Back in stone age (the 1990’s) when computers were only as good as the programs and data fed into them, their failings and limitations were summed up nicely by the expression “Garbage In – Garbage Out”. This is in fact the nature of all intelligence systems; whether artificial-like a computer program, or organic – like the human mind. Each is only as good as the data fed into them. Unfortunately for us, the typical American mind (like the typical American body) lives on a steady diet of junk food.
Right now, many of you are probably saying to yourself – he’s not talking about me. But I am talking about you. And I’m talking about myself too! Because none of us are the independent thinkers we believe ourselves to be. Most of us are what’s called “low information thinkers”. With neither the time nor the inclination conduct any true research on the issues of the day, we form your opinions, beliefs and positions on the basis of information received from other, trusted sources. Those sources might be parents, friends or teachers, they might be the New York Times or Fox News. But whomever our own influencers might be, we essentially allow them to do our thinking for us.
This is not so surprising, given that each day we are assaulted by an endless stream of data to be processed, issues to be understood, opinions to be formed and judgements to be made. We’re inundated with information that we must make sense of, even though much of it may in fact have very little to do with our normal, everyday lives.
In addition to the myriad complexities of having jobs, homes, spouses, children… of managing our finances and taxes… of planning vacations and retirements… there is a vast array of other things we’re supposed to understand, keep track of and hold opinions on.
For example, we’re also supposed to understand and participate in our government on the local, state, county and federal levels. That means we’re expected to know and understand the responsibilities and hold personal opinions about candidates for President, Senator, Congressman, State Legislator, Mayor, City Councilman, School Administrator, Sheriff, and Dog Catcher.
We’re also expected to keep abreast of world events, so on any given day we’re expected to understand who our current allies and enemies are in the world, and which of the numerous wars and rumors of war should interrupt our sleep.
While absorbing a tsunami of conflicting and contradictory information, we’re expected to take positions on seriously complicated political & social issues like abortion, gun control, health care, immigration, international trade and global warming… it’s exhausting!
So what do we do? We outsource our thinking.
When we want to know what’s happening around the world we turn to news providers who we trust to tell us the “truth” about world events. When we seek to manage the health of our bodies we take the advice provided by our doctors and the drugs dispensed by our pharmaceutical industries. When choosing our leaders, we adopt positions on the right or left of the political spectrum, believing these ideologies have a meaningful influence over the behavior of our elected officials. When we need spiritual solace or salvation, we look not toward the heavens nor the burning bush, but to the guidance, dogma and rituals of our religious organizations.
Our perceptions of what is true, or good, or right are no longer forged in our own personal knowledge and experience, but instead are the result of pre-processed information; beliefs, opinions and conclusions relayed to us by other people and institutions. And as we absorb and internalize the all of this second-hand information, we rarely stop to consider its quality. Since it’s often impossible – or at least very difficult – to discern the validity of any of the information we receive, we simply absorb and internalize it all… never realizing what this diet of pre-digested mental junk food is doing to our our minds or how it might be used to shape our views and perceptions.
What most of us will never imagine or understand is that we live in a system where the ruling elite believe that truth is dangerous to common people and the maintenance of social order – and is best reserved for those with the privilege, power and the intellect to understand it. Deception is the norm in the upper strata of our society, and it is used to blind us to their true beliefs and behaviors so that as a people we never see the need to challenge or oppose their self serving agendas.
Our politicians try to make us fearful so that they can present themselves as our protectors. Our religionists want us to believe their’s are the only paths away from damnation and toward eternal life and salvation. Our health care industry want us to accept that health is not possible without their procedures and prescriptions. Our military industrialists want us to see a world full of threats from which massive force is our only protection. Our financial system wants us invested in their rigged equity markets and enslaved by their debt traps. And our corporations and retailers want us to continue to purchase their mediocre, out-sourced goods and services and accept their part-time minimum wage, benefit-less jobs.
All of these groups have an interest in influencing the way we think and behave. They want us to be insecure and dependent so that we are easily led. They want us to be drugged, medicated and addicted to their pharmacological and electronic stimulants so that we can’t think straight enough to see how they are destroying our system of government and dismantling our rights. They want us to be poorly educated and mis-informed, confusing us with false and conflicting information so that we can’t process our own reality or discern what is real or right, or true.
In order to govern their people, Governments routinely use myth-making and deception. They create myths about the character of their system and of their people, generally ascribing to them a moral or ethical superiority. This is particularly useful when the government wants to wage war against another government – usually to protect the interests of it’s ruling class. But rather than admit to their crass economic reasons for war, the government will instead demonize the enemy, telling us how evil they are, how dangerous they are to us and our way of life. This outright deception was used against Americans in the Vietnam and Korean wars, it was dragged out again in the Iraq War, and it’s currently being used in our muddled attempts to overthrow Assad in Syria. In each of these cases, Americans – like you and me – were told we were fighting for freedom, and democracy and human rights, when in fact our government is merely asserting the economic and geopolitical interests of our ruling class.
What Americans suffer from more than anything else is the irrational belief in our own mythology. We persist in believing we live under a democratic rule, when it’s become clear to anyone who really understands these things that our system is better described as an Oligopoly – where the government is controlled and directed by the interests of an elite strata of banking, financial, corporate and mega-wealth interests. These people and their institutions have become so wealthy and so powerful that their interests and agenda’s can no longer be contained in any single country – their motives are global.
For example, for the past 50 years these elite have been investing heavily in China. They have built thousands of manufacturing facilities, exported millions of formerly American jobs there, they’ve now even added the Chinese Yuan to the elite handful of currencies endorsed by the International Monetary Fund as world reserve currencies.
This shift toward China by the money powers has destroyed the American economy, ruined our manufacturing base, decimated our tax revenues, and in time will undermine our currency and ultimately render the dollar all but worthless.
But why, you might ask?
Why would the money masters want to intentionally degrade the American economy? Aren’t we the geese that laid their golden eggs?
But this is where we all have it fundamentally wrong, we believe it is all about money. We believe that these elites, whoever they are, must surely be motivated by the same kinds of things we are… money, security, and the ability to buy things. But this only exposes the depths of our own brainwashing. Since we are constantly reminded that we don’t have enough, that we are not secure and that we always need more, we think that this is a universal human condition. We can’t imagine that there are people for whom money is literally no object. But the elites of this world do not have money issues, their money is viral – it grows, multiplies and replicates incessantly without any effort on their part. In upper, upper echelons of the world, personal wealth is an absolute, it’s automatic, self-perpetuating and never in doubt. These incredibly rich people are not like you or I, they are not motivated need for money… they only crave it. For those who already have more money than they could ever need, the desire for more takes on a more sinister, sadistic quality – they want money for the sense of superiority it gives them and for the power and control it allows them to exert over others. Exceptional wealth elevates the elite above and away from the world of the masses. Isolated from the rest of us, and oblivious to the routine struggles we contend with daily, they develop a “let them eat cake” mentality, and a callousness for our petty problems and complaints.
The dirtiest of all dirty secrets is that the elite have nothing but distain for the rest of us. They believe that they have earned their wealth and privilege – and so consequently they also believe we deserve our relative poverty. They can’t stand our incessant whining and they absolutely hate the idea that we puny, complaining, non-productive maggots should have any power or exert any influence over what they do, how they make their money, what taxes they pay or when they go to war.
Americans, with our tradition of individualism, our love of freedom, our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, had become entirely too difficult for the elites to control and exploit. We were not nearly poor enough, not nearly powerless enough, not nearly desperate enough and not nearly numerous enough to serve as the low-wage worker/slaves and consumer/drones of the New World Globalist Elite. China has a population of 1.36 billion people – thats over 4 times the number of people in America – and all of them need cars, televisions, washing machines, computers, smart phones… all of them need jobs! And unlike Americans they don’t require health care benefits or living wages. They have no unions to protect them, no annoying safety regulations to keep them safe, no environmental laws to protect their neighborhoods from the poisonous wastes spewing from the elite’s manufacturing plants. For the Globalist Elites, China, is manufacturing paradise.
And America… well, we’re just yesterday’s news.
For the immediate present, the elite want to make sure that they can still operate in America, even while their primary interests and greatest opportunities lie overseas. They want to maintain their homes and corporate offices in the safety and comfort of our country, but they feel no responsibility to this country and no loyalty to its people. Ultimately, their goal is to create a legal and financial global structure which will allow them to operate above and beyond the regulations of any government and away from the meddlesome interference of any voting populations. This is the hidden purpose behind all of their international treaties and it’s the reason the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement has been kept a secret from the American people, and why they pushed to get it Fast Tracked through congress without any discussion or argument. They don’t want us to know what they are doing – and thanks to a controlled media and a compliant government… we don’t.
They have purchased our mass media and most of our information sources so that they can censor our information, deceiving us about the purposes behind their government bills, their financial systems, their international trade agreements and their wars. The flood us with emotionally-charged appeals to patriotism. They incessantly perpetuate the myth that we are a force for good in the world – all while obscuring the crimes, the wars of aggression, the occupations, tortures and assassinations all done by our elite-controlled government in our names!
They tell us that we are exceptional, that we are benevolent and caring and that we need to be protected from evil countries and groups that hate us for our freedom… and you know what… we eat it up!