A Soothing Disclaimer from the Stupendously Banal
Don't tarry too long -- we'll be "facing facts" soon enough.
There are plenty of folks who will nod in acquiescence when one proclaims "This world really hasn't changed much." Of course there's no telling what "thought model" has encouraged this human audience to tacitly agree with such an un-quantified proposition, but in such sweeping -- and dramatically poetic -- laments, we need not demand too "high a bar" as to the quality of information, observation and logic which might be driving us to such a conclusion.
In 2015 A.D the world has more than sufficient history behind it to draw some quite conservative conclusions about this "hasn't changed much" idea. Naturally, although the modern technological availability of such a literal glacier of "things" ranging from electric radios to steel belted tires might serve to counter this common argument on the plane of contradicting, material manifestations, other features of life on the planet appear to this particular "interested observer" as a sequence of copies, each following the previous by some varied duration of years, decades or centuries.
The point here is that because the technology which supports our modern social civilization is advancing so rapidly, we have become immured to such fundamental changes. For example, when we see an advertisement for the latest electronic gadget, we are not shocked. Instead, we are probably considering whether or not we can afford to buy one for ourselves.
An additional factor which seems to complicate our efforts as observers is the understandable attachment of our consciousness to material things. When we set our efforts to observing changes which are not manifest in material things, our perspicacity seems to falter. This allows the non-material to seem able to "creep up" on us, arriving without warning or, at least, without any sort of civil announcement.
This may all seem a little abstract, but this is the case with the "creeping" oligarchy which is presently threading its way throughout the country. From one moment to the next -- or from one day to the next -- there seems to be very little changing, but the undercurrent is as strong and relentless as a rip tide. Further, although the uselessly obedient media casts this picture into a chaos of coincidence -- and sometimes, simply out right mystery -- every molecule of that undercurrent is marching in lockstep, and the constant, unwavering destination of that march is total, albeit almost unnoticed, oligarchy.
There are voices heralding this danger of rapidly approaching, saturating oligarchy -- admittedly voices reaching far more eyes and ears than a quiet little high desert blog from Albuquerque, but these voices are reduced to mere uncertain quivers compared to the monolithic roar and rage of the "pretend" media which currently serves those billionaires who host such great ambitions.
Ironically, even the very public servants of those same oligarchs are citing the danger -- for other countries, of course -- from pulpits as unlikely as those of the GOP debates in speeches where every sold out word has been carefully scripted by a wholly owned think tank somewhere.
MeanMesa is fascinated by this flow of little "twists and turns" as oligarchy is defined, insinuated, redefined, denied or simply brought forth to be inserted into casual conversations amid intentionally drifting prognostications deceptively muttered. There seem to be very few "unknowns" remaining in the new economy's "journey" from where we are to where we are going. The image of the new oligarchy is emerging from the fog as we speak.
Perhaps this is an auspicious opportunity to blog a little about what these old eyes are watching.
Three Voices Speaking to the Peril
It's no surprise that the billionaires have forbidden "chatting up" the topic too much.
Their obedient media is busy with ISIS, gay marriage, gun control and abortion.
Their obedient media is busy with ISIS, gay marriage, gun control and abortion.
There are, no doubt, more than three folks speaking about the subject of oligarchy, but -- not many more. It is an unusually upsetting topic for Americans at our level. There is practically nothing to be said in its favor among the great "middle swath" of the population [MeanMesa is reluctant to use the term, "middle class," to describe the broken, bruised and blistered survivors of the Great Republican Looting Festival of 2008.]. By this it is meant that, for example, it would be almost inconceivable to imagine a mob marching down the street in an American city demanding "OLIGARCHY NOW!"
This lack of discourse is, if not suspicious, at least quite eerie. One might think that an approaching change of such magnitude and one promising such far reaching, penetrating effects on both daily lives and future dreams would be a common topic over every back yard picket fence and every broken down water cooler -- you know, "screamed from every rooftop."
This post is about three individuals in the American "public arena" who are speaking about the approaching oligarchy. There has probably never been a more egregious case of well financed treason in the Fourth Estate.
The three men appearing on MeanMesa's list of "outspoken oligarchy commentators" are worthy of examination because all three hold the ear of their own, significant audience. As for message, two are heralding a warning while the third has "chopped, minced and pickled" the subject for his political survival.
Amid the direr vacuum of public discussion concerning this, it turns out that it's very easy to "get on MeanMesa's list." Any public figure so much as even mentioning the term is automatically qualified. Let's have a look at three of these public faces.
1. Thom Hartmann
Progressive Radio Host, "The Thom Hartmann Show"
1350AM, KABQ Albuquerque, 10AM to 1PM weekdays
Old people -- like MeanMesa -- listen to the radio. Because the wing nut billionaires who currently own most of the industry broadcast their hate radio toxin over more hundreds of stations and for more hundreds of hours daily -- a rate of 400 to 1 when compared to the number of hours progressive or any other voices can be heard -- it is always a reassuring pleasure to encounter such "an exceptional exception" as The Thom Hartmann Show.
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| Thom Hartmann - US domestic talk radio host who routinely talks about the encroaching oligarchy. [image] |
Hartmann has famously stated his policy, "I don't want to be afraid that politicians will cut off my access because I ask them hard follow up questions in interviews."
As one samples the various options of what serves as broadcast reporting, particularly talk shows presenting interviews, Hartmann's admirable policy is immediately noticeable. Thom Hartmann reveals himself as extremely well informed and very well educated while remaining notably civil while interviewing guests with opposing viewpoints.
The point here is that Hartmann regularly introduces current news stories about the latest ambitious efforts of US billionaires -- those comprising the anti-democracy, oligarch class -- to complete the "economic coup d' etat" of their avaricious dreams. His views of the shady legislative tactics and "suspicious obedience" of the GOP controlled Congress to oligarchic interests are especially valuable.
He speaks openly about dynastic oligarchs and perpetual oligarchy as the ruling factors of the new economic model for the United States. Hartmann is also utterly meticulous about including the sources of this information as he provides it, allowing any still skeptical listeners to verify the information for themselves.
[A MeanMesa note: For international visitors to this blog unable to receive The Thom Hartmann Show as broadcast by domestic radio stations, a podcast service can be purchased here: Thom Hartmann PODCAST. For free listening during the radio show broadcast: Thom Hartmann - Watch Live TV. The show is also broadcast worldwide via US Armed Forces Network, and Hartmann hosts a televised talk show called "The Big Picture" on the RT network.]
2. Senator Bernie Sanders
US Senator From Vermont
Democratic Party Candidate for US Presidency
If we were to "size" the media fraud which is currently masking any serious reporting about the oligarchic threat, we would quickly encounter another media fraud with roughly the same dimensions. The Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign has consistently attracted larger crowds at campaign rallies than those attending rallies for any other candidate, yet most American voters remain unaware that he is even running in the race. Is there another name for this? It looks like a simple case of sold out media treason to MeanMesa.
Clearly, the scale of such treachery no longer causes much concern to the network executive moguls. These "oligarch wanna-be's" are apparently quite comfortable with their "arrangements" with the billionaires -- they are obviously more concerned with what their masters think of them than they are concerned with what their networks' viewers think of them. Unless you want more of what we currently have, hit the "mute" button.
Let's just say that the billionaires issuing the orders to their wholly owned, uselessly fraudulent media networks are just not that comfortable with the prospect of a democratic socialist becoming a Presidential nominee. Worse, when that democratic socialist is becoming the candidate of choice for the Democratic majority of voters, they are really worried. ["Democratic majority" means that there are significantly more Democratic voters than Republican voters. If this is "news" to you, then you have a "news" problem.]
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| Senator Bernie Sanders [image] |
Sanders is clearly the "visiting glacier" in the oligarchs' "pond." Like a glacier, he's squarely, indisputably there, and the massive crowds filling his campaign rallies -- not to mention his two million small donors -- signal that he can remain as long as he likes.
It's also becoming clear that those two million small donors have polished their walking shoes in preparation for an almost inconceivably massive door to door canvassing effort. The billionaires presumed that they had successfully castrated the last vestige of such powerful political forces after they had systematically destroyed the labor unions.
He is openly and repeatedly campaigning with proposals to finally limit wealth inequality -- an abhorrent nightmare for the billionaires who have invested so generously in their right wing scheme for taking complete control of the government. Worse, at least for the oligarchs, any candidate who is bad mouthing wealth inequality is, by necessity, also talking about oligarchy.
Sanders' often repeated campaign slogan says it all: "It's time to tell the billionaires that they can't have it all." Because oligarchy necessarily includes the idea that the billionaires SHOULD have it all, the plutocrats who own the Republican Party are fuming in their cloistered country club back rooms. The first item in their response to this is to order their media servants to absolutely boycott any reporting whatsoever about the Sanders' campaign.
The uncontrollable Donald Trump actually called Sanders a "whacko" who will give away free stuff. A couple of the mouth junk "stars" working at the oligarchs' networks were ordered to casually drop the narrative that Sanders' proposals would cost the country $17 Tn in ten years. Notably, the missing element in that pitch was any reassurance that the oligarchy wouldn't become permanently cemented into place if Sanders were not elected President.
MeanMesa has noticed an interesting, albeit subtle, change in the commonly used terms of the Sanders campaign. Apparently, using the term "oligarchy" was simply too taxing for the failed education level of too many otherwise sympathetic Sanders supporters. These voters may not be able to entirely understand the meaning of "oligarch," but -- believe MeanMesa -- they can understand the meaning of "billionaire."
Most of the electorate still have plenty of the bruises, scars and terror which was so evenly distributed to them the last time the billionaires were in charge. Remember the date:
2008.
It is going to become the Republican Party's worst, unrelenting toothache by the time November of 2016 arrives.
3. Senator Rafael [Ted] Cruz, Jr.
GOP Tantrum Thrower and Government Shut Down Expert
Nationally famous Right Wing religious bigot,
Jr. Senator from Texas and Presidential Candidate
It is not a coincidences that the faces of contemporary oligarchs appear almost exclusively [MeanMesa notes that a number of corporate, bankster class "oligarch wanna be's" are contributing heavily to the Clinton Primary campaign. However, rather than supporting any sort of Democratic policy proposals, MeanMesa considers these "contributions" to be "damage control" laid aside early on in the event that a Democrat becomes the next President.] among the "cash cow" donors of the Republican Party. Among the billionaire class available cash reserves have already proven to be effortlessly sufficient to render state level democracy extinct -- a large majority of individual states have now "elected" entire state level governments entirely controlled by GOP operatives and their regimes.
These states now serving as the equivalent of living "blood donors" under red control are easy to spot -- most of them are now tattered, economic basket cases.
Nonetheless, the GOP is living up to its well earned reputation as a fetid denizen of utter skunk striped wing nuts. While the billionaires have ordered their wholly owned media to focus unceasingly on Donald Trump, there turns out to be "another strange one" waiting in the wings. A really, really strange one.
Oligarchy From the Pulpit
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| The Rafael Cruz Couple - Pastor Daddy and Senator Son [image] |
Because this post specifically intends to identify public figures who are currently speaking openly about oligarchy, we must add Rafael Cruz to our list. MeanMesa must also note that what Rafael is saying about oligarchy is quite removed from the messages Thom Hartmann and Senator Sanders are delivering. Let's begin with a quotation from Pastor Rafael Cruz, father of the Texas Senator, Rafael Junior:
FLASHBACK: Rafael Cruz Calls Son, Ted Cruz, an ‘Anointed King’ Responsible for ‘The End Time Transfer of Wealth’
[Read the original article at AATTP.org]
We can see from this arrogant, albeit rather dated, religionist nonsense that Rafael has also been thinking about just what help he might render to the establishment of the US oligarchy -- after all, the compensation could be staggering if, afterward, the billionaire winners are inclined to pay their faithful servants and ground troops. For "normal, run of the mill" billionaires the simple prospect of owning everything and everybody in the nation is attraction enough, but for thinly disguised Dominionists such as Cruz, the imagined possibilities look more like a blend of the medieval Oberammergau Passion Play and a blood soaked, WalMart abattoir shrink wrapping fresh pork chops on a high speed conveyor belt.
MeanMesa instantly and humbly admits this blogger has no capacity whatsoever to embellish this article from Americans Against the Tea Party. [AATTP]
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Americans Against the Tea Party
Posted by: Josh Kilburn
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Ted Cruz recently announced his intention to run for presidency, so it’s worthwhile to take a look back at the sort of environment that he comes from, and what his influencing beliefs are.
In a sermon last year, Rafael Cruz said that his son is among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as “kings” to take control of all sectors of society. This is a Christian dominionist agenda that’s commonly called the “Seven Mountains” mandate: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion. If “Seven Mountains” is too abstract, “Creeping Christofascism” puts a much finer point to it.
In fulfilling the “Seven Mountains” Mandate, Rafael Cruz said that his son and other “anointed kings” would help bring about a “prophesied great transfer of wealth” from the “wicked” to the “righteous gentile believer.”
Rafael Cruz said that they are “Kings who are anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to the priests.”
In the wake of the speech, Ted Cruz was blessed and anointed by prominent dominionist pastors, in effect making him a “king” in the political/governmental sense, at a special ceremony held at a Marriott Hotel in Des Moines, Iowa in 2013.
Ted Cruz made his first political speech at Liberty University, and the University mandated student attendance. Given that Liberty University is the religious institution of Jerry Falwell, who was influenced by dominionist pastor R. J. Rushdoony (the grandfather of dominionism, a strong influence on Rafael Cruz as well), it should surprise exactly nobody that they would give Cruz this sort of deference.
While giving a guest sermon in 2012 at Larry Huch’s megachurch in Irving, Texas, Rafael Cruz explained that:
“The pastor [Huch] referred to Proverbs 13:22, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur. God, even though he’s sovereign, even though he’s omnipotent, he doesn’t let it rain out of the sky – he’s going to use people to do it.”
In return, Hutch spoke about Cruz’s son:
“I know that’s why God got Rafael’s son elected – Ted Cruz, the next Senator. But here’s the exciting thing – and that’s why I know it’s timely for him to teach this, and bring this anointing. This will begin what we call the “End Time Transfer of Wealth.”
“And that when these gentiles begin to receive this blessing, they will never go back financially through the valley again. God is looking at the church, and everyone in it, and deciding, in the next 3 and 1/2 years, who will be his bankers. And the ones that say, ‘Here am I, Lord, you can trust me’, we will become so blessed that we will usher in the coming of the Messiah.”
So what is this “End Times Transfer of Wealth?”
It’s the belief that the Kingdom — which is the name given to the vast Global Caliphate that Dominionists want to set up — will remove the wealth from the sinners and give it to the church. This will play a role in the beginning of the Second Coming.
So what role does Ted Cruz play in this? He’s announced a bid at the presidency, after all.
While I can only speculate, I think the better question is, “do we want to find out?”
Dominionist Billionaires and Their Check Books
The GOP's plutocrats are circling like a horde of locusts.
Hungry locusts.
Locusts who brought along their preachers.
First of all, we must immediately disabuse ourselves of any lingering suspicion that the billionaires care "one whit" about the "return of Christ" or the "kingdom of God." Every iota of this over-financed nonsense is intended for consumption by the fickle voters in the GOP's already dangerously unstable, evangelical base. At this point in Cruz's shoddy Passion Play the only thing topping the cynicism may be the irony.
President Jimmy Carter:
The United States is an “Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery.”
The Owners of the Republican Party have already amassed a notably large war chest to finance their 2016 gambit.
"For the first time in more than a century, most of the funding for a presidential election is being donated in amounts of six figures or more from corporations and wealthy individuals. Roughly a third of the more than $380 million already raised for the 2016 election comes from less than 60 donations, according to the Associated Press."
***
"Jeb Bush’s largest Super PAC has already raised $103 million, most of it collected before he even officially declared that he was running for president. At least 20 individuals wrote checks to Bush’s Super PAC for $1 million or more, and an estimated 236 checks were received for $100,000 or more." [This is what oligarchy looks like.]
"It took Ted Cruz three months to raise $10 million, according to the same AP account. He then more than doubled the size of his coffers by collecting $11 million with a single check from a hedge funder." [This is what oligarchy looks like.]
No Need to Suffer From an "Irony" Deficiency
The really juicy parts of the carnival are just beginning!
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| Earl of Casino du Manchu, Billionaire Sheldon Adelson [image] |
Among other notably troubling topics, Senator Cruz's rambling, tangential reference to our oligarchic future was delivered in a speech in a lush Las Vegas casino complex owned by none other than one of America's most ambitious and flamboyant oligarchs. This was cynicism at its utmost.
Still, the rank of file of GOP "true believers" patiently awaiting "prosperity's onslaught" in their aging house trailers saw absolutely nothing contradictory in the paradoxical political soup. While most of these unfortunate, beer guzzling souls have only a passing interest in being counted among Cruz's "righteous" -- and sitting on the receiving end of his "end times wealth redistribution from the wicked to the pious" -- they are almost hypnotically impressed by the lights and sirens of a Sheldon Show not to mention, of course, the women.
MeanMesa suspects that it's very unlikely that 5% of this crowd have any idea what "oligarchy" means. Good work, Fourth Estate and US public education.
Sheldon Adelson is a "mid-range" US oligarch [total wealth < $40 Bn] with the primary political interests in 1. avoiding Federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecution for bribing his casinos into the Peoples Republic of China [REUTERS], 2. legalizing on-line gambling in the US, and 3. using the US military to attack Iran, handing the smoldering remains to Israel. MeanMesa has posted about this war-mongering character before:
[Laughter is the best medicine...]
Minimum Daily Requirement: Irony
GOP Presidential Politics
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