like unions, who believe everybody should share in the prosperity of a business; "share the wealth," "sharing is caring," this is really a kindergarten view of the world though.
You may say, but those people are the ones who actually make the products and run the factories. Yes, but did those people not choose to make that product or work in that factory?
There is nothing keeping workers from banning together in a quest for higher wages or better working conditions, to do so on their own accord would actually be a fantastic representation of the free-market at work - the labor market. If they withhold their supply, the demand has to go up, along with the value (the whole point of a strike, right?).
The public image of unions has been marred by their own actions (or sometimes inaction - laziness - by the union employees), and the actions of their leaders. Just as in the practice of marriage, we do not need the government to tell is if we can unionize. There should not be forced union dues. Businesses should not be forced by regulations to hire from unions' labor pools. Unions should not be protected by the government in any way. If another union wants to compete with an existing union, it should be allowed with no restrictions. Unions should exist but not in their present condition.
We live in a different economy than we did twenty, even fifteen years ago. Those manufacturing jobs that we lost overseas when we signed off so willy-nilly on all our "trade deals" are not coming back. Even if there is some piece of legislation that miraculously get its way through both bonuses and ratified by the Executive to "bring back our jobs," this is what going to happen: The companies that do bring their operations back to the states are going to build new factories and warehouses, which will temporarily provide employment to one sector of the economy. Those new factories and warehouses will all be automated, though. MEaning, after they are built, there will be nominal creation of new jobs. Hate to say it, but those old manufacturing jobs are a thing of the past.
Productivity vs. Compensation |
Automation has already replaced many manual labor jobs. It has also increased productivity among workers. Meanwhile, their wages compared to increasing productivity have been flat since the 70's.
This new economy is a hybrid economy. It is still dependent on the mainstays like food, transportation, clothing, housing, etc., but the methods of production and factors of production have become more technical.
There is less a need for physical labor anymore than there is for mental labor, and even that is being threatened by automation. Much of the stock market is ran by High Frequency Trading algorithms, not humans. In a preemptive effort to combat the proposed increase to the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, Wendy's will soon replace their front-counter workers with self-ordering kiosks - if it goes well expect other fast-food chains to follow suit. Robots are moving into construction. There's even robot journalists now. This means there is a requirement for more education.
So let's open up that can of worms.
.
Education
I originally went to school for sports writing, so I like to look at stats, and try to build a narrative from them. Let's have a look at some numbers on education, and paint a picture of the plebeian pedagogy.
Only 18% of eighth graders are proficient in American History, only 23% are proficient in civics (neither my middle nor high school had a civics class). 32% are proficient in science. Only 37% of high school seniors are proficient in reading, and a miniscule 25% in mathematics. A mere 24% of students at both grade levels meet the writing standards for their age. Those are all big fat F's if you were keeping tally.
This lack of competence among our youth can be seen by comparing the US to other countries. The US used to be the number one nation in the world in Math and Science proficiency, now we are 29th. Our Universities are still top notch, but those have been corrupted by far-left professors and administrators, who's main prerogative when lecturing (especially in the Ivy League institutions) is to make globalism sound both necessary and inevitable. I know this first hand.
What has caused this? Well it is systematic, clearly, and it begins in primary school.
Every student has their own learning style, these include: visual learners, auditory, linguistic, kinesthetic (physical), logical (mathematics), social, and solitary learners. Teachers understand this and are constantly looking for lesson plans to cover as many vases, and maintain as much attention as possible.
A typical schedule for a middle or high schooler may look something like this (since more than 90% of kids attend them, we'll stick with public schools):
1st period - Math; 50 minutes
2nd period - Science; 50 minutes
3rd period - Foreign Language; 50 minutes
4th period - Art/Music/Elective; 50 minutes
LUNCH - 30 minutes
5th period - History; 50 minutes
6th period - English; 50 minutes
The structure of a typical day in school keeps kids hurrying from class to class and building to building. After the standard role call, turning in of homework, and questions about the homework, teachers can begin their lesson for the day - usually 5-10 minutes into the time-block. If the teacher can successfully get their students engaged without having to constantly be telling Joey and Tommy in the back to pipe down, they can focus on class time. Everybody knows when the bell is about to ring, so with 3-5 minutes remaining papers begin shuffling and zippers start zipping, backpacks get packed, the attention is gone. Teachers know this, and many try to end a minute or two before the bell. All in all, this usually leaves about 35-40 minutes of actual teaching time.
To try and fit enough concepts into a lesson to reach all the different type of learning styles, especially the style of "I don't wanna be taught nuthin'," is about impossible. If the class is a subject that the student hates, they know they just have to put up with it for less than an hour a day. This is why students can excel in one subject, and utterly fail in another, typically it's that they just don't care about the subject they are being forced to sit through.
You know what else our children get taught alongside their coursework? How to be good subservient citizens. You must be present from bell to bell. You get a lunch halfway through the day. You understand to take direction from authority, and not question that direction, or the merits of the authority. You will always be on camera. There will always be punishment if you step out of line. You can be detained by use of force. You must allow your belongings to be searched. You must have enough to share with everybody. You must show school spirit.
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Most teachers get into the occupation out of moral duty and compassion, but they are largely not in control of the curriculum they are teaching to kids, so their positive outlooks can quickly sour. The federal and state curriculum standards (common core) have essentially placed a lasso around what teachers teach their students. The US Department of Education says this about the common core guidelines and standards, "All states and schools will have challenging and clear standards of achievement and accountability for all children, and effective strategies for reaching those standards. "
These "standards of achievement" are measured by only one means, standardized testing, aka memorization. Other than in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), testing is not an indicator of true learning or value of education, its a barometer of adherence to government-mandated educational guidelines. Even in STEM, many students will memorize as much information and formulas as possible the nights and weeks before the test, but afterwards discard most of it. An argument can be made that if we are to move into this new hybrid economy we need more analytical minds, but that is actually the least common learning style!
If states are not meeting the educational standards set forth to them by the almighty government they risk losing federal funding. Teachers also have their incomes ties to the results of the standardized tests. This has scattered the academic landscape with eggshells, causing teachers and administrators to to stick with the assigned coursework and common core-approved books for fear of not pounding the "standards" into their students' heads and losing their funding.
There have been endless complaints about the subject matter of the common core assigned curriculum. Complaints run the gamut from barefaced anti-American and liberal propaganda to replacing English literature with "informational texts." These informational texts are things like studies done by the Federal Reserve, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other government organizations. Instead of learning what an absolute sham these organizations are, students are ordered to read their reports then get tested on them.
Sex-Ed teacher demonstrating use of a penis pump and strap on dong. |
Sex education for eleven and twelve year olds was already awkward enough, but now the government has stepped across the line to sick and twisted. Sixth graders are literally being taught how to use penis pumps and strap-on dildos. Fourth graders have been given a book called It's Perfectly Normal, which teaches them proper ways to masturbate... this is deranged. Many states mandate the teaching of "alternative" sexual lifestyles (this could have been added to the breakdown of the family).
Math, already a complicated subject for young minds to grasp, has been convoluted to a level where grown, educated people have to sit for fifteen minutes to understand the problems. It is now OK for children to say 3 x 4 = 11, as long as they explain how and why they got that as an answer. The basic concepts of math are being re-written, the strategies are being re-drawn, and they are only serving to muddy the waters for children and their parents. Its hard to tell who these new standards are benefitting exactly, certainly not the kids, who must now take five steps to solve a simple subtraction problem. If the answer is right, and the arithmetic is right, it doesn't matter the method the child used to get it, right?
The government has succeeded in stripping all intuition and ingenuity from the education system; things don't work like they once did. The long, drawn out, over-diluted processes, propaganda, rules and regulations help nobody, serve to keep the public in disarray, and is creating yet another generation of unfree thinkers.
Of course, this would all be well and good if it was the volition of the populace, but nope, this again is the result of corpo-fascism! One of the main lobbyists for the passage of the common core standards were educational publishing companies. These companies are nefarious and do not deserve any pleasantries or profits from the incorrect people's position that they are "educating our children." That is the last thing on their minds, according to their own words.
The following video (7 minutes) from Project Veritas exposes the industry lie that publishing companies want to help educate the children. This is a fascist crony-capitalist revealing, "the fact that the [government] have to align the educational standards is what they have to do to sell books (sic)." There are too many juicy sound bites to be gleaned from this video, so to keep from transcribing the entire dialogue, I will let you watch:
This is just the first video in a whole series of undercover investigative journalism by Project Veritas exposing the fascism behind the textbook industry. "There's always money in it." Many times old textbooks have just one or two pieces of information added to them, have a new label "slapped on them," and resold. All materials purchased using taxpayer subsidies must be common core approved. That tax payer money is going straight from government coffers into corporate bank accounts, which is all lubed up by those corporations' lobbyists and the people who the bills.
Why are 4th Graders learning about adultery? Click to Enlarge |
Ultimately, the concern is what is in those textbooks and homework packets that are being sold to us through a very thin veil of compassion, which Project Veritas pierced. They are giving us one version of history, one version of economics, one version of secularity. We are given one point of view, that of our government, and are not allowed to stray from that point of view, or else perform poorly on the standardized tests, and lose funding from the taxpayers. From this perspective, it is fairly easy to see the danger in such an "education system." More like an indoctrination system.
It is not unprecedented throughout history for the "winners" to write the history books, and destroy all other versions of it. Indeed, it is the winners who are in the position to disseminate the information they want known, and to withhold that of the opposition, even if he opposing information is the truth, even if it is the moral side.
This has continued right up until today. American Imperialism dominated the planet, and it is supported by endless wars and operations for dominance in any given region. From South America to the Middle East, war for the sole cause of profits of bankers and oil-igarchs continue to be the vestiges of American foreign policy. This still gets supported, and it is actually encouraged for our youth to fight for it. We will jump into these depths with a cannonball in another section, for now, I'll digress.
The point I'm trying to make is that we are not taught about American Imperialism, instead we are taught that the only reason America ever invades/bombs/plunders another country is for "peace and democracy"... give me a break.
It usually takes two years of prerequisites in college before students really get into the mechanisms that drive any particular field of study. Unless you're in college for a career in STEM, you're likely getting scammed.
The prevailing opinion among the people is that college is the key to success. You'll hear all the time, "A college graduate earns a million dollars more in their lifetime." "You don't want to bag groceries your whole life do you?" "We can't hire you unless you have a degree."
Roughly 70% of high school graduates now go to at least one year of post-secondary school 83% of those first-time degree seekers receive some kind of financial aid, and half of them are forced to take out a student loan to pay the ever-increasing costs. The government hands out loans to fresh-faced, dim-witted, eager-beaver eighteen year olds like they're candy. I was one of these, so I can disparage them this way. The loans must be co-signed, usually by the parents, obligating them also to massive piles of debt. These loans never go anywhere, not even if a person files bankruptcy (still have to pay them) or dies (family has to pay them).
The average student loan debt for a graduate form a four-year institution is $37,000. You can double that for grad students. That's just coming out, no home, no car, no career. So you better get to work, Buster, you got loans to pay back. A problem arises when looking for a good return on your investment. The following chart shows the widening gap between college costs and real income for graduates:
So it's pretty obvious that a college degree does not attain the same monetary gains once thought to make it worth waning all the pain.
Part of that pain is dealing with rampant Liberalism on campus. Liberal college professors have become a meme, and for good reason, they outnumber their conservative colleagues 5 to 1. The liberal ideology has always been pervasive on college campuses, where administrators bow to big government to continue getting accreditation and funding (student loan racket is BIG business - roughly $1.2 trillion). One method of maintaining status quo is by hiring and tenuring like-minded professors. This has led to asinine phenomena such as "safe spaces," "micro-aggressions," and "white privilege."
There is a common thread running through the nation's Universities, and that thread is socialism. From Kent State to Black Lives Matter, college campuses have always been breeding grounds and testing sites for socialist agendas. The Communist Manifesto (written by Satanist hack Karl Marx) is among the top three texts assigned at Universities. Capitalism is consistently touted as a failed system, even though, as I have shown, and will continue to show, we do not live under capitalism!
Again, what are our kids and young adults really being taught here? It clearly isn't how to handle their emotions, confront their cognitive dissonance, and come to reasonable conclusions. They're not learning who the people are that outlined and perpetuated these philosophies. They're not learning how our country once fought to stamp out these ideologies. They're not learning why and how socialist dogma contributes to fascism. It's a cesspool of cynicism and alienation for anybody who loves freedom and liberty.
Unless you take the specific courses, you will never be taught about the constitution, the religious (Masonic) underpinning of the framers of the document, the real way the economy works (fiat-currency, fractional-reserve lending, debt-slaver), and most of all, you will never have the dots between all of these connected for you. Religious beliefs inevitably weigh into social and economic policies and legislation; to not learn what and why our "leaders" believe what they do, is to completely neglect the foundations of their ideologies, and the fallacies and farces those foundations rest on.
What does graduating from college get you exactly? Knowledge? Wisdom? Rationality? Nope. You get a degree. A degree confers nothing of a person's actual skills or aptitude in anything, regardless of where it's from.
The word degree is said to come from the Latin words degradus and degradare. Degradus meaning stairs, or a step. Degradare meaning to demote, degrade, downgrade, debase, deteriorate, or abase. So to earn a degree literally means to take a step down. A demotion of wits if you will. Why would this be? Because when you spend years of your life focused on one particular subject, you put your mind into a box, simply because of lack of time or attention to the rest of the vast world of knowledge; you fail to see how it all truly interconnects. You must section off the mind in order to attain mastery of any given subject.
After attaining the degree, the student now feels obliged to join the workforce in a field they got that degree in, obviously. Instead of mastering one subject and moving to the next (becoming more well rounded), the student - now employee - continues with the same thought patterns they used in college, with a few upgrades and tweaks for their given industry; further cordoning off their minds' capabilities.
So what does graduating from college get you? A degree, debt, and bureaucracy of the mind. If you understand that human behavior mimics fractal geometry, then it is discernible that the top-down, pyramid style, bureaucratic society we live in is the direct result of the bureaucracy of the mind. It is us. Our fractured consciousness is the base of the pyramid.
Solutions:
So what do we do? Society is definitely in need of computer engineers, fire fighters, doctors/homeopaths, and teachers. It also need construction workers, farmers, garbage men. I always like the garbage man vs. doctor argument when it comes to economic models. With the garbage man's job being considerably more vital to the well-being of society than the doctor's (if trash piles up everyone gets sick and dies), in a free-market wouldn't the garbage man earn as much or more money than the doctor?
Anyways...
In my opinion, the only way to fix our education system is by achieving a complete reversal of the direction it seems to be heading. Education, instead of being a top-down system, needs to start at the learner. The learner must be able to cultivate their passions; this is the best way to actually learn, not by beating information into the left-brain and hoping it sticks. The learner can share what they have learned with the group. The group can then share to the classroom. The classroom shares to the school. The school to the community, and finally the community to the state, and forget about the federal government entirely.
A student must understand a concept in order to teach it to another person. This model of education would be learning for the entire populace, as they would be hearing the best ideas, seeing the best artwork, hearing the best music, all filtered through their communities' own opinions, preferences, and cultural values.
This might sound like a utopian vision of education, but with the internet being such a dominating factor in society already, it is entirely possible to let children and young adults direct their own learning, and rely on their inherent curiosity to lead them.
Of course, this would upend the current teacher-student paradigm. The authority figure would become a fellow in the classroom, to help guide students towards whatever it is they are looking for. This may also upset the ordinal grade system (1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd, etc.). If yo have a student that loves to do math problems all day, but doesn't want to do any PE or Art, that student is obviously going to blast right past the other kids, most of whom are not as interested in math problems.
I think a dilemma arises when we compel our kids to keep up with their peers in all subjects; it forces them to neglect one field of study that they may be highly interested in, for the sake of passing the test and "making the grade" in another area of study. This is a quick path to burnout and fatigue.
It is not hypocritical to say focusing on one subject constricts the mind, while also saying kids should be able to focus on what they want when they want. Imaginations run wild, and the only thing keeping natural curiosity from exploring how everything in the world is connected - from the stock market to ISIS - is constricting that curiosity into blocks or periods.
That may all be a pipe dream, even though I think it's what can really help the most students make the most out of their sacred time. People are so attached to the ordinal grade system though, so it may be too ingrained in our culture to be reversed. If you are in that camp, well there are still solutions.
Communities must be obligated to get involved with educating their youth. The only way to do this is by cutting off federal influence of money, textbooks, and grade-level standards. It will hurt like a band-aid being yanked off, but the pain can be mitigated if there is a five or ten year plan to do this. If people understand that they will no longer be able to rely on the government to educate their kids, and the onus is entirely on them and their neighbors, then they would assuredly do whatever it takes to give them "the best shot." It would force many people to look in the mirror, and confront their philistinism head-on.
I find the argument against Charter schools outright laughable. If there is a private company who can do a better job at educating kids than the government, then by all means, please take the reigns.
There are people who actually complain about charter schools not allowing teacher's unions. About 7% of charter schools have unions, where it's over 65% in public schools. That's entirely the appeal of these schools!.. That a teacher of poor quality or questionable judgment cannot be protected by a union. It does cause some concern if a charter school monopolizes education in a community, and start firing teachers for not sticking to their prescribes "goals." If there are multiple schools "competing for business," though, this wouldn't be a concern.
Teachers at charter schools are typically given yearly contracts, so there's less worry of wrongful termination suits in this overly-litigious society we have. The annual contracts also give teachers more of an opportunity to negotiate better pay for themselves. Teacher's unions can get their constituents' pay raised, but more often than not, all of those teachers do not deserve pay raises. We need to focus more on the individual than the collective; this is the only way to truly determine the cream of the crop, and pay them accordingly. Competition always helps the consumer.
The current education system is thoroughly lacking in occupational training. Some areas have special schools for learning trades like construction, automotive, welding, and nursing, but far too many districts cut these programs long ago, or just never had the funding to support such programs.
Parents only want what's best for their kids, and part of that is getting a quality education, so occupational education has become sort of stigmatized; for fear of their kids not getting enough instruction in other areas. What's funny, tough, is that's exactly what happens anyways once in college.
If there is a company that comes in and opens up shop/school, their number one priority (besides making money) would be to give their students/future employees everything they will need to be successful in the system.
Admittedly, these are all just ideas. My hope is that they may be new ideas to some people, and maybe some of those people will be in a position affect any kind of change. Change of the current academic culture is what we need, because we as a nation continue sliding compared to the rest of the world. Change occurs one mind at a time - maybe if people understood they are supporting fascist structures, they would change their minds a bit in their actions.
People rant and rave about the deliberate dumbing down of America, but it is ourselves who are to blame. We have allowed our once hallowed intellectual nurseries to fall into ruin. The football jerseys may be new every year, and there's a new baseball stadium, but the academia is increasingly substandard.
We need people to show up to the PTA meetings as much as they do to little Jimmy's baseball games. We need parents reading what is in their children's textbooks and homework packets. We need them to hold the educators accountable for the bull shit that's in those textbooks. We must demand that our children are taught the truth, not what the government has told us is the truth. There has to be a paradigm-shift in how our kids are being taught. Individual learning is more effective than group learning, but individual learning does not mean isolated learning.
We have to educate ourselves first.
I always get frustrated when people say they are not capable of learning or comprehending something. That's an admission to being conquered. That's weakness. I'm of the opinion that anybody can learn anything as long as they don't have some kind of mental impairment. The human brain is a computer; it has a simple operating system, what you put in you get out. The data you put into your brain becomes the thoughts that you think which manifest in the words that you speak and the actions you take (without getting into a philosophical discussion about consciousness and free will).
The data that comes into the mind is a seed, all individual pieces of data are individual seeds. Not all seeds will land on fertile ground, so they will never begin to grow - this is like when you know you heard an idea or a concept or a word before, but you can't quite remember what it is... that seed didn't germinate. Or it's like if you knew that seed was a lousy one, so you crushed it before it ever had a chance.
The seeds that sprout start to become conscious thoughts in the mind. You can curate or neglect those thoughts; you can water one and not the other, and those thoughts begin to grow, they begin to become ideologies. When those ideologies bloom, and you are able to bear witness of the fruits they yield, it is easy to discern which are fit for consumption, and which must be discarded or ignored. After you harvest all of your ideologies you have your dogma, or your moral philosophy.
The thing about these seeds, is that no matter how much time passes, they will all still hold the same exact genetics (these are metaphorical seeds, not Monsanto ones). The people who suffer from the information gap that I spoke about in the introduction, those people have seeds of mistruth, disinformation, and of actual evil sewn into their minds on a constant basis.
All it takes to educate ourselves is to choose the seeds we want to plant ourselves. If we allow our minds to be consumed by the most base of entertainment media available, we will only have base thoughts, motivations, and actions. If we flood our mind with salient information, about the world, and how it works, we can dramatically shift the manifestations of our thoughts into the real world for good.
Education is the foundation of the individual mind, which is the basis for the self, who is the member of the family, who come together to make a community, that decides what those individuals will be taught.
Those communities in charge of molding young minds have been corrupted by fascism, be it in the food, in the disruption of the family, in the sick-care industry, in unions, international "trade deals," manipulated economic data, and the very education system itself. These are just a few examples of full grown fascist seeds, they have revealed their fruits, and the pawns find them bitter.