tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361The Divine Mr. MThe Divine Mr. MThe Divine Mr. M2022-07-06T17:32:53Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1401446Nebs Sez2022-07-06T17:25:38Z2022-07-06T17:32:53Zpessimisticpublic0July 6th, 2022<br /><br />The Human Race is riding a runaway train to hell [aka Accelerating Climate Change] while we argue about Profits and Pronouns, about when Life legally begins, about Borders and National Identity, most of us willfully ignoring the looming doom of our species. <br /><br />I'll be seventy years old in a month and a half. My goal is to outlive our cats and my wife. Then I'll be free to punch my ticket if so moved. *shrugs* Not much else I can do really...<br /><br />...and so it is.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1401446" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1399632Nebs Sez2022-06-27T11:27:01Z2022-06-27T11:29:53Zannoyedpublic1I note that in general the GOP Establishment is being low key about the overturning of Roe v Wade. I suspect they're not happy that those judicial morons 'went nuclear' in the Culture War. They were supposed to just 'chip away a bit at a time' while focusing on their main job of making Business Friendly rulings. Now the 2022 Midterms have taken on a whole new dynamic.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1399632" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1389621Neb's Bottomless Rage2022-05-06T09:28:45Z2022-05-06T09:52:04Zenragedpublic0More and more I get badly depressed after I read my news feed. First though, I get Really Fuckin' Angry. The depression comes after when I realize I cannot say out loud what I want to say because I'd get banned from whatever social media platform and possibly even 'investigated for terrorist threats'. <br /><br />However, without getting specific, what I still can say [so far] is that I desire terrible and ugly things to happen to The Owners, to their operatives, sycophants and political stooges, hell, even to their families, as well...as terrible and ugly as possible.<br /><br />But not all this comes from my 'bottomless rage'. It also comes from my awareness that without the real fear of 'terrible and ugly' consequences, The Owners, their operatives, sycophants and political stooges will continue to rape all of the rest of us in any manner that suits them and their vested interests.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1389621" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1389387Nebs Does Doom2022-05-05T07:16:04Z2022-05-05T08:22:42Zangrypublic0<i>Feb. 19th, 2017 at 2:22 AM</i><br /><br />~I keep reading endless numbers of articles and essays about how Trump became president. And none of the them really seem to get it. Chris Hughes comes close, but he seems to have lost his mind. Can't blame him really, as everyone is dancing around the elephant in the room; we are in fact already IN Collapse, eg, The System is in Terminal Failure.<br /><br />We are in Late Stage Capitalism. What that means is as the profit margins get narrower, The Owners need to squeeze harder to extract said profits. This has been going for a few decades now, but for the general public, the 'balloon went up' with the Crash of '09, which was the direct result of The Big Squeeze. Wall Street et al created a Housing Bubble of insane proportions via all manner of shady and even illegal marketing and accounting games.<br /><br />When the shit hit the fan, they got their political lackeys to use Tax Payer Money to 'reimburse' them for their loses and left said Tax Payers out to dry. Roughly 40% of the American Middle Class Wealth was lost. FORTY PERCENT. That meant eroded tax bases, gutted pension funds, wrecked state and municipal bond portfolios.<br /><br />That is what Obama inherited. And, being the Corporatist he is, he bunted economically. The perfect example is the ACA [which originated with The Heritage Foundation, a very right wing think tank]. He'd promised a Public Option over and over and over again on the campaign trail. Withing a month of his Inauguration, it had vanished, forcing thirty million Americans into the clutches of the Insurance Industry. [see The Big Squeeze]<br /><br />Eight years later, after more and more of that kind of betrayal from the Democrats and the insane slavering obstructionism of the GOP, the American Electorate had come to hate the establishments of both parties. And two Insurgent candidates emerged from outside of each party; Bernie and The Donald.<br /><br />We all know what happened. The 'undisciplined' Dems suddenly became Very Disciplined and sandbagged Bernie. And the infamously disciplined GOP fielded a slate of total buffoons and got its clock cleaned.<br /><br />Even then, Hillary should have won. She did in fact 'win' The Vote. But her ground game sucked so badly [arrogance], and the Dems had alienated so much of their own base [more arrogance], she lost four states by roughly 120K votes in total.<br /><br />And that boys and girls, is how Collapse works. The System becomes so rotten that a Black Swan like The Donald can end up in the White House. [<i>EDIT: 5/5/22 At this point I made some noise about 'The Deep State gaming The System in order to fix the problem and do a reset' but they turned out to be fuckin' gutless and did fuck all, while The Owners, those traitorous scum, got their $1.4 trillion and so didn't give a fuck</i>]<br /><br />But we are still in Late Stage Capitalism and Collapse is still underway and no one has any real idea what to do about that ...except, of course, More Of The Same, which is a well known definition of insanity.<br /><br />Toss the now inevitable Catastrophic Climate Change into the mix and one can be certain that the next century or so is going to be 'very interesting times' indeed.<br /><br />You can kill yourself now if you wish....<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1389387" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1382066Debating w/ Grad Students2022-02-27T21:55:46Z2022-02-27T23:19:00Zamusedpublic0Ok, had some coffee now...lol<br /><br />I started to study history, most especially Military History, when I was nine years old. [I'll be seventy this year] When I was seventeen I was out in the streets demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Organized students at my high school and we confronted the police, violently. [made for great post-demo sex lol] <br /><br />The single Great Sociopolitical Lesson I learned with that was how classic National Socialist crowd control techniques worked seamlessly on Leftist art students. [I went to the old High School of Art & Design in NYC] With proper technique, The Herd is easily guided and controlled no matter how intelligent its individual members may be...and most people ain't that bright. <br /><br />Many of us, myself included for a while, truly believed 'The Revolution was at hand'. What we got instead was Nixon, Reagan and finally Trump, plus Corporatist Apparatchiks like Clinton, Obama...and ofc Joe Biden. [Goddess Bless Jimmy Carter tho, he has remained a Good Man] And nearly all my Old Comrades became Capitalist Roaders, aka 'Yuppies'. <br /><br />I was never a Communist, tho I used some of their rhetoric. Even as a teen it was easy to see that Stalin and Mao were homicidal psychopaths, that no Russian or Chinese workers 'owned the means of production' and the so-called 'communist states' were really Authoritarian State Capitalist.<br /><br />Democracy works fine in small polities, maybe no more than five or ten thousand people. That is the maximum most Baseline Humans can handle. Beyond that, all the institutional mechanisms required to run a Modern Technological State outstrip the Baseline Human capacity to keep track them. After that, running things gets 'farmed out' and that's where Corruption starts to kick in. Once we get to millions of people, it is endemic and Democracy is more and more subsumed until we get to our present state, the Inverted Totalitarianism you so blithely dismissed.<br /><br />Baseline Humans [me, thee and all we know] simply cannot make Mass Democracy work. Just look at how most of us deal with Accelerating Climate Change, which is likely to kill most if not all of us. Denial...Denial...Denial...Extinction. <br /><br />That, more than anything else, led me to become a Transhumanist. Unfortunately, it is almost certain that The Rich and Powerful will be the main beneficiaries of the Genetic Engineering and Cybernetic Augmentation technologies that are being developed in this very moment. But maybe a workable form of Democracy will come out of these New Humans having a Cybernetic form of Telepathy where one can download all the information required directly into one's mind. <br /><br />Of course, I have little doubt that a Genetically Engineered 'laboring class' of 'less than humans' will be created to serve these New Humans, controlled by brain implants and 'made happy with their lot'. We love having servants.<br /><br />Because of our failure to deal with Accelerating Climate Change, these New Humans will have to live underground and in orbit for a while, centuries I expect. But I'm sure they'll adapt just fine. They'll still be 'humans' and we're like f'ing cockroaches. lol<br /><br />Me, I live out in the desert with my 2nd wife and our many cats, which worked out quite nicely in The Time of Covid [a symptom of Accelerating Climate Change BTW]. I write and think and pass the time until I pass onto the next Turn of The Wheel. <br /><br />You see, I'm [mostly] at the Acceptance Stage of Grief, while you seem to be somewhere in the Anger/Bargaining Stages. /sigh I suppose that's in part a function of age...<br /><br />...and that's just about that.<br /><br />See here: <a href="https://nebris.tumblr.com/post/677383159172792320">https://nebris.tumblr.com/post/677383159172792320</a><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1382066" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1354130sigh2021-10-18T00:53:03Z2021-10-18T01:00:06Zangrypublic0"The truth is that this culture is insane. When Derrick asks his audiences, <i>“Does anyone here believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?”</i> — and he’s asked it for years, all around the country—no one says yes. That means that most people, or at least most people with a beating heart, have already done the math, added up the arrogance, sadism, stupidity, and denial, and reached the bottom line: a dead planet. Some of us carry that final sum like the weight of a corpse. For others, that conclusion turns the heart to a smoldering coal. But despair and rage have been declared unevolved and unclean, beneath the “spiritual warriors” who insist they will save the planet by “healing” themselves. How this activity will stop the release of carbon and the felling of forests is never actually explained. The answer lies vaguely between being the change we wish to see and a hundredth monkey of hope, a monkey that is frankly more Christmas pony than actual possibility.<br /><br />Given that the culture of America is founded on individualism and awash in privilege, it’s no surprise that narcissism is the end result. The social upheavals of the 60s split along fault lines of responsibility and hedonism, of justice and selfishness, of sacrifice and entitlement. What we are left with is an alternative culture that offers workshops on our “scarcity consciousness,” as if poverty were a state of mind and not a structural support of capitalism. This culture leaves us ill-prepared to face the crisis of planetary biocide that greets us daily with its own grim dawn. The facts are not conducive to an open-hearted state of wonder. To confront the truth as adults, not as faux-children, requires an adult fortitude and courage, grounded in our adult responsibilities to the world. It requires those things because the situation is horrific and living with that knowledge will hurt. Meanwhile, I have been to workshops where global warming is treated as an opportunity for personal growth, and no one but me sees a problem with that." <i>~Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet Excerpt</i><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1354130" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1294272Summed Up In A Single Sentence2021-01-18T22:41:21Z2021-01-18T22:43:04Zpublic0<h4>“As ridiculous as it may be, many Americans, and certainly many Trump supporters, especially white evangelicals, have a sort of world-historical mission driven mythology and mindset that, in their own mind, reaches back to and carries forward (appropriates) an odd mix of Old Testament authority and New Testament apostolicism (although twisted into the new gospel of wealth a la Joel Osteen and John Hagee, et. al), mixed with a “wild west” sense of manifest destiny, which is informed by Hollywood (John Wayne types) and studio wrestling, along with a strong dose of John Locke libertarianism and Ayn Rand capitalism, which helps to accommodate the confederate flag and racial superiority (I suppose because for them “the West” is white through and through), all culminating in a unique syncretism of “American Exceptionalism”…all of which helps to explain some of the darlings of the mindset, such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, the Q-Anon crowd, and, of course, the world-historical “Chosen One” savior Donald Trump.”~James Snyder</h4><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1294272" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1292251Nebs Sez2021-01-07T02:00:08Z2021-01-07T02:03:54Zindescribablepublic2~Back in 2008 I pointed out that the Democrats had been steadily moving Right after Mondale got trounced by Reagan in 1984, and that the GOP in response had itself moved more to the Right and had now found itself painted into a corner way out in Bat Country. Well, over the past four years we have discovered just how very very far out that corner of Bat Country truly is...<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1292251" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1272399Nebs Sez: [edited comment]2020-10-09T21:48:33Z2020-10-09T21:48:33Zblahpublic0"I'm quite certain that Catastrophic Climate Change will result in the extinction of Baseline Humans [Homo Sapiens Sapiens] aka me and thee over the next century or so, no matter what we do at this point. The Earth's surface is going to become largely uninhabitable for maybe a thousand years, give or take a century.<br /><br />Our descendants, Homo Transformis [Genetically Modified/Cybernetically Augmented in various ways], will replace us, going both underground and in orbit and beyond. The Rich are already buying their bunkers and peeps like Musk, Bezos and Branson are heavily investing in space travel.<br /><br />Me, I'm doing my best to enjoy my last decade or two. I have near zero hope that things will substantially improve."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1272399" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:1201733I Submit That We Are Not Undergoing A Collapse, But Rather A Culling2020-04-06T23:26:36Z2020-04-06T23:31:38Zangrypublic0<i>...this is from Jul. 23rd, 2013..I thought now would be a perfect time to re-post it...</i><br /><br /><i>"All politics is local."</i> ~'Tip' O'Neill<br /><br />~Which is why, in the end, democracy fails. Because humans are, as a rule, 'provincial', which is a socio-cultural way of saying that they are primarily concerned with their own immediate sphere of interest, tend to ignore everything outside of that sphere and react with fear/anger whenever the larger sphere impinges. That prevents most humans from thinking 'globally' or even 'nationally'. Now hold that thought...<br /><br /><i>"Why should I concern myself with how many die? Even the Christian Bible says what is man that God should be mindful of him? For me men are nothing but a brain at one end and a shit factory at the other."</i> ~Aurelio Peccei, founder and first president of the Club of Rome <br /><br />In 1972 The Club of Rome published a historical document, “The Limits to Growth,” described by Wikipedia as a “book about the computer modeling of unchecked economic and population growth with finite resource supplies.” I remember at the time it generated a lot of speculation and controversy, but for the general population, like so many things before it, it went down The Memory Hole, eclipsed by Watergate and then the Fall of Saigon. [see "All politics is local."]<br /><br />Aurelio Peccei was one the authors of that report and his sentiments are fairly clear.<br /><br /> “The Limits to Growth,” was also, I have come to believe, a warning to the population of Earth from The Western Financial Elites; “Since you are obviously incapable of controlling your own affairs and managing your own resources, we are going to gather up as much of them as we can lay our hands upon, build ourselves safe havens and let the rest of you drown in your own shit. In fact, we plan to expedite that by making things as bad as possible in order to get this over with as fast as possible.” In other words, a Culling. <br /><br />I suspect they made that decision not so much because they are evil – though there is certainly some sociopathic reasoning in the mix – but because, seeing that “All politics are local,” they already knew that the solutions required to head off Global Catastrophe would be impossible to implement. Keep in mind that at the time The Cold War was still going strong, America was socioculturally unraveling and China had just wrapped up The Cultural Revolution. <br /><br />In that context, I really cannot fault the logic, even if I am one of those likely to culled. <br /><br />I have imagined snippets of conversations such as these, uttered not at secret meetings in darkened rooms, but at bright social gatherings over cocktails: <br /><br />“Let it all got to hell.”<br /><br />“They will rebel.”<br /><br />“We'll make Consumerism ubiquitous and fund their social hatreds.” <br /><br />“But we cannot control something like that.” <br /><br />“No, but we can guide it and we can survive it. We'll surf the apocalypse.” <br /><br />If I were in their position, I'd do much the same thing, though as those of you who know me will understand that my 'grand scheme' is of a somewhat different design. And because of that, while I expect this Culling will more or less succeed, I have my doubts that it will play out at all close to what The Elites hope for. <br /><br />But the die have been cast and now what shall be, shall be...<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=1201733" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:946400I Submit That We Are Not Undergoing A Collapse, But Rather A Culling2018-01-10T00:30:57Z2018-01-10T00:30:57Zcynicalpublic0<i>...I wrote this five and half years ago..I think it more relevant than ever...</i><br /><br /><i>"All politics is local."</i> ~'Tip' O'Neill<br /><br />~Which is why, in the end, democracy fails. Because humans are, as a rule, 'provincial', which is a socio-cultural way of saying that they are primarily concerned with their own immediate sphere of interest, tend to ignore everything outside of that sphere and react with fear/anger whenever the larger sphere impinges. That prevents most humans from thinking 'globally' or even 'nationally'. Now hold that thought...<br /><br /><i>"Why should I concern myself with how many die? Even the Christian Bible says what is man that God should be mindful of him? For me men are nothing but a brain at one end and a shit factory at the other."</i> ~Aurelio Peccei, founder and first president of the Club of Rome <br /><br />In 1972 The Club of Rome published a historical document, “The Limits to Growth,” described by Wikipedia as a “book about the computer modeling of unchecked economic and population growth with finite resource supplies.” I remember at the time it generated a lot of speculation and controversy, but for the general population, like so many things before it, it went down The Memory Hole, eclipsed by Watergate and then the Fall of Saigon. [see "All politics is local."]<br /><br />Aurelio Peccei was one the authors of that report and his sentiments are fairly clear.<br /><br /> “The Limits to Growth,” was also, I have come to believe, a warning to the population of Earth from The Western Financial Elites; “Since you are obviously incapable of controlling your own affairs and managing your own resources, we are going to gather up as much of them as we can lay our hands upon, build ourselves safe havens and let the rest of you drown in your own shit. In fact, we plan to expedite that by making things as bad as possible in order to get this over with as fast as possible.” In other words, a Culling. <br /><br />I suspect they made that decision not so much because they are evil – though there is certainly some sociopathic reasoning in the mix – but because, seeing that “All politics are local,” they already knew that the solutions required to head off Global Catastrophe would be impossible to implement. Keep in mind that at the time The Cold War was still going strong, America was socioculturally unraveling and China had just wrapped up The Cultural Revolution. <br /><br />In that context, I really cannot fault the logic, even if I am one of those likely to culled. <br /><br />I have imagined snippets of conversations such as these, uttered not at secret meetings in darkened rooms, but at bright social gatherings over cocktails: <br /><br />“Let it all got to hell.”<br /><br />“They will rebel.”<br /><br />“We'll make Consumerism ubiquitous and fund their social hatreds.” <br /><br />“But we cannot control something like that.” <br /><br />“No, but we can guide it and we can survive it. We'll surf the apocalypse.” <br /><br />If I were in their position, I'd do much the same thing, though as those of you who know me will understand that my 'grand scheme' is of a somewhat different design. And because of that, while I expect this Culling will more or less succeed, I have my doubts that it will play out at all close to what The Elites hope for. <br /><br />But the die have been cast and now what shall be, shall be...<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=946400" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:916502I Submit That We Are Not Undergoing A Collapse, But Rather A Culling2017-09-07T04:00:39Z2017-09-07T04:16:17Zcynicalpublic0<i>"All politics is local."</i> ~'Tip' O'Neill<br /><br />~Which is why, in the end, democracy fails. Because humans are, as a rule, 'provincial', which is a socio-cultural way of saying that they are primarily concerned with their own immediate sphere of interest, tend to ignore everything outside of that sphere and react with fear/anger whenever the larger sphere impinges. That prevents most humans from thinking 'globally' or even 'nationally'. Now hold that thought...<br /><br /><i>"Why should I concern myself with how many die? Even the Christian Bible says what is man that God should be mindful of him? For me men are nothing but a brain at one end and a shit factory at the other."</i> ~Aurelio Peccei, founder and first president of the Club of Rome <br /><br />In 1972 The Club of Rome published a historical document, “The Limits to Growth,” described by Wikipedia as a “book about the computer modeling of unchecked economic and population growth with finite resource supplies.” I remember at the time it generated a lot of speculation and controversy, but for the general population, like so many things before it, it went down The Memory Hole, eclipsed by Watergate and then the Fall of Saigon. [see "All politics is local."]<br /><br />Aurelio Peccei was one the authors of that report and his sentiments are fairly clear.<br /><br /> “The Limits to Growth,” was also, I have come to believe, a warning to the population of Earth from The Western Financial Elites; “Since you are obviously incapable of controlling your own affairs and managing your own resources, we are going to gather up as much of them as we can lay our hands upon, build ourselves safe havens and let the rest of you drown in your own shit. In fact, we plan to expedite that by making things as bad as possible in order to get this over with as fast as possible.” In other words, a Culling. <br /><br />I suspect they made that decision not so much because they are evil – though there is certainly some sociopathic reasoning in the mix – but because, seeing that “All politics are local,” they already knew that the solutions required to head off Global Catastrophe would be impossible to implement. Keep in mind that at the time The Cold War was still going strong, America was socioculturally unraveling and China had just wrapped up The Cultural Revolution. <br /><br />In that context, I really cannot fault the logic, even if I am one of those likely to culled. <br /><br />I have imagined snippets of conversations such as these, uttered not at secret meetings in darkened rooms, but at bright social gatherings over cocktails: <br /><br />“Let it all got to hell.”<br /><br />“They will rebel.”<br /><br />“We'll make Consumerism ubiquitous and fund their social hatreds.” <br /><br />“But we cannot control something like that.” <br /><br />“No, but we can guide it and we can survive it. We'll surf the apocalypse.” <br /><br />If I were in their position, I'd do much the same thing, though as those of you who know me will understand that my 'grand scheme' is of a somewhat different design. And because of that, while I expect this Culling will more or less succeed, I have my doubts that it will play out at all close to what The Elites hope for. <br /><br />But the die have been cast and now what shall be, shall be...<br /><br /><b>Note:</b> <i>I wrote the above a little over four years ago. I'd say that given the recent electoral outcome the wheels may have come off the concept I proposed. Not that I'm saying it was not a valid hypothesis to begin with, but that its potential flaws are now glaringly obvious.</i><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=916502" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:915989Mass Democracy Has Failed2017-09-05T08:31:29Z2017-09-05T08:34:07Zcontemplativepublic0<i>..from Oct. 26th, 2008 at 10:28 PM, with a slight edit..</i><br /><br /><i>..this is a comment I made in a friends LJ..</i><br /><br />"I have come to the conclusion that The Great Experiment of Mass Democracy has failed. It has taken me a few decades to be willing to admit such an outcome, but it has been driven home to me over the past half dozen years.<br /><br />You've known me long enough to be fully aware that Politics to me is like Sports for most American males. I eat, breathe, and sleep the stuff, have done so since I was a kid, and these days I can do that 24/7/365. <br /><br />But even with that capacity and inclination, modern society and civilization and all of its myriad mechanisms is still too much for even someone like me to keep track of in an effective fashion. The 'average citizen' is then far more lost in, and overwhelmed by, these things, even those who share my inclinations, and there ain't all that many of those. <br /><br />Joe Bageant's Anonymous Political Consultant <a href="http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/10/not-new-ideas-b.html">said here</a>; <i>“The mastery of the political right over the past thirty years has been primarily to better understand the irrational factors in politics. Conservatives have always understood that when it comes to politics, people rarely act in their rational self-interest but instead on emotion, fears and the perception of their interests.”</i><br /><br />Most people do not want to wake up, especially here in The Republic. Too fucking scary. And a fair number of those are in fact constitutionally incapable of waking at all. <br /><br />Another type of social order is needed. What that new construct might be is now the responsibility of the Aware Individual." <i>...I ended there, but kept thinking about this...</i><br /><br />Participatory democracy does not seem to work when the citizen base gets beyond five or ten thousand. At that point 'political mechanisms' seem to grow almost organically and began to remove the process from the reach of 'the average citizen'. The increase in social complexity creates the Political Specialist. Add Economic and Technological Systems, and 'the average citizen' is finished ...except as a Cipher for Those Who Rule.<br /><br />However, any discussion of 'qualifying' the Franchise brings howls of rage and, given past performance, rightly so. <br /><br />But should not the electorate of such a powerful nation as this be required to meet some Standard beyond accident of birth? Should not 'the average citizen' be required to pass something like <a href="http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=2de5bece24e7b110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=2de5bece24e7b110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD">The Naturalization Test</a> our new citizens must take before being entrusted with a Vote? <br /><br />It's really not that hard a test...if you have a fucking brain in your head. <br /><br />Of course, I'm not holding my breath in that matter. But I am pursuing a Course of Action. <br /><br />In the long term, my own personal belief on where we need to go is to use a version of Heinlein's <a href="http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf">Federal Service Model</a> as a transition to a society that is some combination of the two cultures Peter Hamilton calls <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edenism">Edenism</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamism">Adamism</a>. I suspect we'll get a bit closer to the latter.<br /><br />The above set of paths are templates I propose for <a href="http://nebris.tumblr.com/post/152358165583/nebris-liber-sorores-the-book-of-the-sisters">the path of The Sisterhood</a> in this matter. Of course, I know things will shift and change. <br /><br />One of the most interesting things I've read in the last few years came from William Gibson, Godfather of Cyberpunk. He was amazed that in his very prophetic novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer">Neuromancer</a>, he had completely overlooked the potential impact of cellphones, totally dropped the ball on the subject.<br /><br />I take his revelation to heart, both as a writer and as Her Prophet.<br /><br />For those that dismiss this as mere 'sci-fi thinking', please note you happen to be reading this on The Internet and probably own one of those pesky cellphones, too. Science Fiction is Right Now.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=915989" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:829183Nebs Does Doom2017-02-19T09:57:17Z2017-02-19T10:23:00Zpessimisticpublic0~I keep reading endless numbers of articles and essays about how Trump became president. And none of the them really seem to get it. Chris Hughes comes close, but he seems to have lost his mind. Can't blame him really, as everyone is dancing around the elephant in the room; we are in fact already IN Collapse, eg, The System is in Terminal Failure. <br /><br />We are in Late Stage Capitalism. What that means is as the profit margins get narrower, The Owners need to squeeze harder to extract said profits. This has been going for a few decades now, but for the general public, the 'balloon went up' with the Crash of '09, which was the direct result of The Big Squeeze. Wall Street et al created a Housing Bubble of insane proportions via all manner of shady and even illegal marketing and accounting games. <br /><br />When the shit hit the fan, they got their political lackeys to use Tax Payer Money to 'reimburse' them for their loses and left said Tax Payers out to dry. Roughly 40% of the American Middle Class Wealth was lost. FORTY PERCENT. That meant eroded tax bases, gutted pension funds, wrecked state and municipal bond portfolios. <br /><br />That is what Obama inherited. And, being the Corporatist he is, he bunted economically. The perfect example is the ACA [which originated with The Heritage Foundation, a very right wing think tank]. He'd promised a Public Option over and over and over again on the campaign trail. Withing a month of his Inauguration, it had vanished, forcing thirty million Americans into the clutches of the Insurance Industry. [see The Big Squeeze]<br /><br />Eight years later, after more and more of that kind of betrayal from the Democrats and the insane slavering obstructionism of the GOP, the American Electorate had come to hate the establishments of both parties. And two Insurgent candidates emerged from outside of each party; Bernie and The Donald. <br /><br />We all know what happened. The 'undisciplined' Dems suddenly became Very Disciplined and sandbagged Bernie. And the infamously disciplined GOP fielded a slate of total buffoons and got its clock cleaned. <br /><br />Even then, Hillary should have won. She did in fact 'win' The Vote. But her ground game sucked so badly [arrogance], and the Dems had alienated so much of their own base [more arrogance], she lost four states by roughly 120K votes in total. <br /><br />And that boys and girls, is how Collapse works. The System becomes so rotten that a Black Swan like The Donald can end up in the White House. Now The Deep State has to game The System [delegitimatizing it even more] in order to fix the problem and do a reset, eg a Pence White House, which while ugly, will at least be relatively stable. <br /><br />But we are still in Late Stage Capitalism and Collapse is still underway and no one has any real idea what to do about that ...except, of course, More Of The Same, which is a well known definition of insanity. <br /><br />Toss the now inevitable Catastrophic Climate Change into the mix and one can be certain that the next century or so is going to be 'very interesting times' indeed. <br /><br />You can kill yourself now if you wish....<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=829183" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:828888Random2017-02-19T00:57:57Z2017-02-19T00:57:57Zdepressedpublic0~I saw that I still had this icon and I was sad.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=828888" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:731790Nebs Rages2016-07-29T05:21:55Z2016-07-29T17:40:40Zenragedpublic0"We had a chance to put a good honest decent man in the White House, though I suppose we really never did have that chance. Be that as it may, that good honest decent man was ridiculed and brutalized and shoved aside...and now we're given the choice between The Corporate Fascist and The Overt Fascist and told 'you MUST vote for the The Corporate Fascist because “rights!!”'<br /><br />Well, fuck you. Fuck all you craven mother fuckers. I'd call you sheep, but sheep are cute and your crawling moaning fear is ugly. The truth is, The Republic deserves Donald Trump for our sins, which are Legion. And I strongly suspect we're going to get him..."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=731790" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:728395Nebs Sez2016-07-24T06:55:08Z2016-07-24T06:55:08Zcynicalpublic0~Back some time in 2012 Vince Lamb said he hoped 2013 would be ''a better year'. I told him, 'no, it would be worse...and so would every year after it for the foreseeable future'. And looking out at the mid-point of 2016, I can see I was right. But once one knows the patterns, one can generally predict the future.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=728395" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:713955Nebs Pukes2016-06-08T05:13:05Z2016-06-08T05:13:05Zcrushedpublic0"I'm sick to my stomach. All the polls showed them in a dead heat in California, but all of a sudden she's got a twenty plus point lead...and for some reason they've never explained, the various news organizations are not doing any exit polling at all in the state, so we have zero 'on the ground' numbers to check this against. <br /><br />This is why I hate getting excited by any candidate. Either they turn out to be a piece of shit or, if they're the real goods like Bernie, the systems grinds them down...."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=713955" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:692787Nebs Sez2016-04-20T12:02:47Z2016-04-20T16:29:33Zangrypublic0The Dems and the GOP are both ‘owned’ by Corporate Money. Corporate interests nearly always get their legislative needs met, while We The People get shined on.<br /><br />Each party 'makes the proper noises’ to its respective bases, but their campaigns, and the jobs they get when they either lose or retire from office, are wholly dependent upon Corporate largess. One does not bite the hand that feeds.<br /><br />So for example, the Dems will 'fight for gun control’ and the GOP will 'fight for expelling the illegals’, but note that almost nothing has happened with either. That is because those are issues that help divide the Electorate and therefore keep each party in power because we’re too busy fighting each other over 'table scrapes’ while The Corporations eat their full.<br /><br />That was okay when the economy was in decent shape, but for most Americans, the Crash of '09 has never really ended. The average American is still struggling to get by, while The Rich have apx $36 Trillion Dollars stashed in offshore accounts.<br /><br />So the core base of each party has rebelled.<br /><br />For the GOP, this has produced Donald Trump. For the Dems, Bernie Sanders. Whatever one thinks of their respective platforms and ideologies, it is very apparent that each party establishment hates them and has done its best to derail their campaigns. That is because they each truly represent the Will of Their Party Base and that is not what The Corporations want.<br /><br />Trump is pretty much a lock at this point. And Sanders is closing in on an increasingly hapless Hillary. If the GOP does a 'political maneuver’ and steals the nomination from Trump, expect bloodshed. If the Dems squeeze Sanders out, I expect that Hillary will still win in November. The GOP simply does not have the numbers anymore. <br /><br />But the Democratic party will be ripped open. Too may of us are sick of being lied to by Center/Right Corporatists who pretend to be Liberals [Hillary & Obama] and having a 'social issues' bone tossed to us to shut us up while they feed the Corporations every single thing they want. <br /><br />Capitalism is in its Terminal Phase where it is now devouring its host. As I Posted/Tweeted a few years ago, “No domestic industry left. Massive unemployment. Crushing personal debt. The bankers still free. Drone strikes. Drug war. Social violence. Paralyzed politics. Diminishing public services. 65 US vets committing suicide every single day. 200,000 homeless children nationally.<br /><br />I could go on and on. That is what Collapse looks like, not tattooed barbarians racing along the highways. The steady slide downward.”<br /><br />Hillary talks 'incrementalism', but as we say in AA, “Half measures availed us nothing.” ...and time IS running out.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=692787" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:690310Nebs Sez2016-04-09T21:47:07Z2016-04-09T22:12:26Zamusedpublic0~I find myself in a truly bizarre place this election season in that I am rooting for a Presidential candidate from each party, namely both Bernie and The Donald, when I usually have zero use for any of them. Certainly when the time comes, Bernie gets my actual vote. But I pull for The Donald too because, even if I think he's really just trolling, he IS trolling The Establishment.<br /><br />And I really really really want to see them debate each other. <i>Those</i> debates I'll watch! I'm sure when they disagree it will an extreme disagreement, but I'll bet you they'll agree on a lot of things that would highly discomfort The Rulers, such as how thoroughly rigged the system actually is and how 'the little guy' can't catch a break.<br /><br />It's obvious why I support Sanders. To quote myself, “I'm a fat old man on Disability. I support Sanders out of selfishness, as he seems the only candidate who'll work to make my last few decades of life bearable.” <br /><br />But even though much of what Trump says is appalling, ALL of that stuff is <i>exactly</i> what the GOP Establishment has been saying since the summer of 1968, only he's removed all the filters and shouts it from the rooftop. He has totally stolen their narrative and there's nothing they can do to stop him....except cheat. Of course, if they do that, the base will come after them and not rhetorically either. We'd see the actually shedding of blood at the GOP convention, 'watering the Tree of Liberty' as it were, which many of us would find most entertaining. <br /><br />So there you are, kids.. #FeelTheBern and #Trump2016!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=690310" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:685866Nebs Sez2016-03-13T12:49:58Z2016-03-13T12:49:58Zcrankypublic0"So here comes the lecture….<br /><br /><i>[posted in my local FB group, which is Very Republican]</i><br /><br />The Dems and the GOP are both ‘owned’ by Corporate Money. Corporate interests nearly always get their legislative needs met, while We The People get shined on.<br /><br />Each party 'makes the proper noises’ to its respective bases, but their campaigns, and the jobs they get when they either lose or retire from office, are wholly dependent upon Corporate largess. One does not bite the hand that feeds.<br /><br />So for example, the Dems will 'fight for gun control’ and the GOP will 'fight for expelling the illegals’, but note that almost nothing has happened with either. That is because those are issues that help divide the Electorate and therefore keep each party in power because we’re too busy fighting each other over 'table scrapes’ while The Corporations eat their full.<br /><br />That was okay when the economy was in decent shape, but for most Americans, the Crash of '09 has never really ended. The average American is still struggling to get by, while The Rich have apx $36 Trillion Dollars stashed in offshore account.<br /><br />So the core base of each party has rebelled.<br /><br />For the GOP, this has produced Donald Trump. For the Dems, Bernie Sanders. Whatever one thinks of their respective platforms and ideologies, it is very apparent that each party establishment hates them and has done its best to derail their campaigns. That is because they each truly represent the Will of Their Party Base and that is not what The Corporations want.<br /><br />Trump is pretty much a lock at this point. And Sanders is closing in on an increasingly hapless Hillary. If the GOP does a 'political maneuver’ and steals the nomination from Trump, expect bloodshed. If the Dems squeeze Sanders out, they can expect defeat at the polls, which if we’re lucky would mean a President Rubio and if we’re not, a President Cruz.<br /><br />…and I’ll just leave it at that."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=685866" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:677579Nebs Sez2016-02-19T22:56:11Z2016-02-19T22:56:11Zcrankypublic0~While this is what passes for 'liberalism' in this country today, it is not actually classic Liberalism. It is Urban Petty Bourgeois Moralizing created by Boomers [my generation] to justify their selling out to the Corporate State, exchanging their Citizenship for Consumerism and sacrificing their Freedom [which we learned in the Sixties was kind of tenuous anyway] for a Safety they expect to be guaranteed by The State. They are almost all entirely unaware of the Stalinist subtext of most of these constructs. <br /><br />As I've said elsewhere, <i>"Liberal Humanism had once been a vital force and had changed human affairs for the better. But it inevitably fell victim to the Cult of The Individual and then fractured into ideological factionalism, individual narcissism and intellectual decadence. Its absolute rejection of Hierarchy doomed it to impotence.”</i><br /><br />On the flip side, American Conservatism, via Richard Nixon, sacrificed its moral center to the leftover Old South Slavocracy for electoral gain. It has now painted itself into an epistemological corner from which there is really no escape. A casual glance at the so-called 'Conservatives' presently running for President shows that with painful clarity. It too is a doomed relic of a dead past. <br /><br /><img src="http://41.media.tumblr.com/d000531b49c9ba968f6bf2f10dad07ae/tumblr_o1q8yhK5MT1v5hajro1_1280.png"><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=677579" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:673800Nebs Sez2016-02-12T07:37:36Z2016-02-12T07:41:05Zamusedpublic0Some Rube: "Trump is a smart man. Everyone hates him because he is vague, or points fingers. I'm sick of apologetic politicians, who haven't the intestinal fortitude to defend their own ideas, and just bend to what ever the loudest screamer is shouting. I for one want a strong President. And none are as strong as Trump."<br /><br />Moi: "I'm a New Yorker and am rather more familiar with The Donald than you might be. All he's really done is take the various 'dog whistles' the GOP has used on the rubes for the past 48 years [since Nixon got elected] and shout them from the rooftop. <br /><br />He was probably bored and got into this for the excitement. His "I could shoot someone and they'd still follow me" remarks shows that even he is surprised by his success. I doubt he really wants to be President, as much as it would feed his ego. He's been around long enough to know what an utter ratfuck the gig really is. <br /><br />But hey, spud, knock yourself out. As a fellow New York asshole, I applaud his game. It's brilliant and shows what a bunch of suckers the GOP base really is, just as we New Yorkers have always believed."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=673800" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:657516Nebs Sez2015-12-05T10:23:23Z2015-12-05T10:23:23Zpublic0"The hysterical cupidity of Anti-Gunners is presently on display with their ranting about Congress refusing to ban those on The Terror Watch List from buying guns. Not only are these people who have committed no crime, they include a lot of Left Wing political activists, people in the anti-war, environmental and racial justice movements, because the Security State considers them ‘terrorists’. There are also no small number of people who simply have the 'wrong name’ and are on the list through pure incompetence.<br /><br />The Terror Watch List is a Fascistic blunt instrument. Granted the GOP didn’t vote the law down because of that. They were pandering to their base. Basically, they did the right thing for the wrong reason.<br /><br />But this does reveal how essentially Fascistic the anti-gunners really are and how ignorant most people are about what really goes on with The Security State. More fear driven politics. More proof that Mass Democracy has failed."<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=657516" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-04-27:126361:620870Nebs Sez2015-08-09T23:02:45Z2015-08-09T23:02:45Zcrankypublic0This is a quote of mine from Oct 1st, 2012: "The candidates the GOP fielded this year were the worst in living memory, a collection of morons, lunatics and sociopaths. The only decent intelligent human being in the lot, Jon Huntsman, was never able to get out of the single digits. Nixon and Reagan would have been appalled...and, based upon their respective policy platforms, would likely not be able to gain any traction in the roiling madhouse the GOP has become."<br /><br />Today: The set of GOP candidates amazingly enough is even worse than three years ago. They don't even have a Huntsman.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=nebris&ditemid=620870" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments