American aristocracy (or a simple game of connect the dots)

American aristocracy (or a simple game of connect the dots): "
In California a civil servant, after 30 years of 'service', can retire at age 55 with 60% of his salary. Peace officers and prison guards get larger pensions. Highway patrolmen can retire at 50 with 90% of their pay. Retired state workers retain health insurance. American aristocracy needs enforcers.
Why do Americans allow American aristocracy to use impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace, demagoguery, to control us?

A perfect example of their use of demagoguery is the demonization of users of outlawed drugs, controlled substances, or petty thieves. These individuals are living on the periphery of social norms and quite typically are poor, uneducated and/or mentally impaired. So when they are down, keep them down!

"Prohibition of alcohol fell flat on its face. The prohibition of other drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the ‘war on drugs'. In declaring ‘war on drugs', we have declared war on our fellow citizens. War requires enemies we can demonize, fear and loathe. As a nation we are long overdue for a soul searching coldly analytical look at the ‘drug scene' and the war on drugs. Such candor would reveal the futility of our current policies, exposing the embarrassingly meager return on our massive enforcement effort of $167 billion a year. It is time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war."- Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Department.
.../...
"America contains 4% of the Earth's population and has incarcerated 25% of all imprisoned humans on Earth. Twenty years ago America spent $36 billion on police, courts and incarceration a year while today it spends $167 billion. The economic costs of a criminal justice system that emphasizes punishment and incarceration at the expense of rehabilitation and the potential for recovery are unsustainable." - Joe Domanick, senior fellow in criminal justice at USC Anneberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism.
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Government and corporate America abuses and wastes infinitely more of the public's wealth than most Americans can conceive of. Most of this waste and abuse ends up as wealth in the hands of well capitalized clever men who manipulate resources for personal gain. This wealth is obtained through unfair business practices, sweatshops, government decree and no bid contracts.

Oil price anxieties are acute among American aristocracy which wants America to continue to burn a quarter of the Earth's oil production or more.
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.../... A trader identified as Mallory on the transcript stated "If the line is not congested I just look to congest it. If you can congest it, that's a money maker no matter what 'cause you're not losing money to move it down the line." Traders also stated on these tapes that their scam was protected because president George W. Bush would not allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to impose price caps as one of president George W. Bush good buddies was Enron CEO Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay, the mastermind of energy deregulation.
.../... Russ Campbell, a Nevada Power lawyer, said "This is more than a smoking gun. It is an audiotape of the gun being fired, the bullet hitting the victim and the murderer standing over the victim and laughing."

Unbelievably these tape recordings came to light because Enron sued the small Snohomish County Public Utility District for $122 million claiming it had been underpaid. So Snohomish County spent $100,000 having the Colorado River Commission phone conversation tapes transcribed.
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In an agreement between the U.S. Labor Department and Wal-Mart reached in late 2005 the U.S. Labor Department agreed to give Wal-Mart a fifteen day notice before undertaking any Labor related investigation. This agreement is unprecedented; was drafted by attorneys for Wal-Mart and is the only agreement in existence between the U.S. Labor Department and industry that forewarns, with a 15 day advance notice, of an impeding Labor Department violation investigation.

Oops! Wal-Mart forgot to cut a deal with the INS. November 2005, 125 illegal aliens arrested on a Wal-Mart construction project. The original contarctor was fired and Wal-Mart brought in it's own work force of illegal aliens!
.../...
For those that believe the federal government enforcers all laws equally they might like to know that from 1993 to 2003 the number of arrests of illegal aliens at work sites went from 7630 in 1993 to 445 in 2003, and the number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003 while the number of illegal aliens in America continues to climb.

Unfortunately Americans have become disengaged. This is understandable as most Americans do not know what to believe and what not to believe due to the monopolization of mass media. Americans are swamped with dubious information. Much of it false or bent to suit the editor's or corporate sponsor's position.

American aristocracy and the arrogant political elite fear nothing more than a educated, engaged and enraged population. If we let those who see the American workers life as something to be enslaved reign supreme, then we can be sure that sometime our individual American lives will no longer serve American aristocracy. Americans will be used and thrown away, as has recently become apparent in the reduction of Social Security and medicare benefits. (Americans are now fed 'food' not fit for human consumption that causes diabetes and cancer! Less retirees to take care of!)

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In The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Daniel Boorstin stated that Americans increasingly lived in a "world where fantasy is more real than reality," and he warned, "We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so 'realistic' that they can live in them."

"We are what we think." - Siddhartha Gautama

We are what we think is true in the respect that our mental lives,
which others experience as our attitude, predicates what we will become.

The essence of reality suggests that thoughts and actions of kindness reflect kindness
and thoughts and actions cruelty reflect cruelty!

See Epictetus

See William of Ockham

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http://www.unique-design.net/library/quote/wright.html

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.

According to our strength of character and our clarity of vision, we will endure, we will succeed, we will have contributed something to make life where we were and as we lived it better, brighter, and more beautiful.

- Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect


See Ralph Waldo Emerson

See Henry David Thoreau

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.../... These were the laws of human nature, by which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. All those to whom I looked up were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness.

Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.

My education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and pre-mature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind.

The fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those of benevolence.

Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.

I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner.

I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.

In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one individual were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that individual than, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind…
If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

If any opinion be compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true.

To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

-John Stuart Mills, English philosopher

http://www.unique-design.net/library/nature/mills.html
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http://www.unique-design.net/library/control.html

Is 'out of it' a better place to be than 'with it'?

Yes, if you're interested in things like happiness, self-acceptance and peace of mind. But then again maybe you would prefer to be 'with it' or 'in' because then you do not have to think for yourself. You can let the advertisers and script writers form your opinions and think for you.

Popular culture as espoused through television also works to divert attention from other things of more importance, like the direction in which America is headed, which mass media does not want you to think about.

Do not allow yourself to fall for the advertisers market propaganda and become a mindless human robot!!!

See C. S. Lewis

See Louis Lamour

See John Maynard Keynes

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http://www.unique-design.net/library/control.html

Good now, due to anger or fear, you will allow those that pretend to govern in the name of the average working American citizens to pass laws that will allow those that govern to control many more facets of your every day life and you will thank those that govern for protecting you. In the past this was termed 'a shake down' !

George Orwell's "1984" long ago recognized that it serves those in power to keep our attention focused on perceived threats. Many a social psychology experiment confirms the principle: A perceived enemy serves to quell dissent within any cultural or social group. Emotional fear and anger responses cause humans to vote their "gut" feelings and abandon reason. Enlightened individuals will want to check their fears and angers against the facts and to resist those that serve their own purposes by cultivating a climate of fear.

When indivduals assume that politicians have their best interests in mind we are using faulty logic. Of the three major terrorist actions to occur within the past few years in America two of them were perpetrated by former American soldiers.

The Oklahoma Federal building bomber, Timothy McVie fought in the Gulf War and was flunked out of being an American green beret. The sniper, John Mohammed, was trained as a sniper by the American military. Possibly Dick Cheney's assumption that democracies do not breed terrorists is incorrect. Or is it possible that we no longer live in a democracy? Maybe we now live in an American aristocracy oligarchy or plutocracy.
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oops: a story pertinent to today: Cheney Quail Hunting on Hwy 43 [sic]The Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, patients and their families March 22, 2004 that ten popular antidepressants could cause deepening depression and even suicide. Those involved with antidepressants should look out for agitation, hostility, mania and other forms of violent behavior that have been associated with them.

The link between antidepressant 'serotonin reuptake inhibitors' and violence came under scrutiny ten years ago in a trial stemming from the case of Joseph Westbecker. Weeks after starting Prozac Joseph killed himself and eight others at a Louisville, Kentucky printing plant.

Twenty-seven survivors and relatives of the dead sued Eli Lilly, Prozac's manufacturer. The jury ruled in the Eli Lilly's favor after the plaintiffs' lawyers rested their case without presenting key evidence.

The judge suspected a behind the scenes deal between the drug company and the plaintiffs. An investigation showed that Eli Lilly had given huge settlements to all the attack survivors and their lawyers. In 1997, the judge changed the official record from a jury verdict in Eli Lilly's favor to dismissal of a settled case.

The drug company had won the case in the eyes of public opinion. "It's an example par excellence of the behind the scenes maneuvering that the corporations have done repeatedly to obscure the side effects from public view." - Doctor Joseph Glenmullen, a Havard Medical School psychiatrist.
.../...

"To a real degree, the humans who get a drug in the first few years after its approval are being experimented on." - Dr. Brian L. Strom, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Are you a guinea pig?

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