By Robert Denner
Been trying to come up with a good analogy that better describes what is happening around us, something better than the age old frog in boiling water routine; because what is happening to us is so much more insidious and sly. I was watching a discovery channel special a few years ago regarding how elephants are rounded up and eventually trained to be domesticated draft animals in Africa.
It was truly an amazing feat, that these men with nearly no technology and relatively few people, could coral so many intelligent and incredibly strong elephants. The process starts by identifying a large herd of elephants; they will light a brush fire on one side of the herd which starts the whole process.
There are few things that will scare an elephant and fire is a big one. They get the herd moving in the general direction that they want them to go, at no point can they let the elephants see them as this will cause them to panic and to move in the wrong direction(as people are the other thing that will scare the smart elephants).
Instead; just out of site of the heard is a very weak fence made of brush and sticks. Should the elephants veer off course, they will encounter this barrier. Now if the elephants realized they were being herded at this point, they would panic and burst through the very weak fence. At this point it is far too hard to build an elephant proof fence, it is impossible to anticipate where along this long line they might decide to bolt, so the trick is to just keep moving them forward and if they get too close to the fence, there are men with torches there to scare them back towards the middle of the path.
This goes on for a mile or longer and the further along they move, the closer the walls get and the easier it gets for the relatively few men to scare the elephants back into the middle of the path. Eventually the elephants enter the trap. Had they realized at any point before then, that they were heading for a trap, they could have easily just pushed over the weak fence and trampled the torch wielding man. But the elephants almost NEVER do this, they just keep moving along until they enter the trap.
Inside the trap the walls are reinforced and can withstand a full sized elephant hurling himself against the wall. When the elephants enter the trap area, the door is swung shut behind them and then all hell breaks loose. The elephants go insane and smash themselves against the walls. The men brandish torches to further scare and torment them. This is to get them to wear themselves out in a completely futile attempt at escaping. After many many hours of this torment the next phase begins. They will introduce several domesticated elephants into the corral, in an attempt to calm the herd down and to start picking them off one by one. Two elephants will straddle one wild elephant and they will slowly lead him off to a pen where he will be by himself to complete the process of breaking.
The elephant is removed from his herd and he is surrounded by men with torches. He is chained by the leg and staked to the ground and try as he might, he cannot break free. After days of this treatment he is then introduced to domesticated elephants who take him through the last parts of his “training” and he is from then on a domesticated elephant (or if he cannot be trained he is euthanized).
What does this story have in common with our current economic crisis? Plenty! We as a country (and world) are being led down a certain path. An economic fire was lit behind us almost 11 years ago that scared the living hell out of everyone. That fire was no accident, it was a foreseeable crisis that anyone with a shred of economic common sense could and should have seen coming. The problem with this country is that all economic common sense is beaten out of everyone by the age of 18 by making it seem boring and nerdish. No one wants to understand basic economic theory, so therefore they are easily scared by mysterious men behind weak fences that keep us on our path. Paulson jumps up in front of congress with his torch “PASS TARP OR THE ECONOMY WILL BE DESTROYED, BLAAAHHHHH”. And like pliant little piss ants, they comply, because their woeful economic education does not allow them to understand that outside that weak little fence that Paulson (and now Geithner) is guarding lies true economic freedom.
We are so afraid of smashing through the fence and seeing what lies on the other side, that we will willingly continue walking along a path we KNOW leads to an economic trap. In 2008 I warned that if something did not change, that they would bar the economic doors on those who did not understand the dangers of blindly following the advice of Paulson/Geightner/Bernanke/ and Greenspan.
The time to have gotten enraged was 2 ½ or 10 years ago, at that point we could still have broken free, but now we have entered the trap. They have successfully re-organized the banking system and completely re-written all the rules regarding our monetary system(ALL WITH NO PUBLIC INPUT OR CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT!!!) and now they will sit back as all the big bull elephants hurl themselves in abstract futility against the walls of their pen. The unions and the pensioners and the middle class and the business owners and all the rest are now going to get good and angry. They will whip themselves up into a good lather and they will smash themselves against the walls. The boogie men will come out of the shadows and brandish torches to try and keep them scared.
The Glenn Beck’s of the MSM will come out and proclaim the jihadists are out to get you. Those scary Egyptians are coming for your freedom and you better listen to him. The liberals will roll out the “they are coming for your pensions, they are coming for your jobs, and they will take away your collective bargaining rights!!!” And both sides will be whipped up into a righteous fury as they wear themselves out fighting the wrong fucking battle.
For you see, the Egyptian’s (and Saudi’s) ARE coming to take away our way of life. But what Glenn Beck doesn’t tell you is that WE deserve it. Our way of life is being propped up by stealing the fruits of other countries without so much as giving them affordable food in return. No; we send them pallet loads of green paper that is devalued almost as soon as it arrives and goes to line the pockets of our hand selected dictator da jour and nearly none of it goes to the working class or the poor.
For you see, YOUR PENSION IS GONE! They stole it years ago and the only reason you didn’t realize it, was because they were writing IOU’s to the state treasury (which counted as real money). Your government job in many cases is already gone; you just don’t know it yet. There isn’t enough money in the budget to keep you employed as a state/county employee, and no one is willing to see their already dwindling pay checks get taxed at a rate high enough for you to keep your job. (Don’t expect the elites to pony up the money; that would be against everything they have fought for these past many years).
The fire they lit a decade ago or longer burned all of it to the ground and started you on a path to where you stand now. Had you decided to wake up in 2002 or 2003 and realized that the American way of life was a complete sham and actually had done something about it, we might have had a chance. How the hell could we have not immediately have started riots in the streets the day that George W Bush stood in front of the nation and told us in the wake of 9/11 “TO GO OUT AND SHOP. THAT IT WAS OUR DUTY AS GOOD AMERICANS!!!” How the hell could we not have seen it then?
But they kept moving us along with cheap houses and double digit increases in our home equity values. They kept us going by engaging in 2 wars over resources and kept us in a perpetual state of fear over another terrorist attack. Only they didn’t tell the masses that it was our belligerent actions that were all but ensuring that we would breed yet another generation of US hatred among those that we dominate.
The average American probably felt a certain kinship with the throngs of people in Egypt. There is something very moving about seeing people deciding that they have had enough and to just break free! But here is a little hint for those that are just slowly waking up to the nightmare that surrounds you. The people of Egypt are actually pissed as hell at you. And it isn’t because you are free and that they are not, it is not out of envy of your “way of life”, it is because they have lived under your boot for decades and you didn’t lift a FINGER TO HELP THEM WHEN IT MATTERED!(And just to be clear. I AM PART OF YOU. I did NOTHING to stop this nightmare, save write a lot of words from 2004 to the present).
We are now in the trap and like predictable elephants; the bulls among us are hurling themselves against the walls. My advice is to not listen to them, but rather to save your strength and to bide your time.
After all of the ruckus that was created in Wisconsin, what was accomplished? They passed the bill anyway and all the anger has now turned to resentment and to passivity and angry acceptance. For they were raging against the wrong thing; they were hurling themselves against an immovable fence. For you see the states are really going bankrupt now and there is nothing you can do about it at this point.
But what you can do is to realize that everything in your life has fundamentally changed and that at this point you have nothing left to lose. To me, the best course of action is to wait until enough of us are awake and angry and UNITED and we rush them where they are the most vulnerable. The next phase is already underway and that is the part where they make our captivity seem to be an inevitability. Next Ohio will pass Senate Bill 5(the same thing that they fought in Wisconsin) and the governor will sign it into law and the unions will rally everyone once again to the state capital in a vain attempt at changing their minds. GUESS WHAT, IT IS ALREADY DONE. And marching in Columbus will accomplish absolutely nothing.
After Ohio will be a whole avalanche of states doing the same thing and in each state they will hold rallies and there will be anger and maybe even some violence. BUT WHAT IS EVERYONE FIGHTING FOR? They are fighting to hold onto a system that is corrupt and is destroying this world. Would it not be better to save your righteous anger to fight the REAL FIGHT? End this corrupt monetary system that sucks the wealth of the 3rd world to the United States and its Western friends in a vain attempt at keeping this financial Ponzi scheme inflated.
Wouldn’t it be better if we all worked to end the choke hold on us all by a relatively few number of people? WE OUT NUMBER THEM and it is not even close. We only need 10% of the people who are currently being blindly corralled to just do the unthinkable. And that is to JUST STOP! When they come at you with torches, don’t react. When they send in the faux elephants to try and convince you to follow them out of the pen, DO NOT GO! Just stand pat and wait.
Stop spending money, stop consuming, stop taking out lines of credit. Pay off your Credit cards if at all possible, or be really revolutionary and just stop paying them if at all possible(legally would be even better). Start selling off your 401k and move your money to cash and from cash start paying off the worst of your debt and start purchasing real things that have value(and buying 2nd hand would be the best. If you must buy new, then cash only).
The point is to not let them feed upon your fear and to do the EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO GET YOU TO DO! If they want you to “consume” because it is your patriotic duty, you should do the opposite and buy 2nd hand and not from some corporate company, but from Craigslist. If they raise the price of food on you, work to grow some of your own and help your neighbor do the same.
At some point when they realize that you are not allowing yourself to be led off to your economic death, they will get desperate and they will have to try and FORCE you to do things. Once this happens the other 90% of the herd will realize what is happening. Once the majority of people wake up to how evil these people are, they will gladly join you (and me) in our economic revolution. Once we stop enslaving ourselves in our old way of thinking, we will be free to truly change things.
But if we continue to think that Saudi Arabian oil is ours and that those brown skinned people that live over OUR oil fields, is the truth, we will find that we will make any excuse necessary to allow our masters to go over there and deal out “justice” to keep the oil flowing.
If we continue to DEMAND that unsustainable pensions and 401k’s and all the other “INTEREST” bearing vehicles that we use to MAKE MONEY UPON MONEY is a path to freedom and security, then we will make any number of excuses to allow our politicians to continue to screw over the people of the 3rd world to keep the conveyor belt of wealth transference going from East to West.
We have a choice right now, but the time to exercise that choice is quickly fading. We can choose to continue fighting for things that are corrupt and evil or we can grow up and realize that our way of life IS NOT WORTH SAVING!
Is the American way of life so bereft of humility and generosity, that we have to FORCE other countries to provide us with our sustenance and wealth? We are a country that has immeasurable wealth and yet we are forced by this corrupt system to go out into the world and TAKE MORE. Do we really need new electric cars? Really? Do we really need bullet trains to get us to DISNEYWORLD FASTER? Really?
How is it all going to get built? Where does the energy come from to accomplish all of this? How do you get to retire at age 62, when you are expected to now live well past 74 years of age or longer? Where does it all come from?
WE NEED TO FIGHT, but we had damn sure better be fighting the correct fight, because this is a once in a generation opportunity that lies before us and if we screw it up now, it will be a mistake that we will all have to live with for the rest of our lives(and our children’s and likely their children).
Robert
Robert Denner
The Daily Economic Update
http://dailyeconomicupdate.wordpress.com/