"Trust Me" - From the Guy Who Told You About the WMDs in Iraq.

Well, there you have it. He looked you right in the eye, told you the elephant on his leash was a toad, and that if you let him bring it in the house, it wouldn't do any harm. My god, if you believe that - after everything revealed by the Church Committee, literally thousands of such evidence in the law libraries, and just commons sense where people as corrupt as government in the Land of the Fee is concerned - you'll believe pigs not only fly, but do loops and rolls.


“You had to live – did live, from the habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every word you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” That’s from George Orwell, of course, and the only thing there that doesn’t apply directly to today is that part about darkness. That doesn’t stop Big Brother, 2006.

In case you somehow missed it – like you’ve been comatose since he was elected president (like maybe you had a complete nervous collapse at the news) – George W. Bush is a notorious liar. In fact, it now appears that it’s become pathological. As soon as the President has delivered one of his look-them-right-in-the-eye, obvious as a whale on your plate, Texas Liars Contest whoppers, it becomes to him the truth. The man simply says whatever the situation, in his mind, demands. If he needs a counter to something and doesn’t have the factual information necessary handy (which is about ninety percent of the time), he lies. If he needs to make a point to keep from looking like a boob (about ninety-FIVE percent of the time), he lies.

George W. Bush lies so often that he’ll soon have to begin writing his name on his wrist. When you’re this far down the Bush League versions of Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole, you know, you need some kind of outside reference now and then.

The latest was that looking-you-firmly-in-the-eye speech last night. The NSA isn’t bugging your phone. They’re only bugging people al Qa’ida might be calling. My god – that beggars just about anything I’ve ever heard yet from this guy. George W. Bush would lead an elephant into your living room and tell you it was a toad. Scary.

But scarier was the press and media. During the re rigueur “analyses” our pontificating popinjay punditry foists on us after every such utterance from our Senator Foghorn President, one of the FoxNews Fred Barnes-Mort Kondracke-Mara Liasson panel said that matters like this were so complicated and demanding of high intellect that only a genius could have conceived it. But an idiot could figure it out.

I didn’t hear the rest of what Mt. Parnassus said, having fallen sideward on the couch in a paroxysm of laughter. My Rita sat staring at the screen with her jaw dropped. She said later, she was too nonplussed with trying to decipher what had been said to take in the rest. When we had recovered enough, I noted that it was amazing, wasn’t it, that a White House able to avail itself of genius of the incomprehensible and incomparable sort Barnes and company were talking about had blundered so stupidly into a mess like Iraq, and that in, no one could be found with enough genius to get us out. Remarkable!

Now, I’m pretty used to nitwit pronouncements by the television news media, it’s “anchors” (that’s probably a good term - I.Q-wise, for sure), “analysts,” and the like. Probably the worst is the shear innumeracy of the whole politically- correctedness-paralysed and benighted crowd. Beginning many years ago, I’ve taken note of the stultifyingly stupid and nonsensical statistics they wield so wildly. In an earlier writing here, I gave an example, that having to do with election of our embarrassing chief executive in the first place. On my loose-leaf pad beside the sofa where I watch the news for such, I have pages of examples of media mathematical ineptitude like these taken today from another website. http://www.journalism.ubc.ca/thunderbird/archives/2001.04/numbers.html

The website reports a survey of graduating journalism students at a leading university in the land of Dumber and Dumber. Of the students asked, 78 per cent were unable to rank "Johnny" in the appropriate percentile of his class based on standardized test results, 57 per cent could not properly calculate how a wage would increase (at an annual inflation rate of three per cent) over a 20 year period due to inflation, 52 per cent failed to convert gas mileage from liters/km to miles/gallon, 48 per cent could not select the median income from a list of five salaries, 46 per cent did not know the meaning of deficit, and 35 per cent were incapable of computing a "percentage change" in stock value.

These are our sages, our nation's redoubtable wise men, the people who tell us what’s going on. That’s the people who tell us we’re just too stupid to understand it all – trust them to know. You betcha.

Well, actually – maybe they’re right. Yesterday, I was about to write a piece beginning with the following, something sent to me by a friend named Matt. Matt says this is from a site called “Defective Yeti.” http://www.defectiveyeti.com/ (God – I love that! “Defective Yeti" . . . !) It goes:

“A new poll shows that seven out of every five of Americans don't bother to do the math. ‘When asked, 53% percent said that, when reading or hearing anything that involves two or more numbers, they don't even try to do the math,’ said lead pollster Bradley Noel. ‘Another 49% said they will often think about doing the math but ultimately decide against it. Only 19% said they will actually add things up to see if the report makes sense.’

“The results were greeted with elation from the 47 Republicans and 38 Democrats in the 100-member Senate. ‘This is great news," said Senate Majority Leader Pam Crader (D). ‘When discussing budgets or taxes, we can pretty much make stuff up: millions, trillions, deficits, surpluses -- it's all the same to them. Advertisers were equally enthusiastic. ‘This will allow us to offer consumers 1500 free hours of service during their first month of membership,’ said AOL marketer Ted Rawlins. Only the Department of Education has expressed misgivings about the findings. ‘Mathematical apathy is one of the top three educational problems this nation faces,’ DOE Chairman David Kahn warned. ‘The other one is illiteracy.’

Into that mix, you throw a President who has the god-amazing temerity to stand in front of a nationwide audience and tell us first that he’s only bugging a few phones, and second that he’s doing it because he thinks Osama bin Laden might call somebody in the United States to plan his next attack. Man, if you are so far gone, if your brain is so stick-a-fork-in-it-it’s-done cooked by Hollywood and the media that you believe anything as impossibly stupid as that, don’t read any further. You need to be out grazing somewhere. You’re a jackass.

But then again, you might. You believe that ours is a free market economy. You believe that this is the “Nation of Laws,” that we have “equal justice under the law.” You believe that this is a free country. You believe that the rich pay taxes. You believe . . . Never mind, this is a short essay, and to list all the nonsense you believe would require volumes and tomes (look it up).

Suffice it to say that you believe in a free market where lobbyists infest the halls of government like cockroaches a decaying building, an IRS controls every facet of business enterprise and gainful employment, and corporations are by legal definition alone above competition and supply and demand forces. Living in a place where every conceivable act is regulated by law and taxation, where one in every thirty-five males citizens in prison, on probation, or parole, you believe that you live in a free country. You believe that under a legal system that fines a billionaire and woman living on social security the same amount for a stop sign violation or speeding ticket there is equality. In a nation where anyone with enough money and power can form a corporation capable of passing any attempt at taxation on to the wage-earner, you believe that the rich and the corporations they of course form pay taxes. You not only believe pigs fly, you know they do snap rolls and wingovers. Nuff said?

Having been made to reconsider by that last, I pause to apologize. You’re probably NOT a jackass. Nobody is naturally that stupid – not if he can read this. You’re indoctrinated. You believe that nonsense because someone has deliberately reprogrammed your head to believe That nonsense. You need to think about that.

Anyway: Inasmuch as we know that nobody even dares talk about how his wife likes to sun in the nude, let alone things about their tax return, on the phone or computer, we know there’s got to be another motive. What makes me think so? Well, you may have forgotten that I know about all this wire-tapping, bugging, and key-hole peaking from having been its victim. Maybe you haven’t read “Letters to Aaron,” my book. Had you, you’d know how I came to realize that the United States was bugging my house and offices phones. You’d know how I set up and trapped the government in order to prove what they were doing. You know that I retaliated in kind - the reason I'm so sure about things I say here on the Mongoose Trick Forum.

I should have pulled the trigger that night – then there would be no doubt. As it is, you’re all still wandering around in a cloud of media smoke and mirrors, Mutt and Jeff bewilderment, believing nonsense.

What are they really up to? Well, I think it’s about power. Capitalism. As Ayn Rand once said, you can’t rule innocent people. I published a corollary some years ago, one more to the point today, that being that you can’t rule those free of debt, either. To explain, I need to digress momentarily, for a discussion of that last, capitalism.

Capitalism is a system whereby and wherein the strong exploit the weak. Does that remind anyone of what GOVERNMENT is? Government is the law-giver, and all law in capitalist societies is contrived to enforce that system - to provide means by which to keep the powerful more powerful than the persons whose bodies and property are to be exploited. When the exploiters appear to practice socialism, with the seemingly ubiquitous social program of one kind or the other, it is a deceit. Like throwing a bone to the wolves circling the campfire, it is NOT intended to restore any kind of parity. The idea that a capitalist thrives on competition and free market forces is one so absurd logically as to by unworthy of discussion, but in a nation society where “people don’t do the math,” that’s not the case. Begin by trying to imagine the best team in baseball or any other sport contributing funds and players to the others in order to make for everyone having an equal chance of success and closer competition. Imagine a boxer or wrestler handicapping himself in some manner in order to lessen his advantage over his opponent.

Neither has there ever been a situation or circumstances wherein all the competitors in the competition for property, money, and power were equal at the outset. Any study of history, even a cursory one, makes that fact obvious, and arguments to the contrary absurd.

Nevertheless, there is what the illogical, the illiterate, and the innumerate believe. That is also an aspect of capitalism seldom, almost never, discussed. By controlling the education and information systems of the society, the capitalists and the government they own and control indoctrinate the masses until the lie told often enough has become the truth.

That, by the way, was a religion-derived device, too. Religion does not encourage free or questioning thought. I came to recognize that when I attended the parochial high school I did. In four classes, I was encouraged to think freely. In a fifth, religion, I was taught that the church alone knew what was right. It was a sin to think for oneself. Recognize that anywhere in today's secular scheme of things? Bush League "Patriotism," for instance?

In that, capitalism had to replace the Divine Right of Kings – the idea that GOD favored some people more than others and wanted his chosen ones to have dominion over the rest – with another, the Protestant Work Ethic.

Actually, the Protestant Work Ethic needed a bit of help. Essentially just a Divine Right surrogate, the Work Ethic decreed that god favored those who worked hardest, and that gave the powerful justification for whatever they wanted to do. All one had to do was keep all the devious, deceitful, and brutal means used to “get ahead” covert. Or make it legal. Voila! Today’s lobbyist or his medieval prototype.

As is the case with any ideological or religious concept, especially one with results in the real world, early capitalism grew convolute swiftly, acquiring all the mythology and catechism of earlier systems like religion and its kings (or vice-versa). The core myth for capitalism was the Horatio Alger (NOT, you’ll notice Sammy Glick), the “self-made” man. That’s one you’ll hear continually – daily, probably; and maybe several times daily, at that. The individual, the myth says, starts with absolutely nothing, works very hard, and succeeds - becomes a billionaire. That he is somehow impervious to the vicissitudes and verisimilitude of the world that is “…a stage, and all the men and women merely players” is never considered, much less explained. "Somehow," of course, is read "God."

It’s like sex in the Christianity. You must never think of it – that’s a sin; you must never learn anything of it – that’s a sin, too; and you must never do it, unless the church gives permission – otherwise, that’s also a sin. How you manage to do it in the face of all that – well, that’s a miracle. I suppose. Modern capitalism and its journalists like Barnes, Kondracke, and Liasson excel in that kind of non sequitur, Mad Hatter nonsense, as I noted earlier. It’s something that could only have been invented by a genius, but any dummy can understand it. Or is it that a dummy could invent it, but a genius can’t figure it out. Something like that.

Notice, too, that that billionaire was “millionaire” not long ago, and will soon be trillionaire (only if you’re among the innumerate who are largely the reason this nonsense is possible will you believe that). That’s the carrot in front of the jackass. It’s also necessary when government – the rich, that is – creates wealth by printing fiat money. A quick trip back to the island of bananas and the people gone bananas will refresh your understanding of that.

Oops – need to explain the bananas, and the people on the banana economy. A few years ago, a lady called in to a radio talk show where I was a guest. She asked if I could provide a simple analogy, an example that would explain economics. Sure, I said, and I told a story about people living on a little island somewhere, people whose only industry was a magic banana. The bananas could turn into anything anyone needed, and the islands commerce was simply that of swapping bananas. Things worked perfectly until a visitor came to the island from elsewhere. And started writing IOUs for bananas (he, of course, hadn’t grown, and didn’t have, any). You figure out what happened. Include forming a government and its banks.

Actually, I wrote the basics here in my April 16 post, and there’s little to add to that piece in general. Money of the fiat kind is a device by which government and the rich who invariably form government make claim on the bodies and skills of those too poor to have an independent source of income, or whose source of income can be taxed. Fiat money is an arrogated entitlement to the work someone else does. That simple. All forms of money, stocks, bonds, certificates, IOUs, letters of credit, derivatives, insurance contracts, futures contracts – anything valued by or giving value to money by being tradable - is a claim on someone’s work or property.

Another way to understand money in a money economy is to consider my own story. When I say that I dropped out, I mean that I took away from the rich all the vehicles by which to control me or my sources of income. To invoke Ayn Rand once more, there is no way to rule the innocent. To control people, the rulers must either make them guilty of something punishable, or make them subject to being made guilty. The former is hard cash, the latter interest rates, stocks, bonds, derivatives and things that set the value of money. A corollary is there is no way to rule people who are not in debt. Debt, regardless of what the mythologists and liars tell you, is a form of guilt meriting corporal punishment or fine.

To be un-convictable and non-punishable is to be free, which is to say overwhelmingly powerful.

The wannabee royalty and rulers despise that, the reason they go beyond glorifying and immortalizing Sammy Glick ambition to even moralize it – it’s a sin against the great god capitalism and government to do anything but run on the corporate rich man’s treadmill. “The poor man’s “getting ahead” means using the rich man’s money, at the rich man’s price – he will sell you nothing unless you use his money. If you happen to notice that such applies to the nations of the world outside the United States, I congratulate you. Front of the class (where the rich can keep an eye on you).

I, in short, went to the wilderness, lived off the land. Oh, I picked up coins in parking lots occasionally, just to buy a few things like needle and thread, yeast or cultured cheese for sour dough starter, and the like, but the land, lakes, and rivers are very fruitful in the U.S. I often went without money for months on end. And the government’s frustration and fury grew with each passing month. Whenever I left the open fields and trees along lakes and rivers, police harassment became a weekly thing, sometimes daily (as I relate elsewhere, including my book, I was stopped on the nation’s streets and highways by cops more than one hundred ten – it took a while for me to realize and start keeping tally - times).

Whenever threatened with fine or jail, I would reply, “Sure, I don’t mind a few free meals; I have no money, and my bike is mine, un-taxable. When a job as a mechanic earned me an old VW Rabbit (I bought it, fixed it up), it was titled in the name of a friend. With acquisition of a cheap tape recorder, and knowledge of the law superior to most police or criminal attorneys, I became so powerful with poverty that I began to toy with cops, even handling them physically, with impunity (the stories are also in my book). I had, matter of fact, a hell of a lot of fun.

The effect on women, incidentally, was amazing. After years of celibacy enforced
by fear of being set up for rape charges, I got laid more often during the last few years in question than most men do in a lifetime. Power really IS an aphrodisiac.

But you give up some things most “Americans” would not – COULD not. Freedom
isn’t free. Capitalism’s powers of propaganda and indoctrination are immensely powerful. As a matter of fact, you have been so altered mentally that in an Orwellian fashion you believe that enslavement is freedom. All but totally dependent upon society, you somehow believe yourself free.

Few, for instance, could give up their identity. That’s who – and that means what (ask someone, see what he says) – they think they are. That’s been told them by society, and they have no power or faculty to believe otherwise.

But that’s another Banana Island Story. You figure it out. The point here is that government which has to be up to something is always up to making you a prisoner, either by law making you guilty by virtue of violating its legislative enactments (we forget here about presidential directives, and a host more of similar flat fiats by tyrannously powerful people like him), or by inability to catch the carrot it keeps out of reach with legislation called civil statutes.

THAT’s what the wire-tapping and telephone bugging is all about. You’re supposed to be reminded, to realize that in a nation where damned near nothing hasn’t been declared illegal, you are subject to imprisonment just about at will. You’ve known – for crying out loud - for a very long time, at least since Operations COINTELPRO, SANDWEDGE, GEMSTONE, the Church Hearings and all that, that ALL the phones in the United States are bugged. Now you’re told again, just to make sure your certainty of guilt for something keeps you from joining in anything that might rock the President and the White House – that the capitalists’, bunkey - boat. All they need is evidence from a phone tap to prove it (haven’t you read ‘1984?’ – no, I don’t suppose). If what’s there doesn’t quite constitute enough to convince a jury of the trained monkey variety like yourself, they’ll have a legislature pattern one just for what you’ve given them (and if you don’t recognize THAT one, you haven’t been paying attention, again).

And, in case you hadn’t figured that out, either, that’s why the Constitution of the United States provides for a Fourth Amendment.