The Sach-ing of America*

*(et al.)

Just one more déjà vu from the burgeoning vaults of Goldman Sachs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOrSRsqSV4k (The Daily Show of July 25th, 2013)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFIcNreBSi0 (NBR)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj07djP9L2U (MSNBC)

At least Rome was sacked by outsiders. We seem to prefer, tolerate, and reward sach-ing by insiders. For how long? Till sackcloth and ashes?

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For more on Goldman Sachs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJtO_o-G5Jk -- Goldman Sachs: Power and Peril (Documentary) - Money and Finance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMc6KyM_CrE -- How Does Goldman Sachs Make Its Profits? (Part 1) - PBS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98NhoCmaMt4 -- How Does Goldman Sachs Make Its Profits? (Part 2) - PBS

Accessory?

From Wikipedia¹:

An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. The distinction between an accessory and a principal is a question of fact and degree:

● The principal is the one whose acts or omissions, accompanied by the relevant mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind"), are the most immediate cause of the actus reus (Latin for "guilty act").

● If two or more people are directly responsible for the actus reus, they can be charged as joint principals (see common purpose). The test to distinguish a joint principal from an accessory is whether the defendant independently contributed to causing the actus reus rather than merely giving generalised and/or limited help and encouragement.

In the United States, a person who learns of the crime and gives some form of assistance before the crime is committed is known as an "accessory before the fact". A person who learns of the crime after it is committed and helps the criminal to conceal it, or aids the criminal in escaping, or simply fails to report the crime, is known as an "accessory after the fact". A person who does both is sometimes referred to as an "accessory before and after the fact", but this usage is less common [bold emphasis added].

SO, if one is hired by a company (or country) and told to keep its unlawful, unconstitutional, fraudulent, or deceptive activities quiet (or perhaps even to carry them out), AND WE DO, what does that make us?

How many accessories and principals are out there in our beloved countries? Out there and afraid? Afraid to lose jobs? reputations? homes? loved ones? freedoms? perhaps their very lives?

Any déjà vu here?

Why have we begun to look so much like our former AND current enemies?

How about we have an international re-screening of Judgment at Nuremberg? How about doing it on September 28, the International Right to Know Day²? Or better yet, do it on September 29 and call it the International Responsibility to Know Day, since so many of us seem to prefer to NOT know those things that challenge our preconceptions of self and country?

Will we too, in some future year, when things have run their course down this slippery slope of suspicion, surveillance, and surreptitious “judgment,” hear some judge say to us:

The charge is that of conscious participation in a government-sanctioned system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.³

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Right_to_Know_Day
3. From the screenplay, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Snow Job?

Does it not seem in these latter days that blizzards of deceit and myopia are getting thicker and thicker as co-offenders attempt, with desperation, to obscure, distort, or mis-remember events?

Take the blizzard surrounding Edward Snowden:¹

 Officials and reps on the right and left, crying out for the “rule of law” to be honored in extraditing and prosecuting a man for exposing secret, massive breaches of law by others. How about we take the words of John Boehner (et al.)² and add the names of all the guilty (including sanctioning politicians) in this “giant violation of law.”

Take the blizzard surrounding Benghazi:

 How soon we seem to forget the facts of “9-11” and numerous other embassy deaths in past years as we point fingers of outrage.

Take the blizzard surrounding the IRS scandal:

 How duplicitous to stand atop a heap of one’s own still secret “targets” (past and present) and point with indignation at another’s targets.

Does not the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984 seems alive and well as we frame and reframe events to conform to our 180° view of a 360° world?

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
2. http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2013/06/14/edward-snowden-u-s-traitor.html

Beyond Rational?

Has our modern passion for scientific rationalism become just one more déjà vu in the history of totalitarian ideas? As I listen to some of our most ardent, militant rationalists, the over- and undertones of tyranny are unmistakable. For many of these militants, there can be nothing beyond rational. They see only two options, rational or irrational, never seeming to consider there might be a further advancement of enlightenment toward the transrational. The recognition of such a possibility is older than Plotinus, the ancient philosopher (204/5-274 CE), but he said it so well:

You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which the divine essence is communicated to you. This is ecstasy [Cosmic Consciousness]. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness. Like only can apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union—this identity.*

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* http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/cc/cc13.htm

Truth & Consequence?

“Capitalism cannot coexist with the morality of altruism.”

That was a statement¹ made by Ayn Rand in 1967 on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (at 22:12 minutes).

Considering her well-documented admiration of unregulated capitalism and her disdain of altruism, she meant it as a commendation of capitalism. But when we look at the “ways and means” of capitalism over the past century, perhaps the truth about capitalism is the reverse of what she intended. That is not to say that capitalism has been a total failure. Many significant innovations have come out of the spirit of competition, though it is this writer’s contention that the spirit of cooperation² would have resulted in every benefit we now enjoy, (plus untold others that competition crushed), while at the same time avoiding numerous capital sins.

Perhaps (ironically), the greatest use of capitalism has been its amazing ability to test every soul’s altruism and their gradation of maturity beyond the terrible two’s of “Me & Mine.”

Does it not seem equally amazing and ironic that so many die-hard capitalists cling to the “Me-Mine” philosophy that sprang full-fledged into the mind of Ayn Rand when she was but 2½ years old³?

In retrospect, are these die-hard capitalists but déjà vu age 2? An age group that:⁴

▪ may play with other children for a short time, but aren't yet capable of true sharing
▪ can be easily frustrated
▪ can show feelings of jealousy
▪ can be extremely demanding and persistent
▪ is very possessive - offers toys to other children but then wants them back
▪ can find it hard to wait
▪ may have frequent temper tantrums
▪ can have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy
▪ enjoys make-believe play
▪ can't understand reason or control their impulses
▪ can show aggressive behavior and the intent to hurt others
▪ can be destructive to objects around him when frustrated and angry.

If Ayn is right that “Capitalism cannot coexist with the morality of altruism” (which I suggest she probably is considering the evidence), then why are we so surprised at the state of our economics? Isn’t it a case of cause and effect; truth and consequence?

If seeing, we would but see; and hearing, we would but hear the truth and consequence of capitalism!

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1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBmViYDlrjU
2. The spirit of cooperation is not communism. Communism is the spirit of coercion and one of the extremes of economic theories. When that continuum of economic theory is bent into a circle, the extremes share more than we care to admit.
3. See the reference source for her words at http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2012/11/betraeus.html
4. Sources for age traits: http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/ages.stages.2y.html http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Child_development_(6)_two_to_three_years There are many others.

Blissful Ignorance*

(*A tirade inspired by Salt, Sugar, [‘n] Fat)

Let us NOT count the ways we are addicted. It’s too depressing. Too déjà vu. Or so it seems for all the changes we don’t make in our lives when faced with massive evidence. Take for example, our addiction to ideas—such as competition, efficiency, capitalism, bottom-line, etc. as being the prime drivers of innovation and progress. And by progress, shouldn't we mean, that which advances mankind—not that which conspires to addict or enslave as seen in the old tobacco trials; and now again (yes, déjà vu again and again and again) in recent revelations about the processed-food industry? Take a look:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/Health/ID/2341079476/ 

How much more advanced might we be if we cooperated for the benefit of mankind? Why are we still playing grade-school versions of “king-of-the-dirt-mound?” Haven’t we matured at all? Isn’t that what our CEOs are still up to: pushing and shoving for top-spot on the virtual mound at Wall Street? Pushing and shoving in two-piece pin-stripes? Pushing and shoving adulterated and faux foods down our blissful throats? Pushing and shoving “new and improved” electronics down our virtual throats so we feel driven to dump perfectly good ones into 3rd-world, unregulated waste sites? Pushing and shoving because we are so push-able and shove-able—abetted by Salt, Sugar, ‘n Fat?

And what of our esteemed scientists who have sold themselves for a mess of (processed, bliss-point) pottage?

Why are we so enamored by the big boys (and those few girls) who cudgel their way to the top by obsessing about the bottom-line? Those who buy up “competitors” to co-op or bury products and ideas, or to sell off thriving company assets for a quick profit (and bonus); or those who bypass the buy-up and resort to stealing, maligning, or killing ideas or products that threaten their ideas or products?

How long this blissful ignorance? How long before we recognize the catastrophic damage that our obsession with competition and bottom-line has wrought? How long till we understand that every beneficial progress could have been achieved faster and further by men and women who had matured past the stage of juvenile pushing and shoving? But alas! the powerful “haves” prefer competition. It is the plush curtain that hides the faux-wizard of their superiority and entitlement.

One More Nail—

—in the coffin of “Objectivism.”

Some say, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” but empirical observation says, “When it’s a milking stool or a tripod, or a 3-legged philosophy, two out of three ain’t enough to sit (or to hang your hat) on.”

Daniel Pink’s latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, presents the scientific research of over 50 years that should settle the question of why John Galt’s dollar-sign hanging in the sky¹ hasn’t brought the “promised fulfillment.”

Pink’s call to upgrade to Motivation 3.0 (autonomy, mastery, and purpose) should be required reading for every soul, especially politicians, teachers, employers, and above all, “Objectivists.”

Ayn Rand may have understood, in large measure, the drives toward autonomy and mastery—but what of the drive to purpose? Her “faith” in the supreme (extrinsic) motivation of the “$-sign” has been proven unsupportable. Her beloved “objective” proofs show that “carrot-and-stick” incentives (Motivation 2.0) are lower-grade motivators and can often “encourage unethical behavior, create addictions, and foster sort-term thinking.” In addition, Motivation 2.0 “can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, and crowd out good behavior.” (Pink, p. 205 summary)

Please read Drive. And would someone please tell Tennessee GOP State Senator Stacey Campfield that “...nothing motivates like cash”² is unscientific as to critical “intrinsic motivations”; AND that such erroneous belief is a tad alarming coming from a politician surrounded by lobbyists , temptation, opportunity, and déjà vu.

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1. See the last page of Ayn Rand's philosophic (fictional) epistle, Atlas Shrugged.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbKjvXDPSjA (at about minute 5:38) or also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLtynfHBt_U (at about minute 1:05)
Also see, Martin Bashir interview at the only place I could find it: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/tenn-gop-rep-stacey-campfield-wants-tie-we

Too BIG. (OHHH, Déjà Vu!)

HSBC.¹ "Too big to fail! Too big to jail!"

Wasn't that the paradigm of Assyria? Babylon? Persia? Greece? Rome? And most of the corrupt popes, priests, kings, and tyrants of yesteryear? And now our BIG corporations recycling the follies of hubris and privilege (with the assist of governmental authorities). And where are all the predecessors of our BIG paradigm? Broken remnants in the dust?

And where have we seen HSBC before? Agreeing to pay a record 1.9 billion-dollar fine for its most recent crimes (money-laundering) so it can maintain stability and the confidence of its investors and shareholders! It joins almost every BIG (respectable? indispensable?) corporation on the planet. Just google "corporate fines and settlements" and ask: "Déjà vu what? The sale of indulgences? The Ancien Régime?² The historically ubiquitous delusions and machinations of BIG power and money?"

We must be living in the most unobservant age that ever was! We have access to more information and wisdom than any time in history, and instead of evolving as human beings, we sequester behind faux-persons, recycle folly, and in due course cast ourselves upon the accumulations of dust and debris.

Just consider Hank Greenberg³, a former HyPE (highly paid employee) of AIG and current shareholder. Just consider all of us mesmerized by BIG power, BIG fame, BIG wealth. Are we evolving or are we in a state of spiritual and mental entropy?

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1) HSBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/12/11/hsbc-penalty-laundering-case.html.
2) A system of privilege, power, elitism, authority, and wealth that has survived, in some form or other, every attempt at reformation. One of its most current renditions resides with the militant atheists who are trying to boot religion of the pedestal of elitism and privilege so they can ascend with their own (rational?) substitute version of "the old ways" (about which this writer will elaborate in a coming post).
3) Hank Greenberg: http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-taibbi-on-greeberg-aig-suit-2013-1 and many other sites. Just google "Hank Greenberg" if you want a range of opinions.

Back to the Future ~ Please!?

Words of wisdom and warning from another time to "wring" (or fling) out the old and bring in the new:

Jeremiah S. Black: How shall we avert the dire calamities with which we are threatened? The answer comes from the graves of our fathers: By the frequent election of new men [and women]. Other help or hope for the salvation of free government there is none under heaven. If history does not teach this, we have read it all wrong.
Jeremiah S. Black, 'The Third Term: Reasons Against It,' Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black, ed. Chauncey F. Black, p. 383 (1886). First published in The North American Review, March 1880.

President Abraham Lincoln: At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
President Abraham Lincoln, address before the Young Men's Lyceum, Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838.—The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P Basler, vol. 1, p. 109 (1953).

General George Washington: I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric as we have hitherto been raising at the expence of so much time, blood, and treasure; and unless the bodies politick will exert themselves to bring things back to first principles, correct abuses, and punish our internal foes [Left AND Right by resounding electoral defeat], inevitable ruin must follow.
General George Washington, letter to George Mason, March 27, 1779.—The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 14, p. 300 (1936).

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All three quotes from World Book Encyclopedia "American Reference Library" DVD