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Americans are Stuck in Abusive Relationships with Power
Michael Krieger | Posted Tuesday Oct 9, 2018 at 11:24 am
And we recently discovered, if it was not known before, that no amount of
power can withstand the hatred of the many.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/10/09/americans-are-stuck-in-abusive-relationships-with-power/

Americans are brought up to believe all sorts of myths about the country
we call home. We’re told our economy is a free market meritocracy
governed by the rule of law. We’re told our civil liberties, enshrined
in the Bill of Rights, are inviolable and protected by the most powerful
military in the world. A fighting force entrusted with the admirable and
monumental task of defending freedoms at home, and democracy and human
rights abroad. We’re told we exist in a system of self-government, in
which our votes matter and our voices heard. In practice, none of this is
true.

The fact of the matter is American citizens in 2018 are just a nuisance
for the real power players. Useful as consumers, but increasingly
problematic as larger numbers start to ask questions about how things
really work. For far too long, we’ve been ignorant and willing
accomplices in our own bondage. This allowed the concentrated and
unaccountable power that really calls the shots to go for broke in recent
decades, with unsurprisingly tragic results.

Only recently have things started to shift. Increased levels of barbarism
abroad and corruption at home during the 21st century — under both
Republican and Democratic administrations — have shaken many Americans
from a long stupor. Irrespective of where you sit on the political
spectrum, most people know something’s not right. People don’t agree
on the details of what’s wrong, and there’s certainly no consensus on
solutions, but increasing numbers of us know something’s very broken.

I try to look at things from a big picture perspective, and from that
angle I see too many people focused on the symptoms of cultural decay
versus root causes. Not enough people seem to be taking a step back to see
that at the core of today’s broken socioeconomic and political paradigm
is an American citizenry fundamentally entangled in various abusive
relationships with power. This post will highlight three of these
relationships. The first with government itself, the second with central
banking, and the third with the dominant political parties.

When it comes to the relationship of U.S. citizens to the politicians and
bureaucrats in Washington D.C., there’s no indication that anything
remotely resembling self-government is happening. Rather, the relationship
is far more like that of a servant to a master. The powerful in this
country have declared themselves above the law and beyond accountability
on too many occasions for it to be an accident. Rather, it’s clearly
unwritten public policy at this point. For starters, key players who
pushed the Iraq war during the George W. Bush administration, such as John
Bolton, are never held accountable. Instead, they’re promoted to even
more influential roles many years later.

Equally troubling, leaders of intelligence agencies like John Brennan who
supported torture during the Bush years, ran the CIA while it spied on a
Senate investigation into torture and then lied about the spying, likewise
face no consequences for their actions. Rather, Brennan ends up with a
corporate media gig as an MSNBC/NBC “resistance” pundit. Same thing
with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He lied under
oath about domestic government surveillance, gets caught following the
Snowden revelations, and then nothing at all happens to him. He leaves
government many years later, joins a think tank, and becomes a CNN
contributor.

Of course, this whole above the law thing extends well beyond government
officials. We saw how bankers who tanked the global economy as a result of
systemic and extremely lucrative fraud schemes received bailouts instead
of jail sentences. We should never forget that not a single bank executive
went to jail. When a class of powerful super predators are placed above
the law, society dies.

Let’s now dig a little deeper into the economy. It’s still a
relatively under appreciated fact that the most powerful players
commandeering and influencing the U.S. economy, in a fashion similar to a
communist politburo, are a collection of unelected central bankers. These
people can bring an economy to its knees via interest rate hikes at a
moments notice, or bail out powerful financiers should that need arise as
we saw explicitly in 2008/09.

Moreover, what’s most instructive about central bank policy is that it
always seems to help connected speculators and Wall Street hooligans
versus the general public. One thing you’ll notice if you watch the Fed
steer the economy over the course of its cycle, is it doesn’t really get
going with rate hikes until wage pressures emerge. In other words, once
your average worker starts to get some leverage in the labor market the
Fed ends the party. The same thing’s happening again right now.

Then, after asset markets crash and the economy enters a recession,
central banks will rapidly lower rates to start the cycle all over again.
Naturally, the people who benefit most from all this are speculators and
those investors with access to low rates who buy assets on the cheap.
Meanwhile, you probably got kicked out of your home and continue to face
double digit interest rates on your credit card balance. Then years down
the road, as soon as the labor market tightens and you get a couple of
raises, the Fed again will hike rates and end the expansion.

The Fed makes up all sorts of excuses for why it doesn’t care about
asset inflation or commodity price inflation, but the moment wage
pressures emerge it jacks up rates and ends the cycle. As I mentioned
earlier, it’s happening right now all over again, and it’ll become
increasingly clear over the next year or so. This economy isn’t a free
market in any real sense, it’s largely a rigged oligarchy. Another
abusive relationship designed to enrich a particular type of charlatan.

Michael Krieger
@LibertyBlitz
As I have said many times before, future generations will look back at
Central Banking as we look back at slavery.

129
1:14 PM - Jun 19, 2014
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Finally, I want to touch on America’s dominant political parties. Two
corrupt organizations that fully support and defend the pernicious,
abusive relationships described above. While they certainly disagree on
many things, when it comes to supporting the existing paradigm that
empowers politicians while in office, and enriches them when they leave to
become lobbyists, they are united. Basically, the two parties bicker about
how to deal with the symptoms of a rigged and systemically corrupt
government, but never confront or oppose the structural root causes of it
all.

What’s most incredible to me is how we continue to put up with this scam
as a people. If you look over at Europe, the old political parties have
been getting decimated at the polls. Political parties that barely had any
support, or didn’t even exist a few years ago, are surging ahead and in
some cases taking power. Meanwhile, we Americans are still playing footsie
with the Democrats and Republicans. At least Trump was able to overcome
establishment opposition and get the GOP nomination. Bernie Sanders was
not so lucky, as his response to being the victim of a rigged primary has
been to shepherd his supporters into the arms of the corrupt Democratic
establishment that hates his guts. It’s a genuine national embarrassment.

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View image on Twitter

Michael Krieger
@LibertyBlitz
When Obama was President, Democrats were confident about Afghanistan,
while Republicans weren't. After Trump was elected, it flipped.
This is how dumb partisanship is.

60
1:08 PM - Oct 6, 2018
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That being said, the fact we remain stuck in this pathetic two-party
political dungeon tells me something important. It tells me we’re still
very early in the populist wave here in the U.S. It tells me that while
people are increasingly fed up, they aren’t nearly as fed up as they
could be. When people have finally had enough, you’ll know it. We’re
steadily building up to that moment, but not there yet. There’s no way
to know exactly how this period of time will play out, but I do know what
emerges on the other side won’t look like anything like what we have
today.

Unfortunately, even if we intelligently deal with all the abusive
relationships described above, I still think political power in the U.S.
is far too centralized to be healthy. Outside of essential civil
liberties, I don’t think it makes any sense to assume we need uniform
ways of doing most things, and decision making should be far more
localized. Nevertheless, even at the local level, the abusive
relationships described above can become problematic, so it’s always
important to be cognizant of them.

thanks for posting this, it is an interesting text.
not sure why the domain has to have to word "blitzkrieg" in it. why would you associate yourself with the tactics used by criminals in a war that has cost the life of ca. 60 mio people ?

having said this, the content is still interesting, i was reading exactly until this line:

>We should never forget that not a single bank executive went to jail.

at which point it should be said that some of the bankers went to jail indeed (see here for example: https://money.cnn.com/2016/04/28/news/companies/bankers-prison/index.html)
not that it changes the big picture if some pawns are getting sent to jail, but it is good to show the public something is done. meanwhile of course the game just continues with different players and some cosmetics done on the rules...

i will read the rest of the text later, for now i would just argue that:
-any organization which transfers power of any kind to a higher level automatically comes with the abuse of just that power. this goes for all the systems that call themselves democracies today.
-it is not neccessary to have these structures to make our daily lives working. examples of how to organize without hierarchies and power transfer are numerous, some have failed, but some are working and in fact producing outstanding results.

Posted on def4.i2p

>and decision making should be far more localized.

amen to that. it is true in cyberspace and meatspace.

for the rest of the text: why don't call it by name ? it is capitalism, nothing really new, just going through different phases...

quote:

"There's class warfare, all right," Mr. Buffett said, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

Posted on def4.i2p