Once in a while I'll venture onto one of the social networking sites and attempt to catch up with acquaintances. I'll be honest; I'm half-assed about these sites because knowing Bridget ate a tart at Ago that made her orgasm doesn't do a thing for me or my orgasms.I mention the inanity of this exercise because once in a bit I'll see a comment that will tempt me to add my thoughts. Today was one of them. The setup was my friend Shawn's page, and he'd posted about the loony bin who'd flown his plane into the IRS building, yet he's not considered a terrorist. Someone commented that Tim McVeigh's "the worst" to which I said:
i disagree; tim mcveigh's a shithead, but what congress, the exec & judicial branches as well as the regulators (sec, cftc, et al), not to mention the jerkoff bankers, analysts and ratings agencies have done is no less than genocide on millions - worldwide. and the most astounding thing? this system is STILL intact and doing the SAME exact things that produced the meltdown IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! in fact, while the rest of us are on our knees, goldman sachs of shit ceo lloyd blankfein is taking "ONLY" a $9 mil bonus this year...
so the REAL question of our time is:
WHEN will the american people WAKE THE F UP?
the overs/unders on that are never/as long as they have mcdonald's, cable tv & suvs.
and the report card on barack/his admin? so far, D- over F. and i supported him over mccain [didn't vote for him though]. but enough's enough.
make no mistake; this is not a financial coup, it is genocide....
In true Freudian subconscious play, one of the things about stream of consciousness and free association is that every once in a while things will really come to the fore. This is one of them, because up until now, I really hadn't - in Frank Luntz or Tom Friedman style - named EM08 beyond "EM08" as a utilitarian label.
"Financial coup d'etat" is a start in the right direction, although it's still a bit too martial for my taste, yet it does have a place. "Genocide," however, is loaded, although it is - again, taking a cue from Luntz - being broadened from a specific race or ethnicity's targeting to class. So, the econ elite's war on all else, with the financial coup being an instrument in order to accomplish the goal of theft. Genocide is the result.
I don't use the term "genocide" lightly, either. To the contrary, I think it is perfect in application here, with the element of speed needing to be illumined. Meaning that Native Americans were wiped out in one form or another or Jews were shipped to camps en masse. That is easy enough to see because it is happening in a very systematic and rapid manner. Also, it was very clearly intentional, which I'll address shortly.
With EM08, this systematization of tyranny is far more sophisticated (albeit unwieldy and with more variables and yet, a much greater head start and range of camouflage and protections for the econ elites now) to the Native American or Jewish exterminations, however, what is aiding the banks, their government jackals and associated other hitmen (mass media/fourth estate, analysts, regulators...) is the sheer scope and size so as to render them invisible. There's the scope and size, the unwieldy aspects again. But because of common interests and economic imperatives, it's like a grand perversion of Smith's Invisible Hand mating with La Cosa Nostra and producing their baby, Uncle Scam.
Then there's speed. If President Jackson orders masses of Natives off of their sovereign land because he wants their gold and instigates the Trail of Tears, that's fairly concise and immediate in impact. But let's look at one element of EM08; the first phase of the real estate bubble in order to see why "genocide" will not popularly be applied to what's going on. Here's a simple fact:
*** There were many players; banks, hedge funds, ratings agencies, insurance companies, regulators, politicians, mass media, analysts.
That so many were involved, to greater or lesser degree, obscures the fact that people - not "corporations" - did this and in some relationships with outright knowledge of fraud and conflict of interests. Yet, this is never brought to light by our politicians, congressional inquiries, much less in our bought off overly conglomerated mass media. But because the first phase of the real estate bubble took decades to pop, it's purported to be (by some) and perceived (by some) as "an economic cycle" much like fall after summer, or the melting of our polar ice caps as having nothing to do with man's scarfing down oil like it was his last meal.
In other words, the sheer size and scope of EM08 works to "their" advantage. For the average American, brought to their knees by any number of EM08 pressures, understanding EM08 is like trying to read Manufacturing Consent while riding a Tilt-A-Whirl.
Last, the issue of conspiracy. Whether there is or isn't really isn't the point. It's like talking about whether someone is or isn't racist based upon their intentions, ie, a white person who calls Toyotas "rice burners" isn't racist, they're just being funny. Such talk obscures real racism - in hiring, college admissions, buying or renting a home, number of police inquiries/arrests, imprisonment.... The key is noting what people who wield power as societies and institutional structures do.
With EM08, so what if there wasn't a cabal of evil white men who were led by a sneering Dick Cheney plotting world domination? The fact that they had common interests and the resources to play the way they wanted led them to the same results. The answer is to not get sidetracked by deflections like conspiracy arguments and, as Krishnamurti said, stick to what is.
It may be cliche to say take a lesson from those who talked about watching the Nazis come for the artists, intellectuals, homosexuals, gypsies, and Jews but doing nothing. Yet, as we all watch "helplessly" as millions are being destroyed that is the current situation. Nothing convinces me otherwise.
