Jeff Wells hasn’t been blogging regularly for some time now, and he’s got a new blog post up.
I like Jeff’s way of writing. You don’t have to, but I’d suggest you’d be missing out if you don’t have a read.
These lines stand out:
I think the worst of conspiracy theory – actually all theory, and no conspiracy – must be the unfalsifiable, post hoc prediction. If you haven’t seen it yet or don’t know what I’m talking about, you will, as theorists retool their cottage industries to react to a Democratic administration. Fintan Dunn calls it the “Red Coup gambit” of the New World Order, absurdly describing Obama as an “undercover Marxist ideologue.” Webster Tarpley gets in on the action with his book The Postmodern Coup, which shoe-horns Obama into his meta-analysis as the next, inevitable Manchurian Candidate of the Brzezinski faction. Alex Jones, like some Star Trek energy entity that feeds on pure hysteria, is whipping up a new batch to keep those cards and letters coming. (”Congressman, are you feeling the dread many of us are feeling right now?”)
Comment: Recall how, during the Clinton years, terrorists were more home-grown? Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber. Homeschoolers and Constitution defenders. Going back to Chomsky, terrorism and terrorist are very broadly defined terms, and with a new Administration, we may see a new underlying definition of what it means to be a terrorist. Conspiracy theorists, Jeff argues, will also change their definition of “them”, or The Powers That Be.
Last Thursday, as President Elect, Obama received his initial briefing of classified intelligence pertaining to national security. Friday, CNN’s Candy Crowley asked “whether anything’s given you pause,” to which he replied “I’m going to skip that.”
What was Obama briefed on? While I’d like to think he received a mindf*ck equivalent to that shown in the Orion Conspiracy, he’s probably aware of an impending doom that’s much more realistic. I think everyone who goes to Washington has an idea of how things work, but then the CIA, NSA and military types bring them aside and make them aware of how the world really works, and it’s probably a lot different than the reality that can be gleaned from watching network television.
Imagine being elected to the highest office in the land . . . and then find out who really runs the show. In order for Obama to implement his brand of politics called “Change”, there are quite a few power brokers who will require their pound of flesh out of what’s left of the USA. You can’t say their names for fear of being branded a conspiracy theorist. It’s not a conspiracy – this stuff’s right out there in the open. The world operates according to very different principles than what is perceived by the common man or woman. If you believe that, then we may find common ground on this.
Perhaps Barack Obama has been briefed on something akin to Orlov’s 5 Stages of Collapse.
Stages of Collapse
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.
After the economic order crumbles, the commerce machine stalls and people lose faith in their political institutions. The social order reinvents itself. As I’ve argued before, the social order is transitioning from the America of Vampire aristocrats who siphon off the economic lifeblood of the masses. In Bush’s America, people aspired to upper class values, toys and trappings. Paris Hilton. Subprime McMansions. Hummers on credit. We are moving from this old Vampire economic and political order to a land of Zombies. The Zombies are the masses, though previously dead to politics, have for a while been revived with the viral nature of Obama’s hope and change message. The upper-class aristocratic vampires fear that their miniature empires will be torn to shreds in the name of the common good. Gun sales are up.
The Obama Zombie Nation will be one where aristocratic trappings become uncool. Frugal is the new fad. Brand Names out. Adbusters shoes in. Bentleys Bad. Smart Cars good.
The Vampire to Zombie Nation analogy is but one way of examining the transitional cultural paradigm. Remember jesus Camp, and that clip of the so-called “little Christian Hitlers” pledging allegiance to a cardboard cutout of Bush in their church?
It’s barely different from the Obama-specific variant.
America has changed on the surface. We have economic zombies instead of the aristocratic vampiric parasites of Wall Street. The only difference, though, is who gets what. Wars will go on. Terrorism will happen. People will work behind the scenes to accomplish their goals that pass from one Administration to the next. Youth will still be militarized – what Bush couldn’t get away with in the form of a military draft, Obama will accomplish through militarized brownshirt youth brigades. The goals remain the same, whereas the means to achieve them change form.
Form vs Content.
The more things change, the more they remain the same
“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
