I finally concede.

Talking about issues is useless because no matter what side of an issue you take there is about an equal number of people who oppose it... regardless of what it is.

There is no logic... because nobody appeals to reason and logic. Instead there is propaganda and subterfuge.

The system is broken, beyond repair I fear. All the while people sleepwalk their way through life because they don't have the time or the energy to pay attention... and they believe that they are irrelevant in any case. They are right.

The system has become a self contained, self perpetuating closed loop system. Corporations and money interests control the whole of the legislative and Executive branches of government, and they control the message that the public hears... and they lead the blind sheep who have lost the capacity for critical thinking.

So... until things get to the point that people awaken from their slumber and lose the football game mentality that this system is built around, there is no hope for change and the middle class is doomed to destruction. Sooner or later the middle class will become the financial slaves of big business and the elite. Actually, it appears that we are there already. Blue collar jobs are gone... or going. Manufacturing in this country is nearly dead. New industries are built around technology and not labor, and the middle class is far too big for their to be ample jobs to employ them... and when they are employed it is likely to be in small niche industries where the big business has no interest. Any industry/market segment that has sufficient attractiveness soon becomes gobbled up by big business, franchised, consolidated, and homogenized into another big business dominated segment. Mom and pop businesses are no more. The ability for the little gut to achieve the American Dream is rapidly evaporating.

So.. what are we left with ? We are left with a society which has declining income for the bulk of Americans and one in which business is more and more big business. The WalMart model which has destroyed Main Street USA is becoming the modern business model. It chews up and spits out small mom and pop businesses like chewing gum. And... we are left with the choice of working for big business as slaves, or working in a service business where we all just sell services and hamburgers to each other.

The American Dream is dead... well, maybe not quite dead, but on life support. If people don't awaken to reality, and set aside issues that are really distractions to maintain division, then the bulk of Americans will either live in poverty or be slaves in a system that they have allowed to be created.


It won't matter much for me. I doubt that most of us will live long enough to see real change happen. Too much has to change for people to be able to unite and fight the system. But, aside from not be united in purpose to change the system, people have to have awareness first. I don't see that level of dissatisfaction, and I don't see that level of concern. Everyone is too deeply divided over what are basically petty issues to be able to unite and regain control.

If there is an Anti-Christ, it is this broken, corrupted capitalist-controlled government.... and it's taking this nation down.

End of story.

Take a look at my signature.....

Thank you!

I don't agree with you, but did bookmark this earlier today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzSj1yNZdY8
Network - "There is no democracy"
(video with subtitles and transcript)

linked from POST #1 here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=389x6751180
Glenn Greenwald: On the government's owners
Sun Oct-11-09 10:25 AM

Only if you let it be ....

And then, it is only the end of the story for you ....

For the rest, the story goes on and on and on ....

And so ...

AND?

That is pretty fatalistic, I think, especially in a world where there is both yin and yang ....

One always rising ....

One always descending ....

And sometimes passing each other in transit side by side ....

But then, only but for the briefest of moments ....

And so ...

The American Dream comes from out of a crack pipe ....

And so ...

They are now and have been for quite some time now ...

And they always do ....

And they always willingly bring their own shackles, too ....

Go figure ....

And so ..

And in America, you can always hope for change ....

And so ....

we have each other

Well, not so fast. This is a long article Niteowl, but worth the read.

The next 100 years

George Friedman

Published 27 August 2009

Japan and Turkey form an alliance to attack the US. Poland becomes America’s closest ally. Mexico makes a bid for global supremacy, and a third world war takes place in space. Sounds strange? It could all happen. . .

In 1492, Columbus sailed west. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. These two events bracketed the European age. Once, Mayans lived unaware that there were Mongols, who were unaware there were Zulus. From the 15th century onwards, European powers collectively overwhelmed the world, creating the first truly global geopolitical system in human history, to the point where the fate of Australian Aborigines was determined by British policy in Ireland and the price of bread in France turned on the weather in Minnesota.

Europe simultaneously waged a 500-year-long civil war of increasing savagery, until the continent tore itself apart in the 20th century and lost its hold on the world. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no longer a single European nation that could be considered a global power of the first rank.

Another unprecedented event took place a decade or so earlier. For 500 years, whoever controlled the North Atlantic controlled Europe's access to the world and, with it, global trade. By 1980, the geography of trade had shifted, so that the Atlantic and Pacific were equally important, and any power that had direct access to both oceans had profound advantages. North America became the pivot of the global system, and whatever power dominated North America became its centre of gravity. That power is, of course, the United States.

It is geography combined with the ability to exploit it that matters. The US is secure from attack on land or sea. It is vulnerable to terrorist attack but, outside of a nuclear exchange, faces no existential threat in the sense that Britain and France did in 1940-41, or Germany and Japan did in 1944-45. Part of its advantage is that, alone among the combatants, the US actually profited from the Second World War, emerging with a thoroughly modernised industrial base. But this itself can be traced to the country's core geography. The fertility of the land between the Appa­lachians and the Rocky Mountains, and the configuration of the country's river system, drove an economic system in the 19th century that helped fund an economy which today constitutes between 25 and 30 per cent of global economic activity, depending on how you value the dollar.

Just as important, perhaps, is that while the population density of Japan is about 365 people per square kilometre and that of most European states between 100 and 300 per square kilometre, the US population density, excluding Alaska, is about 34 people per square kilometre. The US has room to grow and it manages immigration well. Its population is not expected to decline. It is the pre-eminent power not because of the morality of the regime, the virtue of its people or the esteem in which it is held, but because of Europe's failures and changes in global trade patterns.

This is a geopolitical reading of history. Geo­politics argues that it is geography which defines power, and that military, economic and political power are different parts of a single system. Geopolitics tends not to take policies or politicians very seriously, seeing them as trapped in reality. The finest statesman ruling Iceland will not dominate the world; the stupidest ruling ancient Rome could not undermine its power.

Economists talk about an invisible hand - a concept, if not a term, they have borrowed from Machiavelli. Geopolitics applies the concept of the invisible hand to the behaviour of nations and other international actors. Geopolitics and economics both hold that the players are rational and will pursue their self-interest, if not flawlessly, then at least not randomly.

Think of a chess game. On the surface, it appears that each player has 20 potential opening moves. In fact, there are many fewer, because most of these moves are so bad that they would quickly lead to defeat. The better you are at chess, the more clearly you see your options, and the fewer moves you regard as being available: the better the player, the more predictable the move. The grandmaster plays with absolute predictable precision - until that one brilliant, unexpected stroke.

Geopolitics assumes two things: first, that human beings organise themselves into units larger than families and that they have a natural loyalty to the things they were born into, the people and the places; second, that the character of a nation is determined to a great extent by geography, as is the relationship between nations. We use the term "geography" broadly. It includes the physical characteristics of a location, but it goes beyond that to look at the effects of a place on individuals and communities. These are the foundation of geopolitical forecasting.

Opinion and reputation have little to do with national power. Whether the US president is loathed or admired is of some minor immediate import, but the fundamentals of power are overarching. Nor do passing events have much to do with national power, no matter how significant they appear at that moment. The recent financial crisis mattered, but it did not change the basic geometry of international power. The concept of American decline is casually tossed about, but for America to decline, some other power must surpass it. There are no candidates.

Consider China, most often mentioned as the challenger to the US. Han China is surrounded by four buffer states, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. Without these buffers, the borders of China move inward and China becomes vulnerable. With these four buffers in place, China is secure - but as a landlocked island, bounded by mountainous jungle, the Himalayas, the steppes of central Asia and the Siberian wasteland. China is blocked in all directions but the sea.

The vast majority of China's population lives within a thousand miles of the Pacific coast. Beyond this line, water supply will not support large populations. Most industrial development has taken place within a hundred miles of the coast. Consider the following numbers, culled from official Chinese statistics. About 65 million Chinese people live in households with more than $20,000 a year in income. Around 165 million make between $2,000 and $20,000 a year. Most of these live within 100 miles of the coast. About 400 million Chinese have household ­incomes between $1,000 and $2,000 a year, while about 670 million have household incomes of less than $1,000 a year. China is a land of extra­ordinary poverty. Mao made the Long March to raise an army of desperate peasants to rectify this sort of extreme imbalance. The imbalance is there again, a volcano beneath the current regime.

China would have to triple the size of its economy - and the US would have to stand still - if China were to pull even with the US in GDP. Militarily, China is impotent. Its army is a domestic security force, its ability to project power blocked by natural barriers. Its navy exists mostly on paper and could not possibly pose a serious threat to the US. Casual assertions of China surpassing the US geopolitically ignore fundamental, overwhelming realities. China could conceivably overcome its problems, but it would require most of the century to overcome problems of this magnitude.

Europe, if it ever coalesced into a unified economic and military power, could certainly challenge the US. However, as we have seen during the recent financial crisis, nationalism continues to divide the continent, even if exhaustion has made that nationalism less virulent. The idea of Europe becoming a multinational state with a truly integrated economic decision-making system - and with a global military force under joint command - is as distant a dream as that of China becoming a global power.

This is not an Americentric view of the world. The world is Americentric. The US marshals the economic resources of North America, controls the world's oceans and space, projects force where it wishes - wisely or not. The US is to the world what Britain once was to Europe. Both nations depended on control of the sea to secure their interests. Both nations understood that the best way to retain control of the sea was to prevent other nations from building navies. Both understood that the best way to do that was to maintain a balance of power in which potential challengers spent their resources fighting each other on land, rather than building fleets that could challenge their control of the sea.

The US is doing this globally. Its primary goal is always to prevent the emergence of a single power that can dominate Eurasia and the European peninsula. With the Soviet Union's collapse, China's limits and the EU's divisions, there is currently no threat of this. So the US has moved to a secondary goal, which is to block the emergence of any regional hegemon that could, in the long term, grow into something more dangerous. The US does what it can to disrupt the re-emergence of Russian national power while building relations with bordering countries such as Poland and Turkey. It encourages unrest in China's border regions, using the ideology of human rights as justification. It conducts direct or surrogate wars on a seemingly random basis, from Somalia to Serbia, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Many of these wars appear to go badly. However, success is measured not by the pacification of a country, but by its disruption. To the extent that the Eurasian land mass is disrupted, to the extent that there is perpetual unrest and disunion from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the US has carried out its mission. Iraq is paradigmatic. The US intervention resulted in a civil war. What appeared to be a failure was, in fact, a satisfactory outcome. Subjectively, we would think George W Bush and his critics were unaware of this. But that is the point of geopolitics. The imperatives generate ideologies (a democratic Iraq) and misconceptions (weapons of mass destruction). These, however, are shadows on the wall. It is the geopolitical imperatives, not the rhetoric, that must be understood in order to make sense of what is going on.

Thus, the question is how these geopolitical and strategic realities shape the rest of the century. Eurasia, broadly understood, is being hollowed out. China is far weaker than it appears and is threatened with internal instability. The Europeans are divided by old national patterns that prevent them from moving in a uniform direction. Russia is using the window of opportunity presented by the US absorption in disrupting the Islamic world to reclaim its sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union, but its underlying weakness will reassert itself over the next generation.

New powers will emerge. In the 19th century, Germany, Italy and Japan began to emerge as great powers, while in the 20th century global powers such as Britain and France declined to secondary status. Each century, a new constellation of powers forms that might strike observers at the beginning of the century as unthinkable. Let us therefore think about the unthinkable.

The United States conducts an incautious foreign policy. The relative power of the US is such that it has a margin of error far beyond that of the countries it confronts. It also has a strategic disruptive imperative, based on geopolitical interests. This will make the planet an uncomfortable place, particular for rising powers.

There is another dimension built into US foreign policy - using subordinate regional powers as surrogates, exchanging their willingness to incur risks from a major power opposed to the US for substantial benefits. These range from strategic guarantees and support against smaller neighbours to trade advantages and technology transfers. The recovery of West Germany and Japan during the cold war are classic examples of this. There are three nations that are already major or emerging regional powers that will be important to the US in dealing with Russia in the next decade or so: Japan, Turkey and Poland.

Japan is already a great power. It is the world's second-largest economy, with a far more stable distribution of income and social structure than China. It has east Asia's largest navy - one that China would like to have - and an army larger than Britain's (since the Second World War, both Japan's "army" and "navy" have officially been non-aggressive "self-defence forces"). It has not been a dynamic country, militarily or economically, but dynamism comes and goes. It is the fundamentals of national power, relative to other countries, that matter in the long run.

Turkey is now the world's 17th-largest economy and the largest Islamic economy. Its military is the most capable in the region and is also probably the strongest in Europe, apart from the British armed forces. Its influence is already felt in the Caucasus, the Balkans, central Asia and the Arab world. Most important, it is historically the leader in the Muslim world, and its bridge to the rest of the world. Over the centuries, when the Muslim world has been united, this has happened under Turkish power; the past century has been the aberration. If Russia weakens, Turkey emerges as the dominant power in the region, including the eastern Mediterranean; Turkey is an established naval power. It has also been historically pragmatic in its foreign policies.

Poland has the 18th-largest economy in the world, the largest among the former Soviet satellites and the eighth-largest in Europe. It is a vital strategic asset for the US. In the emerging competition between the US and Russia, Poland represents the geographical frontier between Europe and Russia and the geographical foundation of any attempt to defend the Baltics. Given the US strategic imperative to block Eurasian hegemons and Europe's unease with the US, the US-Polish relationship becomes critical. In 2008 the US signed a deal with Poland to instal missiles in the Baltic Sea as part of Washington's European missile defence shield, ostensibly to protect against "rogue states". The shield is not about Iran, but about Poland as a US ally - from the American and the Russian points of view.

To gauge what it means for a country to be a strategic asset of a global power, consider the case of South Korea. Any suggestion in 1950 that it would become a major industrial power by the end of the century would have been greeted with disbelief. Yet that is what Korea became. Like Israel, South Korea formed a strategic relationship with the US that was transformative. And both South Korea and Israel started with a much weaker base in 1950 than Poland has today.

Russia cannot survive its economic and demographic problems indefinitely. China must face its endemic social problems. So, imagine an unstable, fragmented Eurasia. On its rim are three powers - Japan to the east, Turkey to the south and Poland to the west. Each will have been a US protégé during the Russian interregnum, but by mid-century the US tendency to turn on allies and make allies of former enemies will be in play, not out of caprice but out of geopolitical necessity.

Two of the three major powers will be maritime powers. By far the most important will be Japan, whose dependence on the importation of virtually all raw materials forces it to secure its sea lanes. Turkey will have a lesser but very real interest in being a naval power in the eastern Mediterranean, and as its power in the Muslim world rises it will develop a relationship with Egypt that will jeopardise the Suez Canal and, beyond it, the Arabian Sea. Poland, locked between Russia and Germany, and far more under US control than the other two, will be a land power.

US strategy considers any great power with significant maritime capabilities a threat; it will have solved one problem - the Russian problem - by generating another. Imagining a Japanese-Turkish alliance is strange but no stranger than a Japanese-German alliance in 1939. Both countries will be under tremendous pressure from the established power. Both will have an interest in overthrowing the global regime the US has imposed. The risk of not acting will be greater than the risk of acting. That is the basis of war.

Imagining the war requires that we extrapolate technology. For the US, space is already the enabler of its military machine. Communications, navigation and intelligence are already space-based. Any great power challenging the US must destroy US space-based assets. That means that, by the middle of the century, the US will have created substantial defences for those assets. But if the US can be rendered deaf, dumb and blind, a coalition of Turkey and Japan could force the US to make strategic concessions.

War depends on surprise, and this surprise will have to focus on the destruction of US space forces. If this sounds preposterous, then imagine how the thought of a thousand bomber raids in the Second World War would have sounded in 1900. The distance travelled technologically between 1900 and 1945 was much greater than the one I am suggesting by 2050. There are no breakthroughs required here, only developments of what already exists.

It is difficult to imagine an American defeat in this war, although not major setbacks. The sheer weight of power that the US and its Polish ally can throw against the Japanese and Turks will be overwhelming. The enemy will be trying to deny the US what it already has, space power, without being able to replace it. The US will win in a war where the stakes will be the world, but the cost will be much less than the bloody slaughters of Europe's world wars. Space does not contain millions of soldiers in trenches. War becomes more humane.

The ultimate prize is North America. Until the middle of the 19th century, there were two contenders for domination - Washington and Mexico City. After the American conquest of northern Mexico in the 1840s, Washington dominated North America and Mexico City ruled a weak and divided country. It remained this way for 150 years. It will not remain this way for another hundred. Today, Mexico is the world's 13th-largest economy. It is unstable due to its drug wars, but it is difficult to imagine those wars continuing for the rest of the century. The heirs of today's gangsters will be on the board of art museums soon enough.

Mexico has become a nation of more than 100 million people with a trillion-dollar economy. When you look at a map of the borderland between the United States and Mexico, you see a huge flow of drug money to the south and the flow of population northward. Many areas of northern Mexico that the US seized are now being repopulated by Mexicans moving northward - US citizens, or legal aliens, or illegal aliens. The political border and the cultural border are diverging.

Until after the middle of the century, the US will not respond. It will have concerns elsewhere and demographic shifts in the US will place a premium on encouraging Mexican migration northward. It will be after the mid-century systemic war that the new reality will emerge. Mexico will be a prosperous, powerful nation with a substantial part of its population living in the American south-west, in territory that Mexicans regard as their own.

The 500 years of European domination of the international system did not guarantee who would be the dominant European power. Nor is there any guarantee who will be the dominant power in North America. One can imagine scenarios in which the US fragments, in which Mexico becomes an equal power, or in which the US retains primacy for centuries, or an outside power makes a play. North America is the prize.

In due course, the geopolitical order will shift again, and the American epoch will end. Perhaps even sooner, the power of the US will wane. But not yet, and not in this century.

George Friedman is the founder of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor. His book The Next 100 Years is published by Allison & Busby (£14.99)

http://www.stratfor.com/

It is interesting how chock full of labels this forum is for a forum that is going to transcend labels ....

Maybe that is an impossibility, transcending labels ....

And so ...

Maybe we become without hope because we take upon ourselves impossible tasks ....

And so ...

First there was the Word and then there were more words and then there were patterns of words...

And then, endless political speeches filled with nothing but words ....

YADA YADA YADA and YADA some more ....

And now here we are ....

And poor NiteOwl is now without hope as a result ....

And so ...

The participants on this forum may be as different as these animals, but that doesn't mean we don't have shared goals. We should deliberately work with others from different demographic groups than our own, even if the fit isn't 100%.


So which one's the Democrat? The Republican? The Independent? The Green? The Libertarian?
The progressive? The liberal? The conservative? The anarchist?
The human rights activist? The civil rights crusader? The gay rights activist? The feminist?
The law and order advocate? The civil liberties activist? The 2nd Amendment advocate?
And on and on.

That's why Julian Bond (NAACP) was the keynote speaker at the Equality March in DC yesterday, why MLK began focusing on economic injustice, and why differences amplified only serve to harm challenges to the status quo. Enlarge yourself through generosity to the causes of others, deliberately, and see what happens.

EXCELLENT ADVICE...

Pay attention to what the prepotent personal constructs of persons are who are advocating different causes. This
will help you to get more in touch with your prepotent personal constructs...

That was when we pumped our oil out of CA and TX.

We now need either a global military empire to reach the oil so we can take it, or get OFF OIL ENTIRELY so we don't need it.

There's always "Hope" Nite Owl. And as Graham says we have each other. When we stop fantasizing about the "other". When we demand truth instead of lies. When we see what is important to us all we will regain a sense of the "commons".

These should NEVER be for sale. We must be able to recognize those who would sell our commons for their benefit and our detriment. We must get a sense of "US". We must be inclusive and not divisive. We must encourage respect for all.

But expect it to be returned in equal measure. And turn our backs on those who do not or will not get that.

We can only be destroyed from within. Giving an ear to those who make hundreds of millions telling us that the poorest or "darkest" of our fellow citizens are the cause of our problems should be a red flag. Those who hate others because of the color of their skin or their language or their religion should be shunned by us all and those who broadcast them and advertise on their programs should lose market share real fast. Not by an "organized" boycott but just by informed citizens en masse who might mention if asked why they will not buy from a particular business.

Likewise and in addition "WallMarts" or some other business who is strangling the Mom and Pop Shop should be avoided. Those who import Chinese goods while paying low wages to Americans with next to no benefits throwing them on the Public dole should be a pariah.

If we don't like Unions then we should encourage Employee Ownership of larger American Business. But until that becomes viable we should support Unions. They should be strengthened and Trade Policies must protect a Middle Class Wage and Lifestyle.

We need to shout now together about this or we will all be shouting later. We can ALL do this much. Call your Rep or Senator and "shout" politely that you want good paying jobs back here in America and you expect them to support that, or you will work at making them lose their jobs!

If enough of us just do that - things will change.

Just my opinion.

Right On!

My question is how do we do this with the U.S. Treasury counting on China to buy Treasuries? (did you miss the Dali Lama snub?)
And, when mom and pop businesses (taxed as individuals) face increasing taxes and insurance premiums?
And, when you refuse to stem illegal immigration for census stats, redistricting and votes...how do you make high-paying jobs for Americans?
Don't expect too rapid a change or you will be disheartened...it's not as simple as "true believers" want it to be. It's a sausage factory.

There is a difference of opinion on what the federal government should do...and what politics requires.
The federal government should support a military, immigration, tariffs and care for the poor young and the elderly...
getting involved in having workers own companies (see Chrysler and GM) and guaranteeing health care does not increase
American (good paying) jobs, but it does expand government...and government jobs. The most powerful union control
has been in industries that have failed at the highest rate - autos, textile and manufacturing in general - unions that welcome illegals
(dues over pay) like SEIU do not improve wages...only membership and political clout. That's the new game...and the
cooperation is between SEIU and The U.S. Chamber of Commerce - stange as that seems.

Regulation of financial instruments is called for...CDSs and SIVs were at the heart of the economic melt-down...
but the big banks' accounting remains un-attended by this administration as with the past. We have government
just as interesting in cobbling together liberal special interest groups (GLT, Latinos, Blacks, Unions, internationalists, investment banks) as
we had conservative (FRC, US CofC, Oil & Gas, NRA, military-industrial complex, investment banks). I understand the pendelum of politics has swung
dramatically as a result of the failures of the G.W. Bush administration and I hope (yes I do) that we will eventually
balance back toward a middle ground where one administration does not accuse CBS and NBC, and the other FOX, as being
mouthpieces for their Satanic opposition.

If you really want American jobs...include local oil and gas exploration and nukes along with "green" energy, make it more affordable for
small business (understand "everyone making over $250,000" includes most small businesses) and don't lie to the
middle class about what health care bills are going to cost them. Because when you postpone the payout
of major new entitlements until 2013 (after the next presidential election) opposition news organizations will provide
statistics on the 2010-2013 costs levied on the middle-class before the benefits begin...and that will be devastating.

The secret of 2010 (Congress) and the 2012 elections will be: can the special interests in the Democratic base
hold together when their goals are spoiled; better than those of the Republican base did when "conservatism" went haywire.

In other words, if you lose hope now...at the pace of change...expect the tide to go back out. I am actually trying to encourage you
because there needs to be a strong, loyal opposition, no matter whom is in power...it's the best guarantee of liberty there is.

The key is "loyal" to what? We better all recognize that while we "argue" about the role of government we better have the common sense to know what is in all our interests and what is not to start with. I know the Dems need to show us all that they can do better for us and we ALL need to feel it pretty damn fast. That is why I am for more bold moves that affect us in positive ways pretty quick. Otherwise the Robbers will be back. We need to be given the truth and we need to demand the facts so we can govern ourselves effectively. Professional Liars don't help us do this and I suspect they do it on purpose.

Look. I can dance the "Texas Two Step" and do "Swing" as well but I need customers who are making money because their customers are making money. And "I don't feel like dancing" to either style when I'm broke.

Just my opinion.

NiteOwl has no hope because he is trying to make a dream real and you can't do that ....

Dreams are dreams ....

You can only live reality ....

And so ...

NiteOwl is obsessed with this MIDDLE CLASS ....

He is trying to create and maintain something that is totally artificial and chimeric ....

And so ...

The robbers will be back?

What?

From lunch?

The robbers haven't gone anywhere, TROU ....

Why should they?

Obama is taking too good of care of them for them to leave and go somewhere else ....

And so ...

You made a funny. There must be no pesky kids on your lawn today.

You better get on board though Livyjr (just so you won't have to blush later).

Obama is our only hope right now "Obi-Wan..."

Then I would say that we were all pretty much ****ed .....

And so ...

A black dude who was a Viet Nam vet and veteran's counselor up here, TROU, always made it a point to tell vets he was counseling that the AMERICAN DREAM is just a dream, not a reality, not an entitlement ....

Just a DREAM ....

A will-o-the-wisp, TROU ....

And yet people chase it all their lives, notwithstanding ....

One more Lottery ticket and a BIG SCORE and the good life will be theirs ....

As they rack up credit card debt trying to live large and charge today, because that is how their neighbors are living ....

And so ...

GOTS TO HAVE ....

And then, when they can't get ....

They lose hope, just like that ....

And so ...

The relevant principle involved here is transforming a, "Preference" into a, "Demand."

Everyone rightfully has preferences...noone has a right to turn them into demands...

It seems a human thing to continue to do so, however, rla ....

Do you find yourself without hope?

I don't myself ....

But then, I don't believe in living dreams, nor do I believe in classes, so I don't have anything to fight for or defend that is not tangible or real ....

And so ...

A Veil of Strangeness
by James Keye / October 12th, 2009

A veil of strangeness is settling over our world; it is becoming more and more a feature of every day. By the ‘strangeness’ I mean incongruous events, Orwellian language, dramatic disconnectedness: Examples: there is great clarity that humans have a massive impact on the biospheric living space, from physical occupation to changing the chemistry of life sustaining biophysical cycles – and yet people who revel in the immediate consequences of our powers often actively refuse to consider that they any responsibility, at all; that the great middle has been, and continues to be, robbed by the economic elite is transparent, yet is ignored by media and government alike; and of course, there is the utter distortion of all things war and peace.

I am not speaking of simple irrationality; although such strangeness rides irrationality as a surfer might ride a wave. This is beyond irrationality: this is the human capacity trying to work in a design and with “responsibilities” well beyond its powers. We could think of movies where a ‘primitive’ is thrust into the present. We have, small step by small step, made the details of our world in such a way that they integrate into a whole that is beyond our comprehension and our powers of adaptation. We are all ‘Encino Man.’

Economists are struggling to understand and, in some way, control a global process of exchange that has grown to become like the energy economy of a rainforest in which only 5% of the species are even identified much less known in any comprehensive way. These people are very smart and yet, ultimately, they are seen to fall back on ideological prejudgments: the conflicts and dueling pronouncements are really statements of largely unfounded belief. Such situations lead only to the opportunism of personal aggrandizement and gain, and not to rational options for whole communities living more successfully in integration in an ecosystem.

I have long felt this strangeness because of training in the standards of biological integration and adaptation. Actions that remove from the universe thousands of species integrated into adapting ecosystems, remove millions of biochemical systems that have evolved through the same processes, over the same immense time, actions that remove these things without the slightest awareness, are incomprehensible. They are exceedingly strange. But there has been a quantum leap in the presentation of strangeness; it requires no special sensitivity or training for its recognition.

I spend a great deal of time with “children” (14 to 18) who are fighting the strangeness, fighting the upsets and uncertainties of their days. The strangeness has left them without a solid surface to build their lives on.

The transition years have always been difficult – the transition from protected childhood to responsible adult. Our ancestors had a solution to this change: a child observed, as he or she grew into pubescence, the behaviors of adults and at a point, decided by tradition, was initiated into the next stage with ceremonies and specific instruction. After such an initiation the child was then a baby-adult, just as he or she had been, at their beginning, a baby-child. A degree of certainty surrounded these human lives like water surrounds a coral reef.

The children I spend time with, for the most part, are overwhelmed by the strangeness and uncertainty that pervades their every moment. They don’t believe anyone or anything and thus contribute to another layer of strangeness. Adaptation for them is an impermanent process of the moment laid over a desperate desire for stability, safety and a future that they can count on – precisely the qualities of life they are denied. And in a dramatic act of strangeness they come to believe in commercial advertising, celebrity and subculture reality.

That they select these things as a reliable source for reality is not in itself strange at all: a large part of the economic world is devoting considerable energy to create just such a platform from which to communicate, sell to and control these children. What is exceedingly strange is that the so-called adult world has allowed its children to be stolen – Pied Piper fashion – from them. But these children are not secreted away behind a cleft in a rock, but are there in front of us, just beyond our comprehension; a condition, they have been told, that is good for them. Our youth and what they will become, what they will do with the increasingly complex world using their decreasingly effective education, is another strange conundrum. It adds to the sense of weightlessness.

The adults, those grown into full size and needing some job to sustain themselves, are barely adult-like in the sense of competent practitioners of the human way. The strangeness settling over them leaves them angry and frightened; uncertain and grasping for the hand-up offered by religion, militancy or materialism, or by almost anything that will seem to let them see a bit of acceptable future through the strangeness.

The world has grasped for Obama to clear away the uncertainty, the lies, the terrible incomprehensibility; yet this only adds to the strangeness. We want our leaders to make sensible decisions; we want them to make our world safe and understandable. But leaders haven’t done that since we lived in small nomadic communities. Leaders have for thousands of years struggled against the grounding reality; their power only comes from the illusions of their followers. It is this that has finally resulted in whole populations living in ungrounded strangeness. It is left to us to find our way through the strangeness, to find the grounding structures in our lives.

I seem always to find my way back to this place. Either I have little imagination or this is, like the bottom of one of those spiraling coin funnels used for charity donations, the final destination for our efforts. We are turned back on our own resources, and they have to be enough. Ultimately, we must accept that the strangeness is not a condition that we can make sense of and thereby overcome or correct. It is the product of billions of individual actions disconnected from reality coming more and more each day into collision with each other and reality. The consequences seem strange and overwhelming because they are; and they are not to be made sense of. Sense is to be made of our own lives and our daily contact with The Real. The trick is to discover what that is. It is a first step, at least, to know what not to consider.

James Keye is the nom de plume of a biologist and psychologist who after discovering a mismatch between academe and himself went into private business for many years. His whole post-pubescent life has been focused on understanding at both the intellectual and personal levels what it is to be of the human species; he claims some success. Email him at: jkeye1632@gmail.com. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.

This article was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 9:01am

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/a-veil-of-strangeness/

There is little discernable agreement in the scientific literature on the definition, measurement and application of hope.

How the American people, whoever the hell they really are, have bootstrapped American presidents up into being "OUR LEADER" continues to elude me ....

Forty years ago, I know for sure that I was in a place called Viet Nam, which was NOT America, and I know that because the people over there who actually lived there and called themselves Vietnamese were quite emphatic about the fact that not only was it not Kansas over there, it was also NOT America, and we had NO right whatsoever to be over there f***ing with them, their families and their property and their government ...

Then, I was made to get on a plane, which brought me to here, wherever this really is ....

An insane or lunatic asylum, perhaps, with no walls ....

People say it is America, but you could never prove that by me ....

All I know is where I got back to isn't where I left from ....

And so ...

That DOES NOT surprise me, rla ....

There really is little discernable anything at all in scientific literature ....

And the last thing I would expect a scientist to understand would be hope .....

They have no need for it, you see .....

Or use for it, more properly ....

And so ...

I personally don't find hope to be a measurable or quantificable quantity ....

But nonetheless, I still have hope, unlike poor NiteOwl who has hitched his wagon to the AMERICAN DREAM ....

Which like crack cocaine or opium only gives a little bit of a high before it is gone again, and your re-supply will then cost you some BIG BUCKS ....

Which is why I am not out there pursuing the AMERICAN DREAM ....

I am living with my own reality, instead ....

And so ....

A great piece--the art and science of Personing in the human social system...what concepts and skills did you employ today?

One can never step in the same river twice...

There is no good reason to make a problem out of being in an existential predicament...that is the normal way
of being...problems have solutions, predicaments don't...everything that is, is in motion...

I don't know if that was a general question or a specific question, rla, but as for me, I used my skill at using a lopper or lopping shears to go out in the woods and lop up a bunch of small dead branches so I have small wood to use as kindling to get my fire going ....

And before that, I had used my skill at starting wood fires in my stove to start a fire in my wood stove ...

Outside of that, well ....

Hmmmm ....

Okay, I did that stuff anyway ....

Does that count?

And so ....

The difference between an animal and a human, rla, is that when caught in a trap, the animal will fight the trap or chew off its own leg to get out ....

The human studies the trap and learns from it ....

And so ...

I also used the concept of fire today to get a fire going ....

CONCEPT -------> SKILL

And so ....

Do you think the plane might have flown down a rabbit hole on the way back, rla?

Mathew Crawford, in his little book, Shop Class As Soulcraft, points to a paradox in our experience of Agency:to
be master of your own stuff entails also being mastered by it.

The development of human agency which is related to the concept of spiritedness, occurs only through the process
of over-comming concrete limits (resistence) which is not of our making. I think this is what Livyjr is getting at when he talks about, "Reality" hitting you up side of the head like a two by four...

Actually, I am wrong here ....

Scientists are always hoping for more funding, followed by a nice generous retirement package ....

And so ...

I'll go with that scientific explanation, rla ....

Well done ....

And either you survive the experience and learn from it or ....

Well ....

And so ...

The question was general, or rhetorical as they say...there is a rabit hole between every eye blink...

I learned a new concept today...Encino Man...

Time for me to go feed. Orine is still at the trainer's barn. I actually miss him, which is a surprize since it makes for less work...

Enjoy, rla ...

And is that a concept or skill that you are employing there when you are feeding the horses?

just a quick interuption of the thread

please look at this thread for an important CGCS message, thank you.

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...=111880&hl=

There is so much work to be done. We have a great salesman in Obama, but he is selling out of an empty wagon.

1. Liquid bio-fuels from algae. Or from sugar cane in the deep south whose climate is similar to Brazil where it has been a huge success.

2. Nukes. I know, I know, Livy is gonna beat me up on this one, but other than the heat they generate, they are non-polluting.

3. Solar farms in the southwest. Giant curved mirrors which heat a fluid in a central pipe. If you do the math, enough solar energy falls on each square mile to provide electricity for the typical 500 houses on an adjacent square mile. At least during the day.

4. development of European sized cars which get 42 mpg and use much less fuel.

5. Re-striping all highways to accommodate the new smaller cars. We can get one or two extra lanes for NOTHING. This will ease our traffic problems.

These are just a few.

But enough about ideas, how about Michael Jackson?

I could never beat up on you, jeffmoskin ....

You are too nice a person for that ...

And it is not the heat alone ....

Rather, it is the prodigious amounts of water vapor that they cause to be put up into the atmosphere where it is unnatural, and hence unstable ....

Up here this summer, we had grey day after grey day after grey day ....

It greatly affected the growing season, which is short enough as it is ....

It was a very wet summer for us, which caused a lot of damage that we have to pay for on top of all the other things we already have to pay for ....

There was a blight that wiped out a huge amount of tomatoes up here ....

So let's put more water vapor up into the air ....

It just gets more and more ridiculous ....

And how about that Michael Jackson, ain't it?

The dude sure did have some moves ....

And so ...

Handling the hay, grain and water are skills, employed as an expression care which is a concept.