For several thousand years the rich and powerful have wielded the most effective tool know to man to control their servant populations, that of divide and conquer via mind control and social engineering. This underlying manipulation is always present as an integral part of the financial system and overall social conditioning and it usually expresses itself in the form of personal jealousy, greed and fear among the plebs. However, every three or four generations the big guns are brought to bear by the elite to strip the productive class of nearly all their social and monetary gains.
In the past this has been accomplished through various major and minor “financial panics’ as they were called in the 1800’s and depressions or recessions as they are called today. Or as the elite prefer to call the process, a reallocation and rebalancing of financial assets back to their rightful owners. And when on occasion even this fails to tame the herd or steal all a people’s wealth the rules of the game are changed, usually through massive social disruption caused by widespread and prolonged war. Once we hamsters are thoroughly disenfranchised and reprogrammed, often by fighting among ourselves over any remaining crumbs, we are set back down on our endless exercise wheel of futility to begin the process all over again.
Assuming the average Zero Hedge (ZH) reader truly understands this big picture view of the world, I find it curious that many in the ZH comment section are applauding the Egyptian resistance when they previously denigrated the European protests and rioting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears as if one group of people who have been defrauded, lied to and robbed are more worthy of our support than the other. Ultimately the difference between these two groups is not freedom verses oppression but simply the freedom to choose (or lack thereof) the model and color of our own personal hamster wheel.
I sense in some of my fellow ZH plebs a superior attitude and possibly even abject jealousy regarding the actual people participating in one nation’s uprising over another instead of recognizing the similarity of the basic social resistance messages. If we would just step back from our self interested pursuits and naval gazing for a moment we might possibly see this for what it really is, an inalienable truth. We are being divided and turned upon one another and we are helping the powers that be accomplish this. Sadly the methods used are quite transparent and as old as the hills.
Our general support of the poorer Egyptians over the better off Europeans implies that the Egyptian protestors are more pure and genuine and thus worthy of our intellectual benevolence. Of course the overpaid and under worked Europeans are not deserving of the right to protest and push back against their masters. How dare those lazy good for nothing Europeans react angrily to the wholesale theft of their nation’s wealth and the austerity measures slapped in place to pay off the bills the Ponzi masters ran up while engineering financial fraud.
We shouldn’t begrudge our masters for taking their generous cut off the top for decades before the game turned into vapor and the real wealth floated away into numbered bank accounts, QE2++ inflated stock prices, off shore factories and (increasingly) stolen precious metals. After all, they earned it the old fashioned way and the slaves were cut in for a small taste. Since it’s all those generous social benefits that are pushing the financial system into the abyss and not the wholesale global financial fraud, the European slaves have nothing to complain about. Let the masters eat their cake in peace for crying out loud.
It’s almost as if we here on ZH are declaring that toiling away in the service of our various capitalist Gods for fifty or sixty hours a week for ‘real’ slave wages, disappearing fringe benefits in lieu of actual wage increases and with a pittance of vacation time actually taken, is considered the ultimate in piety to our higher powers aka the financial and social elites. Don’t we gloriously ‘free’ Americans just love to proclaim to the world that this is ‘the only way’ to monetary salvation aka consumer nirvana.
And yet somehow we believe that even though the average Egyptian is doing essentially the same thing (only they’re earning actual slave wages) that this alone supposedly endows them (and only them) with the inherent right to attempt to throw off the chains that bind. Alas, if you get past the dramatically different living standards, both Egypt and Europe are protesting the same thing, meaning official complicity in the public financing of governmental and private fraud, theft and corruption.
Pray tell what the attitude will be among us when Americans finally take to the streets. Will we make fun of anyone who shows enough balls to actually gather together and push back against the Ponzi machine? Unfortunately, despite the fact that we claim to be aware of the propaganda and manipulation machine, how we react to the protests often depends upon how the mainstream media frames the protesters combined with our own lovingly nurtured prejudices and biases. The end result of this psychological cocktail often inflames or endears the observer (meaning you and me) to what we’re seeing on the boob tube. How easily controlled and manipulated even the supposedly aware Zero Hedge flock appears to be.
Aside from the geographic location, economic maturity and methods used in The Middle East, The Far East, Asia, Europe, Africa, The Americas etc, I see little difference between the various figure head leaders and their suckling and supportive elites in their effort to rape rob and steal from the masses that populate the countries they rule. Aside from the fairy tale belief that the world’s leaders wish to make life better for the downtrodden and disadvantaged, I find every country’s cabal has a single purpose in life. And that is (for the most part) self enrichment, personal comfort and power exponentially compounded.
That being said, would someone kindly explain to me why we jeer those who fill the streets in Europe yet we cheer the Egyptians for doing precisely the same thing for essentially the same reasons? I guess it’s only OK to revolt from your masters when you’re already groveling in the dirt and live in a terror filled world called the police state. But it’s not OK if you already own a flat screen TV and you presently (but not for long) receive 6 weeks paid vacation, state paid child care and the police state is carefully hidden. It sounds like the better kept house slaves have no right to revolt, but the beaten, exploited and worn down field slaves do. Forgive me if I’m missing something in the translation here, but isn’t the unifying theme and operative word among both classes of people “slave”?
Why is it that we can’t seem to understand that an economic system can be created where everyone doesn’t need to work sixty hours a week in order to survive. We passed the point of increased productivity decades ago where we no longer need to be chained to a desk or assembly line in order to live and live well. The fact that we still are chained speaks volumes to how effectively the system is drained of its fundamental wealth one B(L)S politically expedient lie at a time. We remain chained because it remains the elite’s best method of mind control.
Real wages over the last 30 years have seriously declined while the elite’s wealth has skyrocketed, particularly when you recognize that where one spouse could comfortably provide for the family of four thirty years ago it now takes two wage slaves toiling away to support the same sized family, an often overlooked part of the “real” wage equation. The system is being (and has been) systematically bled, even destroyed, in order to enrich the few. In its place illusionary wealth called ‘credit’ has been extended to keep us deaf, dumb and blind while even more tightly bound to our intellectually customized hamster wheels.
We all seem to be experiencing a massive Cognitive Dissonance of the truly self destructive kind and it’s the most obvious indication yet that we all suffer from a terminal case of Stockholm Syndrome combined with victim-perpetrator bonding similar to battered spouse syndrome or families of the addicted. Our world has been systematically looted by a small cabal of financial and political elites over the last 30 plus years and arguably for millennium. And whether we wish to admit it or not, we haven’t put up much of a stink because we were given a small seat at the table and a few extra servings of moldy bread and watered down rum.
As long as ‘we the abused’ were compensated enough to dull the pain we allowed the abuse to continue. Repeatedly beat me about the head, then give me a dirty rag to stop the bleeding and I’ll kiss the masters feet and be eternally grateful. Now that we the abused are being dealt out of the Ponzi card game, but the abuse itself is being ratcheted up, only now do we cry foul. “Hey, where’s my dirty rag?” Worse, we are increasingly angry with our fellow wage slaves who are relatively better off (those SOB house slaves have two dirty rags, imagine that) but who are finally attacking their abusers while we are not.
Incredibly we claim the rebellious are selfish, lazy and over indulged. We condemn those uppity house (wage) slaves for reaching beyond their station in life because they aren’t satisfied with their more flexible chains and increased beatings. The truly conditioned mind, the mind of the house broken and kept slave, can never see beyond the reach of his or her own chains. The real world ends where potential freedom begins, all because we are too busy tending to our narrow belief system which demarks the extent of our reality and existence.
This is our true hamster wheel within which we are locked into the illusory, but all consuming pursuit of money, itself a state of mind and a symbol of our acceptance of the status quo every time we use it. This tool of enslavement called fiat ‘money’ has been cleverly equated to freedom, but is actually the ultimate form of bondage. I owe, I owe, so off to work I miserably go. The company store is still there, only remodeled and restocked with QE powered iGags dipped in hope and change. Yum, finger licking good!
To gaze upon another placated mind living the better life is infuriating and immediate tension and division is created by our own jealousy and greed. Natural allies are divided by the ruling elite who create intentional shortages and artificial differences. This doesn’t happen by accident or ‘nature’, but by manipulation and conditioning. The global masters have vast experience cultivating their human crop and managing their plantations. Can’t we see that by not supporting our fellow abused when they fight back, regardless of their ideological, financial or physical condition in relation to our own, we are directly supporting our own abusers financially, emotionally and intellectually?
I understand this essay may be considered harsh or even derogatory to some. But to be frank I’m tired of using words that won’t disturb the placated mind. Rarely do we grow when we are not deeply disturbed or strenuously challenged. It’s time to grow up folks. It’s time to recognize that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and that anyone resisting the global financial elite in any country for any reason is fighting our battles for and with us.
Anyone pushing back against tyranny, financial slavery and the process of publically financing and socializing private debt is fighting the same abusive power elite that we should be. Instead of squabbling over the dwindling crumbs on the floor it’s time to pull our head out of our posterior and understand that either we fight the abusers together or we will surely be abused separately.
02-09-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
