Fear the Silence Part IV: Political Parties should Confess their Machiavellianism

If you have not read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, I highly recommend it. It spells out the proper way to behave politically to maintain the appearance of benevolence as a leader while by necessity ruling as a tyrant.

One quote of Machiavelli is a reminder that ideals can only be achieved in rhetoric. The goal of a decent equitable civilization can never be achieved due to the realism of human behavior.

Many men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. (1)

This is why politics only appears to be competitive and divisive. It maintains the illusion of choice, as suggested by Machiavelli himself.

Among Machiavelli’s suggestions are the following:
• It is better to be feared than loved.
• Keep up the illusion of being reliable at keeping your word.
• Keep the nobility satisfied in order to prevent conspiracies.
• Keep your subjects occupied so they have no chance to rebel (conquering lands or employed at skilled trades – oops! Too many of us are out of work. Smell revolution yet?).
• Being overly generous will only cause greed for more.

Machiavelli had his own version of the Golden Rule: “The offenses one does to a man should be such that one does not fear revenge for it.” Of course this means either don’t do anything, or do it in such a way that will afford no retribution. This is the realistic human behavior golden rule that most people live by.

This philosophy used to belong to the Democrats of the South. Why Machiavellianism easily shifted parties is simple. There really never was a difference between the parties. One party seems to be more honest than the other. A few Republicans finally openly admitted to Machiavellian behavior.

Dennis Miller is openly conservative and said on many occasions that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and people need to toughen up and get theirs (what ever it is) before someone else does.

Why would you be loyal to a party that exploits the masses to get the golden ticket to government service benefits? You don’t really have a choice.

I never read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but I get the idea that the free market should be allowed to self-regulate. This is the mantra of conservatives. They had everyone convinced that markets could self-regulate from the birth of the Industrial Revolution all the way up until 2008 when one leading conservative economist finally admitted to a U.S. Congressional subcommittee hearing that the idea was “fundamentally flawed.”

For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side. But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending. (2)

The rest of the Republicans should not wait as long as Greenspan to confess the true Machiavellian nature of the free market system, to themselves as well as everyone else. If they hurry up and acknowledge the truth like Dennis Miller and Alan Greenspan, there’s a slim chance they might get a few more supporters.

Democrats won’t admit to Machiavellianism. They have hope and dream silage to keep the masses from rebelling. They are going to get elected, then patronize their “nobility” just like the Republicans. The masses get screwed either way.

The “nobility” in our case are the industrial complexes of Banking, Finance, Military, Energy, Railroad, Automotive, Telecommunication, Medicine, Agriculture, Insurance, a few multinational retailers and other corporations "too large to fail."

I would suggest that the entire system be crushed by everyone not paying taxes, but it looks like enough of us are unemployed or poor that our tax refunds will do enough damage. What the hell. They can’t afford to put us in prison anymore anyway.


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1. Wikipedia – Partial Summary of Machiavelli’s The Prince
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince ]

2. New York Times October 24, 2008 -- Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html ]

Fear the Silence Part 3: You can take your ball and go home, we have our own.

The election in Afghanistan may serve as an example for the rest of us, depending on one potential outcome.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah was until recently running against Hamid Karzai for the presidency of Afghanistan. The first round of elections were allegedly riddled with fraud in favor of Karzai, and Abdullah decided to not even bother running through the second round because, according to the BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8336388.stm ], Karzai rejected Abdullah’s demand for replacing the election judges from the first round.

Just because Abdullah’s not running in the election doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be followed. Especially if Karzai’s administration really is rampant with corruption as reported by the Associated Press [http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWS-iq74Txky__OmsJk0qHgUdJgQD9BMTNBO0 ]

A coup d’état is usually a power grab by a group of people, but what if that trophy stinks? What if the rules for that game have been distorted to benefit certain players and uninvited guests?

Dr. Abdulllah can walk away from the established system and build his own powerbase in a manner similar to Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth global warming movement that ultimately helped shift the hearts and minds of a whole new generation away from rampant capitalistic consumerism. (Of course GW Bush and friends were equally helpful at pushing).

Unfortunately, once the election of Barack Obama happened, too many old cronies from past administrations came out of the woodwork. The tentacles of Wall Street wind their way throughout Washington, What a cliché. We get fooled again and again.

Too many voters are falling for the same lines again and again.

• “I’ll clean up [__name city, state or government office__] “
• “I promise no nation building.”
• “I’ll cut taxes.”
• “I won’t raise taxes.”
• “No new taxes”
• “I’ll cut waste, fraud and abuse.”
• “abortion, gay marriage, family values.”
• “___________________________________”

They keep getting elected. That’s what they are good at, getting elected. It’s obvious that most of them see their new position as the finish line. After all, they have all the career staff they need to keep the old machine running the status quo, and they can bring onboard their family and friends who helped get them there.

What can those of us who get run over, left behind, used and then tossed away like disposable razors do about it?

We can build our own machine; start our own game.

We can vote with our wallets, any other suggestions?

Send them to sageofspringfield@gmail.com

Fear the silence - part II: Go Time

Saying is over, time for doing.

We have all commented online at newspaper’s web site and message boards, complaining about everything. We call people names; we point accusatory fingers and write about the bad behaviors of powerful people. We even come up with ideas and suggest needed changes. Do they listen? No.

Did you hear the latest political campaign rhetoric? The candidates are once again running on the same messages of “cleaning up corruption and waste” that the last candidates ran on and ultimately failed to complete. How many campaign cycles have we been through hearing that same message?

What can we do about it?

Ralph Nader’s been talking about this for decades. Nobody takes him or any other independent political candidate seriously for the simple reason that none have moved outside the box and simply created an entire functional government structure that can be manned at a moment’s notice. A future candidate will need to have his complete cabinet in advance of his run for office. Not just the politicians, but the entire bureaucracy must be replaced, all the way from the bottom up.

This is going to require a massive and complete shift in loyalty by law enforcement and military personnel away from the current industrial plutocracy, back to a real democratic form of government. No, a republic is a plutocracy.

You’re not going to get any businesses to support such a radical change because they are the real power behind the curtain of politics. Washington D.C. is merely an illusory Emerald City with the Wizard pulling the levers and puppet strings all the way from Wall Street.

How many times have you heard that old cliché? Everyone knows it but nobody knows what to do about it. The banks have a strangle-hold on small businesses and consumer credit card holders.

The strangle-hold is only effective as long as people value the extra car, the S.U.V., the boat in the driveway, the extra thousand feet of storage space in the house, the finished basement, the riding mower, caring about monthly or weekly fashion updates, etc.

How do you crush the system? Stop spending. Seems impossible? Try these links for helpful hints:

http://myyearwithoutspending.blogspot.com/
http://fruwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.stopspendingmoney.net/
https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

Consumer spending isn’t enough. The government is more completely owned by the industrial complexes of Military, Legal, Medical, Energy, Food, Insurance, and Mass Media. All of theses have always been subsidized by taxes and reinforced by Patent regulations that suppress innovation and technological progress that might compete with them. We never heard much about this before the Internet allowed freedom of speech to expand around the world.

All of the aforementioned industrial complexes operate through Lobbyists in D.C. and often literally write our legislation. Do you need evidence? Just Google this: “legislation written by lobbyists”

Find out which legislators have been caught doing favors of one kind or another for lobbyists, and scratch them off your list. The best we can do right now is colossal non-cooperation.

Complaining and protesting has failed. Freedom of speech is only good for attracting the attention of those who can make you disappear. If things get worse for us because we speak up, we can act in silence and go underground.