It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

Keeps going…

Also interesting because it’s written by this guy:

Paul Craig Roberts is a former editor and columnist for both the Wall Street Journal and Business Week. He worked as the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury under the Reagan administration, but has since disavowed both the Republicans and Democrats.

Haven’t read the book so I don’t know how much vitriol he directs towards the Reagan Revolution, which deserves a lot. Given his serious credentials, this Kevin Costner movie scenario is even stranger.  The man has credibility.  He’s a conservative, but a level-headed one:

Paul Craig Roberts: In recent years there has been a redistribution of power in the US from government to private. The US now resembles an oligarchy of private interests. The most powerful ones are Wall Street, AIPAC, the military/security complex, the oil industry, agri-business, insurance and pharmaceuticals. These private interests control economic and foreign policy, write the legislation that Congress passes and the President signs, and have achieved the monopolization of the US economy by large-scale commercial organizations. As far as I can tell, traditional conservatives scarcely exist in the US today. They have been eliminated by the neoconservatives, essentially militarists committed to US world hegemony….

In my experience with libertarians, especially during my tenure as Distinguished Scholar at the Cato Institute during the 1990s, I have encountered an ideological inflexibility, dogma if you will, that turns blind eyes to analytical and empirical evidence. Many, most likely most, libertarians regard jobs off-shoring as the beneficial workings of free trade. Those, such as myself, who present the clear facts of the case are demonized as “protectionists,” which means that libertarians do not have to examine the facts and encounter the empirical evidence.

Daily Bell: You mentioned one of your books. Can you update our audience on some of your other writing?

Paul Craig Roberts: I regard all of my books as important. In my latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, I explain why off-shoring is not free trade. I also explain why the two necessary conditions set out by David Ricardo for the principle of comparative advantage, the basis for free trade, no longer exist. I further explain that when a country moves the production of goods and services that it consumes offshore, GDP growth and consumer incomes are moved offshore as well. Jobs off-shoring or “globalism” is a way to convert US labor income into executive bonuses and capital gains to shareholders. This is the explanation for the rising income inequality in the US.

Daily Bell: And also for rising unemployment?

Paul Craig Roberts: Since 2008 the lowest interest rates and largest federal budget deficits in US history have been unable to stop the rise in US unemployment, much less to call the unemployed back to work. There are no jobs to which to call workers back.

Puts the science fictional fear-mongering in context.

Good take on the financial meltdown and what caused it. Still don’t know how derivatives work. But then, nobody does. A reminder how clueless and dangerous Boehner’s ant comment was. Could have done without the political music interludes. I’m not sure if there’s a lower form of music than songs that are overtly political, singing about taxes and such. Very cool that this project was completed via Kickstarter.

Seeing Ross Gelbspan’s despair about the future of humanity is one of the more persuasive things I’ve seen about the Global Warming debate.  He knows his shit and he’s genuinely sad that the world as we know it could be coming to an end.  Follows the Global Warming debate through Katrina and “Inconvenient Truth ” – from total apathy to new interest.  It puts the oil spill in a different light – in that it could be another moment that drastically changes public perception for the better.  The argument about Obama’s anger is not necessarily his anger at BP – but his indignation, saying, “Things need to change and will. Now.”  Obama has sucked on this issue.  As much as it’s a disaster, it’s also a potential gift.

Also persuasive about how awful the mainstream media has become – the other side of the discussion is always given a seat at the table, no matter how dubious their claims.  Confuses the issue totally – unsurprisingly.  Because given the choice between a hoax and this-will-kill-you, why wouldn’t it be more comforting to believe it’s a hoax?  Even if the hoax idea is perpetrated by the Tony Haywards of the world.

Less effective because Naomi Wolf goes Godwin with a vengeance. I’m sure she got shit for this – haven’t look at reviews. But it’s fascinating to see Wolf couch the Bush administration in exactly the same terms as the Tea Party – erosion of liberty, believing in the constitution, etc. Imagine if Glenn Beck released a movie called the “End of America” equating Obama with Nazism. Basically, his show does just that every night. There may be more truth to what Wolf is saying, and the Bush administration was a total nightmare, but if we lived in a true totalitarian state, I wouldn’t be writing this. She’s as alarmed at Obama as well, who has been a real disappointment.

All of these issues should be of concern to the right wing base, except Tea Baggers don’t realize the problems in their own party, or don’t care. I wouldn’t be surprised if a Republican Party operative was the first person to start bringing Obama=Hitler signs to rallies. Then it metastasized. So long as Obama is painted as far left (because in the lunatic mind, Hitler=left) then anything he does, no matter how reasonable (or right-leaning) will be met with resistance, and so he’ll have to move rightward. This is exactly what’s been happening (see: healthcare). Trouble is, Obama might not have needed this push even without the insane resistance.

I’d like to see a master documentary covering all these things: Finance/Environment/War, without being overly partisan. Because a fair amount of blame goes to Clinton and Obama as well. In “Capitalism,” Michael Moore smartly called out the members of the Clinton administration who are responsible for deregulation, though he’s called far left. This is a populist issue, not partisan. Someone needs to make an Alex Jones documentary for non-paranoids.

A Youtube video by the protester against the flotilla attack who lost an eye.

Yesterday on the drive home, went past the protest at the Turkish consulate on Wilshire Blvd. Looked like this:

Felt physically revolted.  I’m Jewish – by birth only. But hard not to feel some tug in support of Israel.  Except they’re trying to create a country based on Biblical boundaries.  It’s madness.  No different than Islamist fanaticism.

Still, the episode shines a light.  The world’s finally losing patience, and things likely need to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

Felt the same way about Rand Paul’s recent antics. Didn’t get into it before because it gets tiring focusing on people’s grand stupidity.  But he finally called attention to the fact that hardcore libertarianism makes no sense. So you limit government power in order to what – increase corporate power?  Aren’t these the guys who protest the Fed because it doesn’t have enough government oversight?  Enron, BP, and Goldman Sachs are proof enough that non-regulation makes no sense.

Weirdly, libertarianism has a strange faith that people will behave themselves without state intervention.  Humans are children – they’ll break things if they’re given no boundaries. Especially those humans who try to find new ways to make money.

As a media dissector and editor of Mediachannel, I have followed the reporting of this story closely with many detailed articles and in two books since, even before it became a story back to 2005 when I made my film In Debt We Trust only to be dismissed by some as a doom and gloomer for exposing the subprime mortgage fraud.

I was hoping that Rachel Maddow would challenge his mass delusion theory but she bought right into it also, in her interview. At one point Lewis opined that there was DECEPTION (i.e., lying by the investment world) but that too was not examined as Lewis himself counterpoised two explanations for the disaster, asking, “was it mass delusion or crime?”

Answer is: why not both? Interestingly, Disinfo’s post immediately following is called The Real 2012 Apocalypse, with the sunny information that even if the earth doesn’t come to an end in 2012, the financial crisis could be coming to a head at the very same time:

2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets….

The apocalyptic talk is not limited to perpetual bears and the rest of the doom-and-gloom crowd.

Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm.

“An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this…”

What’s so interesting about talk about the apocalypse and prophecy is not if it’s real, but that the world seems to be acting out prophetic fantasies regardless.  And this puts the concept of “delusion” into a different context.  As if it’s not just blindness, but acting some kind of death wish that’s as core to human experience as belief.

To look at the financial crisis from a more-mystical bent, “mass delusion” can have larger implications -  that they were being driven by something that maybe that didn’t understand and weren’t even conscious of – acting out a kind of archetype of corruption.  Even – possibly – acting out the archetype of the end of the world.  This isn’t totally insane thinking – because if you add together “mass delusion” and the financial crisis coming to a head in 2012, it’s a singularly weird juxtaposition.  This is not to mention the parallels in the Book of Revelation and what’s happening in the Middle East.  Even if insaniacs are trying to bring the Book of Revelation to life, who’s to say if the drive to make prophecy reality is not the prophecy itself.  Put another way – we’re hard-wired to die, perhaps we’re wired to make the whole system die as well.

To take the Jungian view, the financial crisis is acting out the archetype of the apocalypse:

What Jung sees happening in our era is that the Self, the central archetype of order and meaning, has been activated in the collective unconscious.  And when the Self becomes activated, it means a change in the collective cultural worldview.  At the core of every cultural worldview is the God-image, whether it’s Christian, Moslem, Hindu or whatever.  (Buddhists don’t subscribe to a God, but they believe in the Infinite, which, from a psychological standpoint, serves the same purpose.)  But when the Self is constellated, then the process of “uncovering what has been hidden,” the Apocalypse, the “revelation of new truth,” begins.  And this is a process that takes ages….

The “archetype of the Apocalypse” is the activation of the archetype of the Self–the central archetype of meaning–that is bringing with it some new worldview, a new God-image, a new relationship to the Divine, and a new stage of psychological maturation for the whole earth.

It’s a positive view of the apocalypse – because most would argue that what’s happening isn’t a result of our maturation but our immaturation (like that word, so I’m coining it). The conspiracy is not created by a shadow government, but the shadow self acting out darker impulses, which is happening more frequently. It doesn’t really have to be as complicated as that: as the world dissolves in a myriad different ways, it’s understandable if systems fall apart because corruption becomes more allowable.

Attributing the apocalypse to the collective unconscious is pretty dispiriting, because how do you fight something that’s the work of millions of brains working together without knowing it?  It’s like trying to change fate – or change prophecy (yikes).  At its core, it doesn’t really make a difference if the breakdown of the financial industry is delusion or crime/unconscious or conscious.  The main diagnosis that matters is that it’s happening, and it’s very hard to get the collective unconscious to undergo therapy.

Simon Johnson on the Doom Cycle (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute on Vimeo.

About Simon Johnson: Prof. Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com (a widely cited website on the global economy), and a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers.

Fraud is built into the system.  Those with any moral sense leave while those who remain are bottom feeders:

(via)

Meanwhile, I reviewed American Apocalypse, an apocalypse novel about a financial meltdown – which is irritatingly prescient, and basically confirms what these guys are saying.

We talked about how Obama’s been a disappointment and how maybe he’s not unable to get things done because of the climate, but basically he’s getting what he wants.  So while he is to the left of Dick Cheney, there is still indefinite detention, the Patriot Act was quietly extended another year last week, the big Pharma deal, the lack of new financial regulation, on and on.  For some reason, those in highest power are right-leaning corporatists – Clinton was basically a Republican president and Obama’s of the same mold.  A “progressive” these days is just what a regular average Democrat used to be and the Democratic party has gone rightward.  For all the talk of a Democratic majority, it’s a ridiculous assertion, as there are only a handful of true Democrats and then a bunch of Republican-style corporatists.

Me, as the conspiracy theorizing sort, sees the possibility of a nefarious plot in all this – that there’s some purpose to all this pro-corporate anti-humanist legislation being passed.  I just cannot buy the assertion that it’s just for profit.  My brother mentioned that the Rubin crowd thought they were doing good: with the regulations stripped in the nineties via complicated derivatives equations, they thought they were giving the economy a good boost.  Makes enough sense, except regulations are put in there so people don’t abuse the system. So you strip the regulations and abuse is a given.  Were they really that short-sighted that they couldn’t see the obvious?  Or is this a nefarious plot to bring down the financial system to usher in something new?

When you break it down, it doesn’t matter.  Whether or not the Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission decided to destroy the economy and told Robert Rubin to do its bidding, or it was accomplished due to blind, abject stupidity, the result is the same.  The attraction of conspiracy theory is that it gives a purpose to society’s breakdown, which actually feels better than the realization that there is no grand purpose to civilization’s demise – it’s just that humans are fuck-ups and given the opportunity to fuck up (deregulation) they’ll take it.  Greed is just such a boring reason for the financial meltdown.  Really, people just wanted more money?  They’re just a bunch of addicts?  Maybe – and that makes me think even less about the human race than if there was some kind of machination behind all these recent events.

Except there still might be.  Even if all the recent events are totally arbitrary and not planned beforehand, it’s still leading to systemic collapse.  So there’s still a conspiracy to destroy the system – even if it’s unconscious.  In my novel I pontificate about humanity’s seeming death wish and how this plays into prophecy.  Although the battles in the Middle East, the decline of the financial system, the melting of the environment, et al. aren’t necessarily proof that the Book of Revelation  is real, it is very curious that world events seem to be mirroring end of the world prophecy regardless if it’s intentional.  Either way, we’re heading towards collapse – our current structure is unsustainable, and it’s eerie that we seem to be acting out prophecy, even if that prophecy wasn’t a literal prediction.

I take a more esoteric approach to the possibility that people are bringing these events to life – an unconscious conspiracy that is acting out a grand “design,” whether it’s bringing a Jungian archetype to life or something else, is as valid as a secret meeting at Bohemian Grove.  People might not know why they’re doing it, but they’re still doing it.  The shadowy group in control might just be the unconscious. In that sense, the New World Orderites might be taking things a shade too literally.

I take a similar leap with something like crop circles.  It is possible that even hoaxes are revealing some kind of coded message.  Couldn’t an advanced alien race – conceivably – act through hoaxers to create the same messages as they could do themselves?  We’re talking a race a million years more advanced than ourselves – why not?  What made those hoaxers decide on that particular design?  Even a hoax has possible meaning.  Whatever the case, they’re beautiful, and shouldn’t be laughed off just because they’re so cool:

There’s still a lot we do not understand about consciousness, and the potential of collective consciousness, so people may be creating an apocalyptic future without total intent.  Just as it’s eerie that our world seems to be acting out 2012 prophecy, it also seems to be acting out New World Order conspiracies (Patriot Act, globalization…).  Whether it’s a literal plot to end the world or a plot comprised of humans’ worst instincts may not actually matter.

Here’s Dennis Kucinich, that famous conservative Paulite, using the same terminology used by the Libertarian right, “The Federal Reserve is as federal as Federal Express.” (around 4:00):

True lefty, socialist liberals hate this system as much as the Ron Paul right. Only the left wants to bring back the regulations that were stripped out during a Democratic administration (by Robert Rubin et al.) contributing to the financial crisis. And Ron Paul writes, Why More Regulation Makes Things Worse:

The other problem is the trust that people blindly put in regulations, and the moral hazard this creates. Too many people trust government regulators so completely that they abdicate their own common sense to these government bureaucrats….The free market works so much better than a centrally planned economy. With central planning, everything shifts from one’s own judgment about safety, wisdom and relative benefits of a behavior, to the discretion of government bureaucrats.

Yes, but how about the moral hazard of letting people roam free?  Is government intervention perfect?  Obviously not.  But when given unfettered rein to do whatever they want, profiteers will do what they’re in the business to do: profit.  I can’t claim to be an expert on the economy, but Paul’s argument doesn’t seem to hold up.  Because it’s the lack of regulation that led to the crisis.

In many cases, the nanny state goes too far.  But Libertarians take this idea too far by saying that all regulations are evidence of the nanny state.  The financial crisis proves that rabid capitalists will destroy the system if given the opportunity.  As Michael Moore points out in “Capitalism,” I don’t trust these guys to be guided by their own moral compass:

Though I find elements of Paul’s outlook interesting, I also think libertarianism is impractical. Yes, a stateless utopia via the Venus Project is a nice idea, but it’s not possible currently with the current U.S. system. You could argue that the system necessarily needs to fall apart in order to usher in a new stateless system, and given human instincts, libertarianism would probably usher in that downfall faster than any other system. As has been proven countless times, if the unfettered free market is given free reign to do whatever it wants, it sides with abuse of the planet and its people. To have government intervene with new regulation isn’t proof of creeping fascism, it’s proof that humans won’t do the right thing if they have the choice not to.

Whenever anyone cries socialism about Obama I recoil – it’s just such an inaccurate reading of the tea leaves.  If Obama was a Communist, he wouldn’t be making the far left so angry.  He’s a Clinton centrist, and for that reason he’s a disappointment.  I figured he was running towards the center for the election and would be a bit more open when he finally got into office.  And by open, I mean, yes, more socialist.

The problem we’re in is that we’re in a corporatocracy, so anything that takes away corporate power is fine by me.  But some conspiracy theorists and the “small government” right see nefarious encroachment in any government – which doesn’t make sense.  All government isn’t evil.  Of course not.  At what point do libertarians draw the line at regulations?  I’m glad my tap water doesn’t kill me, for one.  Much regulation is reasonably self-protecting.

Doubtlessly, the entire system needs reworking because people are basically forced into a system in which their income doesn’t much exceed their basic needs, so they’re tied endlessly to the 40 hour work week.  People then blame taxes for their troubles, but really they should be blaming the amount of their paycheck, not the amount that goes to taxes – how much profit is the business making relative to what its paying its employees? Make no mistake, if the monthly paycheck was higher, people wouldn’t be so concerned with the amount taken out by taxes. Perhaps that makes me a Communist – because I see no fault in there being some equality between what a business owner makes and what an employee makes. Perhaps not equal, but some better disparity is more equitable.

Likewise, the hardliner conspiracy-minded rightwing that scream about the global warming “hoax” also makes me want to flee. The mounting scientific evidence aside, the fact that global warming is inspiring more environmental awareness can only be positive. At my kid’s school, there’s a board where kids have created collages saying “Protect the earth” and so on. Some would call this “indoctrination.” It’s not because at its core, it’s positive.

If you look at the rhetoric of the right – libtards, et al. – it doesn’t take into account how Teabagger-style angry the left is about the state of the country.  For example, Game Over:

Without a single iota of hyperbole, it may now be said that regulatory capture of our government by Wall Street has been concluded. Done deal. Since Monday, the sheer volume of news supporting the truth that Wall Street essentially controls our government has become–quite simply–overwhelming.

It is the total sellout of Main Street and our country as a whole that’s been all but concluded before our very eyes. To call it anything less than that would be inaccurate reportage.

It’s beyond disgusting, IMHO. Words cannot convey my sense of contempt…that to which we’re bearing witness today.  It is the definition of betrayal.

That sounds exactly like Teabagger hysteria, but unlike “Obama is a socialist,” this one has some merit.  It’s actually closer to fascism – the marriage of corporations and government – except that doesn’t make Obama a fascist, because this is an ideology perpetrated by the right much more than what remains of the left in power.  An idea very much lost on the right wing.  The purpose of a government health care plan, for example, is not “socialism,” but to take power away from Blue Cross and other corporations who are screwing their consumers.

Where the right stupidly think Obama represents a socialist takeover, they don’t seem to realize that they basically have a Republican, corporate-centered candidate who is stripping regulation, not adding more government “interference.”  People’s sense of logic really does seem to be devolving – though I imagine this is how it’s always been.  Stupidity has no generation:

More in this vein:

There’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Think that’s from a Paulite conspiracy screed?  Joe Stack’s manifesto?  No, it’s from The Atlantic.

Obama is enough to make one paranoid – I’ll grant conspiracists that.  In the sense that he had more honest idealism during the campaign (wasn’t entirely just exploiting people’s hopes) and then once he was handed the reins he learned – this is how it really works.  I continually can’t get my head around a system that is continually built so that it destroys itself.  He seems to be playing the same game as everyone else.  Basically, all of Obama’s slogans were crap: “Change doesn’t happen from the top down, but from the bottom up.”  “We’re the change we’ve been waiting for.”  “This is the moment.” Etc.  The crash from all that hope is pretty stark.

I’m glad I didn’t see Zeitgeist until now because in 2008, during Obama’s rise, I wouldn’t have wanted to absorb it.  The primary and election season were a fucking lot of fun.  It felt like Kennedy – don’t insert Kennedy’s bad policies here, on a more thematic level than that.  I’ve held on for a long time that Obama’s presidency was transformative enough by just who he is, but basically all we get with Obama is financial collapse at a slower rate than would have happened with McCain/Palin.

So I’m kind of in no man’s land. Too liberal for the libertarian right, and too whacked out entertaining 9-11 truth, UFO’s, et al. for the Daily Kos left.  I’m not sure such a forum exists.  So I’m writing here.