Paint it Black (David Glenn Cox)

David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust

Apr. 25, 2011 -- We look towards the morning with hope and we look upon the evening dusk with regret.

Optimism and pessimism can be internal mechanisms directing the way in which we view the world. As we look back at the campaign of Barack Obama we see now the side effects of offering hope and happy talk. Hope and change, words parsed, sliced, distressed and dissected with the skill of a coroner’s knife. Words designed to stir the emotions of hope and promise but with every phrase an escape clause and a doorway to despair.

"You know, there is a tendency in Washington to believe our job description, of elected officials, is to get re-elected. That's not our job description," Obama said. "Our job description is to solve problems and to help people." 

Notice how Barack Obama said “help people” and not to help “the” people generally but to help people singular and corporate.

"I will not slow down in terms of going after the big problems that this country faces," he (Obama) said. "The easiest thing for me to do, Diane, would be to go small bore, avoid controversy, just make sure that everybody's comfortable and we only propose things that don't threaten any special interests in Washington. If you do that, then you can get a boost in the poll numbers." 

RENO, Nev. – “President Barack Obama said Thursday that the Justice Department will try to "root out" cases of fraud or manipulation in oil markets, even as Attorney General Eric Holder suggested a variety of legal reasons may be behind gasoline's surge to $4 a gallon.” If my face appears blue it is because I’ll be holding my breath.

Machiavelli wrote, “Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you.”

 “They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watch-word of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And what ever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed but at every chance they immediately rally to them.”

If we consider what Machiavelli is trying to tell us across the centuries then we can begin to understand all that is going on around us today. If you sought to destroy a free society you would first stifle incomes of its workers. Poor people working longer hours and earning less money have little time to organize resistance. Next you would destroy their cities and disperse them across large geographical areas without a city center. A poor mass transit system would assist the oligarchy in isolating the people.

Free Trade and the outsourcing of jobs accomplish several of these tasks while enriching the corporations at the same time. Yet most importantly is a program of constant demoralization of the people. To attempt to destroy their faith and their beliefs and so to instill in them a feeling of hopelessness and inevitability. So if corporate sources promote a political candidate whose platform is based upon hope and change then his failure will by itself demoralize his supporters.

What of his opponents, you might ask, won’t they become encouraged by his failure? They might, if not for a steady stream of nonsense issues which make it appear as if the candidate or office holder is unjust or unqualified and flaunting or abusing his power. Actual crimes and abuses become hidden by faux issues disseminated by a complicit corporate media. A birth certificate becomes more important than the indefinite detention of a whistle blower.

A huge artificial deficit amassed through tax cuts for the oligarchy and huge military budgets leave the wealthy safe and comfortable while deficits and unemployment leave workers and their families fearful about their futures. Wall Street recovers as Main Street languishes and the federal government offers to its struggling people, little, less and nothing. 

The deficit is then proclaimed by all political parties as the cause of all suffering and only the gutting of those social programs for the poor and middle class will save us from ultimate doom and destruction. Warnings from Wall Street funded bonding agencies are used to heighten the tension.

Remember that when George W. Bush left office many Republicans were demoralized, yet to the oligarchy George W. Bush was the most successful Republican President since Ronald Reagan. He bankrupted the treasury with two phony wars and initiated a massive tax reduction scheme for the wealthy. The idea of being greeted in Iraq with flowers and candy was purely a child-like scenario. It was already known to be false by all military doctrines; it instead served the oligarchy by a long protracted struggle based on a phony national security issue.

Look back at the last ten years from the standpoint of the oligarchy:

--Increased corporate profits with lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthy.

--Weakened labor unions with smaller membership numbers.

--Bank borrowing interest rates from the Federal Reserve near zero while lending interest rates to the public remain high.

--A reduced number of major banks and brokerage houses amounting to a cartel and the departure of the federal government from mortgage lending.

--A Real Estate depression in which the Federal Reserve fully reimburses member banks for their losses at public expense and a federal government which withholds any assistance for individual homeowners.

--Consider that a home is the one and only asset the average American family will ever own. The destruction of ten million private homes pushes those families down to non-owning peasant status. With the end of government mortgage assistance the banking cartels shall now dictate who and when and how you will purchase property in this society.

--Falling wages for all but the top 20 percent of wage earners and for almost all other Americans a decade of zero wage growth. 

How quickly and successfully Barack Obama detached himself from his own renewal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy versus last week's call for austerity based on the Cat Food Commission’s recommendations. His argument was counter-pointed and framed against the backdrop of Paul Ryan’s societal white wedding suicide pact. Yet the centerpiece of both political parties’ deficit reduction programs is a cut in the corporate tax rate and yet another tax cut for the wealthy. 

The corporate media pick and choose to pull corn kernels from the manure pile. They ignore stolen elections or any objective criticism of corporate fascism in America instead creating a fantasy world of illusions. Drunken starlets, unreality shows and tea baggers, Sarah Palin or sports. Creating new stories from whole cloth: DEARBORN, Mich. -- A controversial Florida pastor and his associate were released from jail tonight after being held briefly for refusing to pay a $1 "peace bond" after a jury ruled they would "likely breach the peace" with plans to protest a mosque. 

Can a pastor be a pastor without a flock? Terry Jones had said recently that only he and the associate pastor remained as members in his “church.” That would make him an unemployed pastor who has the money to travel and to foment new breaches of the peace. After a meeting with a local Imam on Friday the hand gun which Jones carries discharged accidentally. Sure it did, but how does a Florida pastor carry a concealed handgun on a Michigan street? No charges were filed, no of course not, why would they be?

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “An attack on any religion is an attack on all religion.” It is a key element of any totalitarian movement to destroy the prevailing religion or to have an official religion which is then controlled or muzzled by the whims of government. It is often the case where the regime will pit one religious belief against another setting up alleged fifth columnists or enemies of the true faith. 

In this case Jones had gone to Dearborn, Mich., to protest in front of a Mosque, to protest in front of people who had said or done nothing to this “Christian” pastor. It is very similar to the actions Neo-Nazis who had once wanted to march through Skokie Illinois where many holocaust survivors resided. The purpose was only to offend and to defame and then to claim victim hood while committing an assault in a media circus environment. 

A Christian faith which has adopted the tactics of Neo-Nazis? As Jones is not alone, Westboro Baptist Church has funding to travel far and wide to offend and Franklin Graham says, maybe this Donald Trump is onto something with his birther falderal. Even the preacher down the road from you is praising the sacrifice of the troops in Iraq protecting our freedom yet the gospel of Jesus Christ never said anything like that and the troops in Iraq aren’t defending anything except the wealth of the oligarchy.

Simply pawns in the game displayed for your amusement, a comfortable illusion of good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians. A two party political system where both parties wish to achieve the same goals through different routes. A one party state with right and center wings ever cascading towards the reactionary night.

Suddenly the enemies of this society have gone from being Communists, terrorists and Muslims to autoworkers, public school teachers and state employees. Their pensions and benefits are seen as an affront to a public which once had pensions and benefits of their own. Billionaire TV celebrities versus wicked public school workers.

“But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily.” --Niccolo Machiavelli

A government where failure for you is success for the oligarchy, where financial distress for labor means financial excess for Capital. A government where the people are regulated and corporations are not. Where corporations are treated as persons while actual persons, citizens no less, have little standing. A government where religion is propaganda tool of media. The median home price fell 5.9 percent year-over-year and nearly 50 percent of all home sales were distressed sales as home prices fell for a third straight year. Stock prices on the Dow Jones rose more than 1,200 points as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs cashed in an $18 million bonus check.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Failure is Success

“Fascism is Capitalism in decay” --Vladimir Lenin