By PeakProsperity. Originally published at ValueWalk.
The winds of change are now swirling so rapidly that it’s hard to make sense of what’s happening. And adding to the confusion is an all-out effort by the establishment to convince the masses that, despite the multiplying signs of instability, “everything is fine”.
The deceptions surrounding us are now constant and impossible to avoid. How much longer will it take until a critical mass of the populace starts to see through the delusion?
The stock and bond markets are rigged by central banks and their allies to go ever higher, enriching an elite few at the expense of everyone else. The mainstream media over-reports the inconsequential, and under-reports the most important things. It’s truly astonishing what is not being reported on, presumably in an effort to minimize attention on some really important matters (Yemen, Russia’s increasing concerns over western actions, Wikileaks on HRC, etc).
If it all weren’t so serious, it would be humorous because the chicanery is now so over-the-top obvious.
The elites often commit crimes without any consequences. It’s so bad, we’ve seen the architects of wars based on lies get promoted to positions of greater power, now telling new lies on an even grander scale. (In DC, the polite term du jour is “fabrications”. But we’re all friends here, so let’s use proper language: lies are lies.)
Meanwhile, whistleblowers end up facing the full weight of the law. And the little people face harsh, draconian consequences for even the most minor of infractions.
As James Howard Kunstler succinctly puts it: Racketeering is ruining us.
If you can make a lot of money doing it, in the US that’s A-OK with the powers that be. Who cares about the collateral damage, as long as Uncle Sam and his cronies get their cut?
The Winds Of Change
But this all is going to come crashing down, because it has to. Not because of a sudden case of enlightenment by the elites, but because of math.
Simple math, too.
While there are lots of sub-equations we could parse through, the parent of them all is this one: Endless exponential growth on a finite planet is impossible.
It’s really that simple. And what’s transpiring now is nothing more complicated than what happens when a culture’s main growth narrative no longer matches the limits of its reality.
Unfortunately, it’s possible to fool people for just long enough into thinking it’s a workable plan. Give something a couple of decades in the sun (cheap, plentiful petroleum, for example) and entire institutions, political and monetary systems and dogmas will be fashioned around it.
This kind of self-delusion is not new for humans. It’s no different than if an ancient tribe was luckily blessed with 40 years of dependable rains which they attributed to a specific set of rituals. It’s not too long before correlation becomes confused with causation. And when the expected rains start ceasing to arrive, the rituals get more convoluted and increasingly desperate measures are called for to appease the angry gods.
Eventually, finally, people slowly wake up to the fact that their rituals and the weather never had anything to do with each other. But by then, society has usually torn itself apart, unable to align the contradictions.
This is what’s happening now. The narrative we live by is breaking down, and increasingly, our desperate ruling elites simply don’t know what to do. People are confused and so they want to either return to the past “Make America Great Again!”) or they want to cling to the present (“Stronger Together”…as in don’t rock the boat, preserve the status quo!).
Neither will work of course because the rains have ceased for reasons that have nothing to do with America’s elaborate but quirky rituals (the current presidential race being a prime example of such).
And this is why, despite the fact that our true challenges are rooted in the mathematics of resource depletion, our undoing will come when the social fabric tears apart.
Which is why the current unrest escalating all over the globe is so important to track. As we watch less-resourced societies begin to fail in advance, we better understand the nature of the reckoning heading our way.
Among the many conflicts that are boiling over, the one that concerns me the most — by far — is the West’s very intentional efforts to demonize Putin specifically, and Russia generally.
The tactics being used are no different from those used to disparage Saddam and his regime right before the invasion of Iraq. We’ve been down this path before; the playbook is literally exactly the same.
Blatantly obvious propaganda is being used, most heavily by the very same (and unrepentant) main stream media outlets that were used the last time around — when we ended up commencing a ‘pre-emptive’ war based on ginned-up intelligence that turned out to be wholly false. We owe it to ourselves not be so easily led this time around.
The Winds Of War
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Now, I’m sensitive to the idea put forth by some that this whole Putin demonization is merely the latest use of a hobgoblin intended to help get HRC elected president.
Obviously if this is true, it goes well beyond HRC herself. In the military industrial complex, there’s a vast host of self-interested parties who feast on war and whose paychecks and future prospects depend heavily on it. There even are a few demented souls in the halls of power who believe in war as the best way to project one’s influence. Stew them together and you have a pretty good handle on what DC is all about these days.
So I’m sympathetic to the temptation to think: “Hey, it’s always a safe bet during an election year to try and appear tougher than your opponent…this is all just election year politicking and it will pass and fade after November 8th.”
Here’s why I don’t think that’s accurate. In fact, I think something deeper and more sinister has been set in motion.
The blackballing of Putin and Russia started years ago, in 2013, when Putin managed to convince then-president of Ukraine Yanukovych to back out of the agreement intended to bring Ukraine into the EU fold as the final NATO brick in the wall.
That set-back enraged the neocons in Washington DC mightily and they’ve been rapidly anti-Putin ever since. This neocon grudge has found help and support ever since from the UK, US, and EU press which were also willing partners in selling the fraudulent “evidence” that led to the Iraq war — and Libya, too, and now Yemen and Syria.
As examples, these cartoonish magazine covers (both from 2014) look like they were designed by Intro to Psychology 101 students asked to create a propaganda hit piece:
Heck, there’s even potential evidence as far back as 2008: as exemplified by this TIME magazine cover where the “TIME” banner was placed behind Putin’s head in such a way that the peaks of the M gave him “horns”. (For fun, see how many example of other leaders you can find
The post We Risk Being Collateral Damage In The Neocon Lust For War appeared first on ValueWalk.
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