In Chapter One (here) I discussed how the outspoken and non conformist generation of the 60’s and 70’s has morphed into something so completely foreign to its basic beliefs that it does not recognize itself as the embodiment of all that was wrong with that period in history. I then talked about natural human cycles as part of the explanation for our present day insanity and how we willingly participate in our own enslavement.
Now it’s time to pick up on the thought I dropped earlier about how our emotional animal responses are influenced as much by biochemical reactions as by our social and physical environment. While I’ve written several articles and comments regarding the process and methodology of propaganda, mythology and social control systems, something I’ve not discussed much to this point is a subject that is so abhorrent to American mythology that it’s immediately rejected by the control system and its tools and puppets as impossible and even treasonous to discuss.
Conditioned minds tend to projectile vomit back up information that is deemed unpalatable and inconsistent with its implanted meme, a sure sign the truth is hitting pretty close to home. What I’m talking about is the legal and illegal drugging of Americans by the government, with plenty of help from private and corporate enablers and profiteers. This type of abuse has a long and storied past not only here in America, but throughout the world.
Even after decades of public and not so public disclosures of government, military and intelligence service(s) involvement in the importation and distribution of illegal drugs into America (as well as Canada and parts of South America and Europe) there is still massive public and governmental denial that this has and is still going on. The ranks of the three citizen armies of the brain dead, hopelessly naive or ideologically blinded are skillfully leveraged by governmental and private parties to figuratively and literally pull the wool over our eyes when it comes to the vilest and most abhorrent acts perpetrated against American citizens by American citizens.
A careful and in-depth reading of (alternative) world history over thousands of years illustrates a long and ugly account of governments, kings, pharaohs, religious orders etc. poisoning and drugging its own citizens, guest and migrant workers, domestic and governmental slaves (including but not limited to wage, sex and debt slaves) with drugs and alcohol, and recently materialism and consumerism, in order to maintain control and suppress rebellion and dissent.
Even our sanitized history books talk about importing and supplying opium to Chinese Coolies, although the textbooks are careful to point to private business and/or individuals as the perpetrators of these ugly deeds, never specifically mentioning that government agents were often involved from the start. The pertinent question to ask is this; what is different between then and now other than our arrogant belief that somehow we are different from those lesser human beings from the past.
Which, by the way, is another mind control device skillfully used to obscure and placate. We are constantly told that nearly everything in the past is backwards and unusable, but everything present or coming in the future is much better and more desirable. “Oh…we don’t do that anymore so there is no sense studying history for clues to what’s going on today. There’s nothing to see back there, so move along now. Let’s hurry to the future folks, for out there lay our salvation and prosperity.”
Of course you’ll find little to no mention in the widely disseminated ‘history’ books of the 50 plus year record of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), its successor the CIA, or military involvement in the experimental drugging (think Frank Olson for example) and later mass drugging of America through illegal drug importation and distribution. This was and is still carried out through direct and indirect participation by these and other governmental agencies, including the relatively recent addition of the DEA.
There have been numerous MSM stories over the years, many of which have since been corroborated by several independent sources, of governmental, military and intelligence service planes crashing with tons of drugs on board. Unofficially, official America leadership is up to its nose (pun most definitely intended) in high value high volume drug running, importation and distribution. Period. Full stop. End of sentence and paragraph.
In addition there are endless reports, some even briefly appearing in the MSM, of high level official and ‘unofficial’ government involvement with so called drug kingpins and organized crime heads. While no doubt some of this is the result of official corruption (the ever popular lone corrupt official is a popular explanatory meme for the occasionally embarrassing public disclosure) there is also evidence that some of these activities are orchestrated and blessed from above as unofficial but still promoted government (and corporate) policy.
The illegal drugging of America by ‘official’ America is being carried out with implied covert and overt assistance to private parties, corporations and individuals both foreign and domestic. The outsourcing and privatization of America doesn’t end at street sweeping, prison keeping and war mongering. Stated as simply as possible, our government is the illegal drug pusher extraordinaire if for no other reason than the massive and consistent cash infusions it provides for the global Ponzi machine, all money that governmental and private parties are not publically accountable for and thus made to order for black box operations, kick backs, slush funds and campaign contributions.
And it’s easy to understand why any government would prefer its citizens to be comfortably numb. Please understand that I’m not saying all illegal drugs are handled by these entities. Not by a long shot. They don’t need to control it all in order to accomplish their goal of the destruction of the social fabric to just enough of a degree as to thoroughly distract and demoralize average Jane and Joe. Plus it all makes a wonderful public works project to boot. Consider all the clerks, guards, judges, prison staff, police, coast guard and supporting cast that are needed to keep the war on drugs going. For a supposedly free nation, it is remarkable that we have the highest prison population in the developed world.
What’s really amazing to me is that much of the primary evidence I’ve found of government involvement in drug running and distribution can be found in the printed mainstream media………though it’s often placed on page 37 or buried somewhere as filler in the sports or entertainment section. And rarely is it picked up by other news organizations and widely distributed, almost as if the MSM has its own policy of Omerta or code of silence. It’s published once or twice so it can be claimed the “public” was informed, then quickly ignored and forgotten.
There are exceptions to this stealth disclosure, with the occasional front page story or series exposing one drug scandal or another. Gary Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” series published in the San Jose Mercury News in which Webb exposed the Iran-Contra affair’s ugly underbelly of CIA and Reagan Administration enabling of the Contra importation and sale of (crack) cocaine into the LA area for the express purpose of using the profits to purchase weapons to support their revolution.
But even in this case the rest of the MSM quickly organized a campaign to refute and discredit both Webb and the Mercury News. This eventually resulted in a partial retraction and disavowal by the Mercury News and of Gary Webb being sacked/let go/voluntary quit. The code of MSM silence lives and those who break it are quickly beaten to professional death…….or worse. Webb eventually published a blockbuster book on the subject that was also pretty much ignored by the MSM when it wasn’t being harshly criticized.
When one pushes past the fact that the Reagan administration was enabling the direct circumvention of a Congressional ban on weapons sales and financial assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, one suddenly realizes that our government was directly involved in the illegal drugging of America. And this is just one example of what can only be described as deliberate foreign and domestic policy that transcends administrations and Congressional critters. Don’t take my word for it, do your own homework and recognize reality for what it is.
Of course up to this point my discussion has only covered the illegal drug side of the comfortably numb equation, which from a big picture point of view is peanuts (measured by quantity and/or dollars) compared to the officially sanctioned legal corporate drug pushing designed to drug America into obedient oblivion. We all understand that the business of America is business. And second only to the military/industrial/financial complex, business in America is healthcare which consumes 18 to 21% of annual GDP. More importantly each year pharmaceuticals consume a greater portion of the total healthcare bill, rising from 25% in 1995 to well over 46% in 2009, the last year in which I’ve seen figures.
Similar to just about every other US government ‘regulatory’ agency these days, there exists a huge conflict of interest within the Food and Drug Administration, with one side of the beast tasked with promoting the very industry the other side is supposed to be regulating. Judging by the fact that on a per capita basis health care in America is more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world, I would say the industry side of the equation is winning and Big Pharma leads the corporate profit parade.
But more to the point of this article, one third of Americans (including our children) are living their daily lives under the influence of a variety of antidepressants, anti anxiety and/or narcotic pain killers. Think about that for a moment. One third of the US population is sedated or has their mental and emotional disposition artificially altered or elevated in order to make it through the work or indoctrination (aka school) week, with particular emphasis on work.
Around 15% of us are taking prescribed pain medications and the pharmaceutical industry estimates up to half of us are abusing our pain meds. In addition, 10% of the population is considered alcoholic and another 20% are abusing alcohol. Then there are all those other so called ‘safe’ drugs, with the majority of the population drinking coffee, soda etc. or doing shots of “5 Hour Energy” and other freely available stimulants. And this doesn’t even take into consideration the one hundred and fifty six pounds of processed sugar each of us consumes per year.
While it wouldn’t be fair to add these percentages together to arrive at a total because of overlap, recognizing that many of us are either ‘professionally’ prescribed or self medicating with several ‘drugs’ at once just makes the problem that much bigger. The end result is that, seen as a whole, we are a self medicating zombie population that can barely get out of bed in the morning without drug assistance, let alone retain the capacity to think independently and critically about what is in our own best interest. Alas, this is just what the powers that be want. Not zonked out so much that you can’t work, but zonked out just enough that you really don’t (want to) care.
Do I even dare mention the most widely distributed drug of them all, our beloved comfort food, which has slowly fed nearly a third of the US population into the meat grinder of obsessive compulsive obesity? As we are collectively force feed a steady diet of government sponsored fear mongering, who is really surprised when we take refuge in a double quarter pounder with cheese, super large fries and enough soda to sponge bathe a family of four? When the point comes where major television networks run prime time TV programs about weight loss as entertainment, how can our personal obesity problem be seen as anything other than a national obsession? Freud would have a field day if he were alive today.
BTW the implied double entendre found in NBC’s popular TV program “The Biggest Loser” teases the mind. Which one is the bigger loser, the contestant struggling to lose 100 lbs of congealed Big Macs or the viewers, 50% of whom are obese or moderately/severely overweight and most likely munching on empty calories as they cheer on their favorite contestant? The conditioning meme is obvious. When we view others who are (relatively) worse than us we have a tendency to normalize our own dysfunction, thus removing the urgency to recognize our own self destructive behavior. Hey, I’m not as bad as that guy.
Instead of Waldo, let’s see how many overweight people we can find in this Woodstock photo from 1969. Then pull up some random crowd shot of the average college campus or mall food court for a comparison.
Americans love to forgive and forget, particular when we’re forgetting our own transgressions. So what’s next on the menu, late night liposuction with Leno? Why struggle through all those deep knee bends, stomach crunches and treadmill miles when you can carve up your loved one like a Thanksgiving turkey using your favorite electric knife and a spinal tap? Like a bloody car crash at a busy intersection, we just can’t help but watch in morbid fascination as we act out our own insanity.
Of course, self medicating ourselves in our quest to be comfortably numb isn’t restricted to food, drugs or alcohol. There’s a world class selection of navel gazing diversions and obsessions available at the click of an alternative reality mouse and a onetime swipe of our (national) credit card. No more need for trips to the local arcade, movie theater or DVD rental store. The world lay at our feet and is manipulated at our command. Entertain me now for I am master of my domain…..when I can actually find it under the rolls of fat.
We play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) aka World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy or enter crack berry nirvana via Blackberry, Droid, Vortex or iPhone. Don’t forget to sign up for maximum obsession mobility via Wi-Fi, WiMAX and Max-iPads. Let’s see, I’ll take one from column A and two from column B. And just in case you didn’t notice it, the subliminal programming is becoming glaringly obvious. It’s no accident that the top two MMORPG games use the words Warfare and Fantasy.
And let’s not forget the grand daddy of them all, the brainwashing and predictive programming opiate of the masses available to everyone as early as birth and without a RX prescription. All hail the all American God called television via High Definition 3D LCD surround sound immersive technology. It’s better than being there in person, thus reducing the live crowd to nothing more than paying extras, there for our entertainment as sound effects and a colorful background.
There have been numerous books written about the drugging of America so I won’t waste any more of the readers’ time discussing the specifics. And I do understand that Americans have long had a love affair with booze (and drugs for that matter) with many of the founding fathers bemoaning the evils of rampant public drunkenness and the social ills that come with it. But only the seriously self deluded would try to convince themselves that things are no worse than they were 200 years ago, if for no other reason than the drug, financial and war making toys are infinitely more destructive.
So while the self medicating phenomenon isn’t exactly new to America, the selection, potency and wide scale availability of the mind altering methods, chemical or otherwise, is new. Combine this onslaught with the psychological and propaganda operations conducted by the government and the mesmerizing and distracting of America via the mass media, then sprinkle in the distorted views of body, family and nation promoted by corporate America, and I feel safe in saying we live in a comfortably numb Insane Asylum. Where’s Jack Nicholson to break us out when we need him? Pass the Thorazine please.
Two of the most fascinating words in the English language are manipulation and seduction. While the term seduction is most often used when discussing sexual escapades and dalliances, there is an implied usage when people talk about being financially, politically or socially manipulated aka being victimized. For the most part we Americans have become expert professional non-responsible victims. We use the excuse of being a victim, or of having been victimized, to avoid any responsibility for our own lives and actions. Even corporations claim the victim high ground. Somehow we are all above the scrum and just in charge of our portion of the zero sum game.
A constant theme of mine here on Zero Hedge is personal responsibility for one’s actions and/or in-actions. I endlessly beat this drum because even among the Hedge regulars I hear many of the same excuses used by the general population to explain away prior inaction and decisions that have led us to this point. A particular favorite seems to be that we have no control or that we were/are manipulated or that people are acting against our wishes….so what can we do.
Over and over I read comments about how we (the collective ‘we’ is used to share the non responsibility) are not responsible for cleaning up this mess but rather they are, meaning someone else who is presumably in charge and with the authority to do so. I hear how someone, anyone, should do something about this mess or that I’m only responsible for my own interests…..which are usually very narrowly drawn to avoid responsibility except for those things the speaker wants or needs.
All these thoughts inevitably lead back to my theme of being comfortably numb. Because there is something that goes so far beyond that fuzzy not-quite-with-it feeling one gets from mood altering drugs, alcohol and pain killers and firmly into the one super drug that is shared by all. I am, of course, talking about that wonderfully powerful drug called denial, of which we all have an endless supply produced on site. Bottoms up boys and girls!
Cognitive Dissonance
08-02-2011