Governments, Technology, and Revolution

You are alive in 2014. And that's so much better than 1914. All that disease eradicated. A standard of living so high, that even if its stagnated, it'll take 500 years for some countries to catch up. A constant, reliable supply of food and medicine. And oh, the technology. Skyping with your pants off while your significant other rambles on in Dickensian fashion on Facebook. Curved TV's. GPS collars on Chihuahuas. And don't forget that gadget keeping track of your caloric outflow as you jog by that gaudy bitch's $3.4 million Tudor-style house.


But alas, as great as you think you have it, you are eternally fucked. The advancement we all believe has infinitely improved our drab existence, has in reality guaranteed you will never matter again. And if you and your brethren ever try to become relevant again in any significant economic or political fashion, you will be vaporized. And it'll only get worse.


For all the benefits technology has granted you, it has granted the ruling elite exponentially more power and advantages. And they knew they needed such advantages. The ruling elites are one of the exceptional few groups who are aware that history repeats itself. And they have taken steps to ensure that any detrimental Guillotinesque repeats never happen again to them.


I am reminded of a quote from my favorite Pixar film of all, "A Bug's Life". After the subservient ants failed to deliver their fresh crops to the ruling elites - the grasshoppers - a low ranking grasshopper in the midst of intense debauchery questions his leader's desire to go back and scare the ants again, in order to keep them in line. The leader responds, "Those ants outnumber us 100 to 1. If they ever figure that out, our way of life is over!"


Throughout history, whenever the ants realized they outnumbered the grasshoppers 100-1, or 1,000 to 1, revolution ensued. Rapid violent change occurred. Dynasties rose out of the ashes, as others lay hanging in the gallows of history. But not anymore. Technology has put the final nail in the coffin of any future revolutionary aspirations that ants may entertain. For starters, the weapons advantage that Governments enjoy relative to the weaponry of the proletariat is now larger than at any point in history, with all due respect to Mr. Kubrick and the opening salvo of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Whereas fiery catapults and daggers once gave the charging masses a fighting chance vs cannons and crossbows, todays pissed off ants have no such chance of success. The weapons technology gap is now too wide. Coupled with surveillance techniques which now have more storage capacity (by far) than all the knowledge mankind has ever accumulated, and you'd be lucky if you made it to Starbuck's to meet Carlos and discuss a million man cyber-march before DHS whisked you off in a black van.


And this says nothing of the government's ability to change majority consensus via MSM. Perhaps one of the greatest social shifts of all time occurred when society's fiercely negative opinion of Vietnam and its veterans was somehow crafted into unending praise of our war machine. Throw out the first pitch. Sing the National Anthem. Show the country how well you can dance. And all this in less than a generation. All wars are noble. And all its participants are nobility.


So listen up, little man. Your weapons suck. Big Brother knows what you're up to, Winston. And your group of cohorts who show equal ire and disdain for The Powers That Be will soon be chastising you in your absence.

Everyone's a Clean Up Hitter

I got a friend. I'll call him Barry. Calls once in a blue moon. Bullshits about getting together (for 3 years now). Then silence for 6 months. Repeats the process. I should have figured it out long ago. He's a Clean Up Hitter. He's Babe Ruth. Not Pete Rose. Or at least he's trying to be. Clean up hitters typically swing for the fences. Or strike out big. That is their job. While America has had their fair share of clean up hitters, for the most part, this country was built by blue-collar folks, singles and doubles hitters. Pete Rose. Steady employment. Bigger and better paying jobs as they reeled in the years. Vacation home on the lake. Pensions like clockwork. Of course, all that is gone now. No one can create steady, consistent wealth anymore. Recurring expenses today vs recurring expenses in 1970 resembles the 1995 wait list at Jerry Sandusky's Football camp vs the 2012 wait list. We got huge mortgages, increasing property taxes, iPhones for our toddlers, Panameras, Aspen timeshares, LandRovers for the Mrs. Parochial school tuition. Live-in maids. $500 Lacrosse camp fees. But with real wages stuck at 2000 levels, you're almost as poor as when you chugged a few Milwaukee's Best and capped it off with a couple of $0.59 Chilitos at Taco Bell back in the college days. So you have two choices: Try to build something slowly, while all your expenses continue their boner-like trajectory, or swing for the fences. Try to get rich by sundown. In the meantime, fake it till you make it. Keep going to those Chamber of Commerce meetings. Keep printing those $10 batch of biz cards. Schmooz. Network. Follow-up. Be Persistent. Your expenses certainly are. Now dig in. Snarl at the pitcher. Squint so you can see the fences. And swing like a lumberjack. Strike one. Thats ok. You miss 100% of the shots you never take. Strike two. Its ok. Tough times don't last. Tough people do. Strike three. FFFUUUUUCK!!!! You should have gone to medical school. Back to Barry. See, he's swinging for the fences. Got no long-term plan. None of us do. Only short-term hopes and aspirations. Thats why he calls me. To see what he can get in on at the last moment. Try to ride someone else's gravy train. Try to get the scoop from me. Thinks he's big shit because he knows some guy on the Board of Directors. "Hey, lets get together for a beer". Only to realize, for whatever reason, he ain't getting the scoop. There is no scoop. He's checking out. He'll call again in 6 months or so, wanting to drink more beer, but really trying to see if he can hit a HR. Little does he know, I'm behind on the count 0-2. Steeeee-Ryke!!!!!

Stick Around -- It Gets Worse (Or "The Hour Late")

"But you and I have been through that,
And that is not our fate.
So let us not talk falsely now,
For the hour is getting late."

-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

Let us at least be honest with one another.  After the Neo-Nazi-Cons defrauded the U.S. into a decade-long Iraqi misadventure -- to the tune of over $2 trillion, according to one Brown University study -- the Middle East is now worse than ever.  As if that was even possible.  Yet true to their seemingly inimitable ability to tamper in anything -- matched perhaps only by their mastery of wreaking death, destruction and discord, they are back.  Yes, they are back.

In 2002, when George W. Bush began hatching the Neocon plan to invade Iraq -- an invasion not just without justification, but without any perceivable national interest at all -- many drowned-out voices pointed out what later became inevitable.  Saddam Hussein was installed by the West.  You can repeat this fact to most of the flag-waving, chest-beating hoi polloi in America, and they won't even deny it.  But somehow it goes immediately down the memory hole.  Their brains switch channels back to the Newspeak of the day.  Utterances come back attempting some kind of purported justification, but it only makes you shake your head.  There is no answer, yet they still attempt one.  Mind reversion to radio pilot mode.

And not only was Saddam Hussein installed by the West, he was acting on their orders.  He was put there to hold a lid down on all of the ethnic and religious internecine tension that was forestalling the bloodiest most hellish of civil war.  It has been that way in the Middle East since time immemorial.  And there were never any laws visited upon the place long enough for any secular and national and transnational identity to take root.  The institutions were soon undermined by the need to keep the people down and continue to siphon that most precious of natural resources right from beneath their feet.

Couple that with what no American wants to hear and what only few can admit:  The West was using the people in that region for a half-century, literally stealing the greatest wealth of natural resources in history, flowing out easily in a black goo, to create a Western Christian, ultra-powerful society.  And the Have's in this game were keeping evil dictators in place with a very small share of the wealth and with arms to keep their people face-down.  Yes, you read that right.  These poor people's own natural resources were being used to put them in the position of the Have-Nots.  And they weren't happy about it.  Not one bit.

So all of those voices back in 2002, all of those voices telling the Chimp not to invade because there was no interest and no justification were also telling him that there was no end game.  Once the lid was lifted, once Pandora's Box was opened, all of the demons and hellish angels dwelling in those ancient ethnic and religious hatreds would be unleashed.  There would be the unraveling of what little nations were there.  It would be de-evolution of civilization on a cosmic scale.

And it would spread.  There would be not just the localized rivalries.  There was also the hatred that had been brewing and festering for decades.  Those people who had their oil taken from them -- oil that could have made them the Have's, if indeed they were not really the Have's all along.  And the wealth transfer that took place from the Middle East to the West was the actual reversing of the roles of the Have's and the Have Not's -- and all by virtue of calculated, ruthless Supremacy and Imperialism of the worst kind.

So let us not talk falsely now.  There is no need to make up new acronyms for the latest terrorism bugaboo.  You and I have been through that, and that is not our fate.  When we look closely, we know.  And the hour is, indeed, getting late.