RedwoodGuy's Open Salon Blog

End the Hallucination

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:12:57 -0500

Choosing to Awaken

Awakening from the dream is not easy. You may need more than one crisp slap in the face. Try this: get naked in front of your mirror. Do you see an elephant or donkey brand burned into your hide? How about an American flag birth mark? Turn around. Do you see any cords, wires or chains hanging from your body? Any plug-in sockets? Remote control sensors? Then guess what - you're absolutely free to be the human you were meant to be. Nothing is being rammed down your throat. The White House, Supreme Court, and Goldman-Sachs are not controlling you. All of that was just one life-long television induced hallucination.

There's No Taliban Under the Bed

Furthermore, you aren't going to be killed by a Taliban or Al Qaeda terrorist. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. And you won't be getting an audience with the President, the Chief Justice, or the Speaker of the House to tell them what they ought to be doing. So, get over it - no one in charge is taking your phone calls. You should also know that you aren't going to drown from melting icecaps, and no one from the United Nations is coming to take your guns.

Statistically, here's what is going to happen. You're going to eat too much junk food, become obese, get over-medicated, and live out the last years of your life in debt, and in diapers. You're going to die from heart disease, cancer or a stroke - the three leading causes of death in the U.S:

Number of Americans killed by those diseases last year: 1,300,000
Number of civilians killed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda last year: 0

So, isn't it about time to stop hallucinating?

The TV Acid Trip

Limbaugh, Couric, O'Reilly, Friedman, and Kristol and a small army of fear-mongers, pundits and blathering media jocks are being paid a small fortune to keep you hallucinating. But they're just the tip of an iceberg. Television, radio, newspapers, movies, magazines - and now the Internet - form the largest industry on Earth with but a single goal - spinning up the massive illusionary narrative you actually accept as your life. No, this isn't another "Matrix" conspiracy theory - - it's actually much worse. It is mass murder with no prosecution or punishment. In fact, these killers of your real life are rewarded and lavished with million dollar salaries and perks to go with it.

Where exactly is your real life then? Right where you left it - deep inside buried under a stinking, smoking, festering pile of rubble left behind by a lifetime of television and media "acid" consumption. Here, a mountain of false anxiety and suspicion created by TV and radio media mavens. There, the jagged shards of fear, paranoia, xenophobia, and rampant racism. Over here, a steaming pile of false hope and frustration. All topped off with a gooey layer of advertising residue for medicine you'll soon need to treat sicknesses being designed into your food.

You Do Have a Real Life

The global media structure exists to accomplish one mission: keep you from being in the simplicity and beauty of this exact present moment - where your actual, real, living-breathing life takes place. The only life you will ever actually live. Because no, you won't be dating super models or movie stars, you won't be negotiating any Global Warming agreements in Copenhagen, and you aren't being asked to write legislation for health care reform. You are however, being suckered into spending all your waking energy believing you are doing those things.

Thankfully, humans are built with resilience and adaptability that works in both directions. Yes, they can make you sick, but you can also choose to step out of the hallucination and get well. You can ditch the paranoid, self destructive shopping-bot they have created. You can reboot and load sane reality back into your life. You can rediscover pure bliss and happiness. Go ahead - get started now - turn that radio dial down - keep turning - all the way now to off - click! Now, take a deep breath and go outside and walk around the neighborhood for an hour. Say hello to your neighbors, wave at people driving by, smile at little kids, pet every dog you meet, listen to the birds, and don't think about the Taliban jumping out from behind the bushes. See? It's that easy.

How to Pacify a Nation

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:12:28 -0500

Here then, is how the USA works. Begin with a pyramid with three horizontal layers. At the bottom are 308 million people who form the raw human resource to be exploited. In the middle layer is the political class of about a million people at all levels of government - Federal down to local. This forms the tool which will be used for the exploitation. At the very tippy-top of the pyramid are a few thousand oligarchs with names you don't know, and probably never will. They provide the money to run the tool, which exploits the human resource, which builds the massive wealth base upon which they thrive.

Great masses of people always need to be pacified and controlled. There are only a few different means to do this. In the USA we use politics. We have a highly organized, regimented strata of governments and bureaus and public functions, which make and enforce all the rules by which the masses will live their lives. The political class runs these governmental functions, and they report to the oligarchy through a socio-economic construct usually termed "the establishment."

The establishment is the moral and ethical standards body which negotiates the exploitation process between the oligarchy and the masses. This body consists largely of media and business people, because they have the most direct access to, and contact with the masses. News editors and publishers, academics, TV anchors, CEOs, and mass media celebrities along with politicians and their pundits are the bulk and shape of the establishment. The establishment is crucial in forming public opinion, and in setting and managing the public agenda, which serves the oligarchy. The tools of the establishment are television, radio and newspapers, through which the entire mass of human resource is pacified, motivated and controlled.

To be effective, a political mechanism for controlling the masses must offer the illusion of competition. Lacking that, you have naked authoritarianism, and that is a different means all together. Competition in the US political system is derived through two authorized franchises of the establishment. One is called Republican, and the other is called Democratic. Together, these two sanctioned "teams" compete for public favor through a rigidly controlled electoral process played out on television. Every seat in every government institution then, is occupied by a member of one or the other authorized teams. Since both teams operate under the strict guidance of the establishment, which in turn owes it's existence to the oligarchy, a very uniform means of control and pacification is rendered upon a very massive human resource.

A careful look at the presidential election process reveals how this system works in practice. In the primary phase, anyone can be a candidate. All kinds of views are acceptable to run under one or the other official team colors of Red or Blue. Even whacky candidates like strippers or libertarians are allowed into the primary process. These bogeys are encouraged to run because they are needed as punching bags for the prime candidates on TV shows. The media treat such candidates with open contempt, and deliver them up as fodder in the process of making the prime candidates look smart, viable, refreshing, and of course presidential. These outliers also heighten the illusion of actual competition for these government roles. "Oh, if only my guy/gal had done a bit more fundraising….." But of course, these outliers are going nowhere. One by one the media will destroy these candidates, and eliminate their access to the TV screen. By the time the primaries are over, they are gone and long forgotten.

This leaves the two contenders - one each from the Red and Blue team - to battle it out for the people's choice award - the Oval Office! By tradition and strict convention, the Democratic contender must play the role of righteous and just savior of the downtrodden, and the Republican contender must assume the mantle of fierce warrior and executive businessman. Both must promise middle class nirvana. The cheerleading establishment must whip up as much wild enthusiasm as possible for each team. TV channels and shows, as well as newspapers and radio stations are doled out to each team. Great personalities from TV and radio are paid truly impressive salaries to incite their fans right to the very brink of chaos.

On election day there is one certainty only - that the winner will be wearing either a Red or Blue jersey. The illusion for the public will have been successful, and the winner can report directly to the oligarchy for operating instructions. Those instructions are always the same: follow the lead of the great banking and industrial interests, they'll let you know what they need, and when they need it.

The candidate who was a wild-eyed liberal promising chickens in every pot, is now starting wars and signing laissez faire free trade agreements. The wild-eyed conservative promising H-bombs on the world's brown peoples, is now pulled back into policing actions with a few combat brigades, and perhaps offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The public is reduced to scratching their heads wondering how their candidate could have possibly fooled them. The establishment gets busy putting on the post game show - writing blogs, creating news broadcasts, arguing ferociously on hot political TV shows, writing OpEds, writing books and giving lectures. They will fan the flames of public adoration and disgruntlement until it is time to start all over again - which happens to be right now!

That this fantastic illusion works year after a year is a testament to two things: the hallucinogenic power of television, and the inability of the human mind to "awaken" from the sleep state and into reality.

The Obama Illusion

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:12:57 -0500

The hope is unravelling. The change has been redefined, minimized, compromised, sliced and diced into bite-sized morsels of what is now predictably called "the possible." It must be so painful for the true believers, who once more fell into the dream that so often grabs the young, the hopeful, the idealistic.

I wasn't in that crowd this time, but I feel the pain. It happened to me in 1992 as I watched that same dream turn into a corporatist nightmare and a personal debacle of ethics. This time around the play was too familiar, and the trappings so artificial and transparent they glared like cheap neon lights.

Not even a full year in office, there was Mr. Obama making regular old, predictable, tried and true, Washington-style, back-room sellouts to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, with not a ray of sunshine coming into those White House windows. The steady parade of Washington's money grubbers from Daschle to Tauzin sitting down to carve up the health care turkey for industry was just what the crowds in Grant Park on Nov. 4th imagined, right?

Charles Schulz seemed to know the inside scoop on why people do this to themselves time and time again. Lucy pulled that football off the ground every season, and Charlie was on his back pondering his continued gullibility. Charlie the optimist, Lucy the ever present realist.

Becoming the POTUS is a bit like salmon spawning - a nearly impossible and treacherous journey. Lot's of liberals and lefties run for the presidency - none ever make it. Because it isn't allowed. It's not compatible with crony capitalism, and that -- believe it or not, is simply the end of the story.

The path to the White House means swimming up a river of money deeper and wider than anything you can comprehend. Money is in the hands of a very, very small group of men and they fully intend on keeping it that way. To be a viable candidate in either of the two sanctioned parties, you will be vetted by this group, and you will swear allegiance to their principles - none of which involve any Kumbaya leftist philosophy. This money controls the media, this media controls the vote.

Where and when Mr. Obama made his final conversion before being blessed as an 'sanctioned' outcome of the 2008 election I do not know. But, that he made it is as certain as his actions. Remove your rose colored glasses, take off the love beads and take a sober look. Watching the party in Grant Park, were you imagining a flock of Bush era Wall Streeters in charge of all things economic? Did you hope for Aetna and Pharma cutting secret sweetheart deals? Don't feel bad, we've all been suckered this way before. And, if Charles Schulz is right, this won't be the last time.

All-in With Palin

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 14:12:12 -0500

Mark this date as when the WaNY establishment anointed Sarah Palin as the #1 challenger to Barack Obama in 2012. The Washington Post has given it's editorial page over to Mrs. Palin for a rant on Copenhagen. I suppose there are other Republicans running - Huckabee? But they have been wiped off the pages and TV screens of the MSM in favor of Mrs. Palin, who is just, well - everywhere all at once tweeting us breathlessly!

Every tweet and tidbit uttered is captured and echoed back throughout each day by all the media stars from the Right and the Left too. That's a sure sign she's the new IT Girl! And, just how smart was it to dump that tedious boring old desk job as Governor of Alaska?

It's going to be a very long election cycle, but game on! In summing up Mrs. Palin as the Red Team's media darling and enticing front-runner she has these 10 things going for her:

1. She is pretty.

2. She is telegenic and has natural TV star quality.

3. She is sexy enough that every male between 12 and 95 is fantasizing of sex with her, and every male media star, TV host, and columnist believes he has a shot.

4. She knows instinctively how to make news - and no handlers required.

5. She has a dysfunctional, weird family ready-made for gossip columns - which make up a significant part of the media bullhorn.

6. She has a "hillbilly heart" - - that quintessential American blend of pure kitsch and corn and 'country western' values embraced by the great heartland masses. She's a Mom!

7. She is fearlessly self-revealing, and unafraid of self exposure of any kind.

8. She doesn't kowtow to the tired gray party apparatchiks. Yes, you could even say she's a bit rogue.

9. She is religious in that wonderfully benign, public and sentimental way mastered by Ronald Reagan, and copped by George W. Bush so effectively in 2000.

10: She's fun to cover! (Compare and contrast: Mike Huckabee?)

Of course, this doesn't mean she's any kind of shoe-in for the Republican nod in 2012. Just like Rudy, she could burn up in the primaries. But until then, she is IT!