"The Eastern World it tis Explodin',
Violence flarin', Bullets loadin'
Ah, you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction"
If... I were given unlimited power, money, and the unknowing assistance of multitudes of pawns, players, shills, toadies, lap dogs, etc; to take down a nation, how would I do it?
Common sense says, first I would want to control that nation's monetary system with the unlimited ability to tax the population (incurring massive debt) into servitude. I might name my monetary system with an official-sounding title that would fool the multitudes into thinking I was an official governmental agency - and not a private banking cartel.
I would institute various programs of entitlement to entrap and make the citizenry dependent on various handouts - thus killing their incentive to work, but most of all to control dissent. One doesn't bite the hand that feeds them.
I would give robber barons, and various corporate entities, through lobbyists and campaign contributions to key legislators the power to write their own meal tickets, excusing them from various taxes, regulation, liabilities and accountability. I would set up off -shore accounts and various trusts to protect the wealth of the favored elite. Only the working cogs will pay strangulating taxes.
Next, for quicker servitude, I would shut down the mills, the various plants, machine shops, manufacturing, auto companies (livable wage jobs), and send them to foreign lands, where labor costs (no benefits - no safety standards) are mere pennies. I would grant tax incentives, subsidies and create consulting firms to assist companies in making a smooth transition to less restrictive lands.
I would direct Congress to vote legislation (various visas) to import tens and more tens of thousands of foreign workers who would be paid one-half to one third of American wages (no benefits, no job security) to work at resorts, hotels, restaurants, in the medical field, engineering, teaching and in Information Technology. I would propagandize the gullible public, telling them that Americans 'won't do' those jobs - or that there are not enough trained Americans to fill the positions. Congress will be instructed to reinforce this lie in various scripted messages (media - campaign trail - speeches in Congress).
I would open the borders to allow millions of the dispossessed (due to trade agreements) south of the border/others; to work on corporate farms, as maids, laborers , construction workers, roofers, etc. I would encourage illegal immigration; so as to keep these unsuspecting people, in a constant state of apprehension - should they insist on a livable wage, or complain, when unscrupulous contractors leave them unpaid, or injured without compensation.
I would limit any real choices in voting, keeping the field limited to a two-party (monied) system - where only the wealthy (poor candidates ignored) and chosen need apply. Again, I would encourage animosity between the reds and the blues, never revealing that they are playing (these political parties) good cop - bad cop (depending on who is in power). Both parties will be given their scripted talking points, which per usual, will promise the world...and deliver nothing.
I would saturate the land with drugs, pills, LSD, marijuana, prescriptions, designer drugs etc; till the land was awash with mind-numbing, brain-damaging chemicals making crime rampant, destroying families/communities, and creating a private prison industry (the largest in the world). The costs, to states and various communities will bankrupt many - with peace officers, renamed law enforcers and gradually becoming militarized. People will be conditioned to FEAR the police, not welcome their presence.
I would allow the HMOs, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies to ravage and destroy what was once an affordable medical system. The focus will be on 'profits' with ever more exotic drugs being offered in lieu of preventive medicine.
Pollution, food additives, chemicals, and Frankenstein crops will add to create even more ill health. The Hippocratic Oath will become as antiquated as the Geneva Convention. Being on constant vacation and with their own (taxpayer subsidized) health insurance, granting them the best in prompt treatment (prescriptions), the people's representatives will, as usual, protest feebly and do nothing. Pharmaceutical companies will be granted legislative authority, to charge top dollar for needed medicines, with Congress voting to prevent more affordable medicines (made by the same companies) from being imported to the U.S. from Canada and Japan. Profits over people is the corporate mantra of the land.
I would make (except for legislators and the judicial and executive branches with their obscene pensions) retirement an impossibility for seniors. On fixed incomes, or minuscule pensions (if not already looted), they will be unable to afford rising taxes, the cost of medicine, rent, food, home heating, or medical treatment. Many will die in the land of plenty of hypothermia, cancers, malnutrition, and once treatable medical conditions that they can no longer afford to deal with (while their well-to-do neighbors sing Amazing Grace at the village church). If they don't die fast enough, they will be encouraged to embrace 'death with dignity' - an Orwellian term for execution.
I would institute perpetual war, thus killing off the best and brightest, bankrupting the country (borrowing billions for destruction) while filling the coffers of corporate gangsters, the favored, and the military industrial complex. I would privatize most of the military, hiring mercenary troops at lucrative salaries for international and domestic crises. Soldiers when returning home (due to privatized bureaucracy) will be made to jump through hoops (for benefits) and forced to prove that missing limbs, depleted uranium poisoning, and brain damage will hinder them from living happily ever after.
MEDIA - Information, education, rational discourse, and debate on all sides of an issue will be limited or prevented. Citizens will be encourage to take sides - i.e., abortion, gun rights, immigration, gay marriage, funding religion with taxpayer dollars, graphic sex education for young elementary children, etc. Issues will be kept to the superfical and emotional. Corporate control of the media (all media) is mandatory (thus Clinton's Telecommunications Act - giving away the airwaves) with entertainers, not newscasters, giving their fluff and nutter reports of the day:
OJ, Paris Hilton, pit bulls, Rosie O'Donnel, the runaway bride, the diapered astronaut, etc. PR hirelings will be presented as 'experts' be they mothballed generals or think tank suits. Citizens will be instructed what to think - not how to think. Limits will be put on speech, in public hearings, local council meetings/gatherings, letters to the editor, etc. Facilitators, stakeholders, and consensus will take the place of the democratic process (the outcome pre-determined).
PRIVATIZATION - I would give away the Commons to private industry and foreign investors including water, medical care, the infrastructure, roads, schools, utilities, bridges, rivers, waste disposal, and lands (under the guise of nature preserves, parks, heritage sites, biospheres and buffer zones, etc). As collateral for the trillions in debt, I would post the people's land with countless signs reading "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" and "Private" etc.
I would keep the multitudes entertained (distracted) throughout the years with ball games, gladiator (well-paid) sports, concerts, theme parks, shopping malls, expensive automobiles, theater, the arts, movies, various awards ceremonies, electioneering debates (senseless), arguments on war (to surge or not to surge, to invade or not to invade), liposuction, breast implants, Viagra readiness, exotic vacations, designer clothes, the newest must-have electronic gadgetry,
Air-headed starlets doping and drinking it up, NASCAR, horse racing, soccer, golf, environmental activism (safe not threatening industry), etc.
All of this and more, I would do, if I were given permission (generously-compensated, of course) to destroy a nation. I would make sure that all of these various entities, and non-governmental agencies, were compartmentalized (thinking they were about the people's business) with no one (even within these agencies) having a clue as to the final objective. It is comparable to the worker in the eastern European factory thinking he is building baby carriages. Stealing a piece a week (he couldn't afford to buy one) for his expected child. He finally has them all and assembless it on the living room floor. To his surprise, he sees an M-16 in his hands.
The greatest conspiracies aren't hidden - just fragmented into different pieces - like a puzzle. Right before people's eyes.
Whistle blowers, of course, will be dutifully dealt with making an example for others. Most of the masses - worried about their jobs, promotions, benefits and pensions - will 'follow orders.' The few who object and fail to conform to the dictated, carefully constructed 'norm' will be labeled 'conspirators, crazies, fringe extremists, communists, queers, un-American and traitors', etc.
This has always worked down through the centuries - it's the old herd instinct. Identified as 'other' has those protesting or objecting marked as 'other' and therefore blackballed, to be avoided and shunned. Nobody wants to be labeled 'other' - not in group-think. That would make him or her much like the mad cow discovered in a dairy herd - a turd in the punchbowl of society.
"Ah you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction?"
Essay By By Judith Moriarty
Violence flarin', Bullets loadin'
Ah, you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction"
If... I were given unlimited power, money, and the unknowing assistance of multitudes of pawns, players, shills, toadies, lap dogs, etc; to take down a nation, how would I do it?
Common sense says, first I would want to control that nation's monetary system with the unlimited ability to tax the population (incurring massive debt) into servitude. I might name my monetary system with an official-sounding title that would fool the multitudes into thinking I was an official governmental agency - and not a private banking cartel.
I would institute various programs of entitlement to entrap and make the citizenry dependent on various handouts - thus killing their incentive to work, but most of all to control dissent. One doesn't bite the hand that feeds them.
I would give robber barons, and various corporate entities, through lobbyists and campaign contributions to key legislators the power to write their own meal tickets, excusing them from various taxes, regulation, liabilities and accountability. I would set up off -shore accounts and various trusts to protect the wealth of the favored elite. Only the working cogs will pay strangulating taxes.
Next, for quicker servitude, I would shut down the mills, the various plants, machine shops, manufacturing, auto companies (livable wage jobs), and send them to foreign lands, where labor costs (no benefits - no safety standards) are mere pennies. I would grant tax incentives, subsidies and create consulting firms to assist companies in making a smooth transition to less restrictive lands.
I would direct Congress to vote legislation (various visas) to import tens and more tens of thousands of foreign workers who would be paid one-half to one third of American wages (no benefits, no job security) to work at resorts, hotels, restaurants, in the medical field, engineering, teaching and in Information Technology. I would propagandize the gullible public, telling them that Americans 'won't do' those jobs - or that there are not enough trained Americans to fill the positions. Congress will be instructed to reinforce this lie in various scripted messages (media - campaign trail - speeches in Congress).
I would open the borders to allow millions of the dispossessed (due to trade agreements) south of the border/others; to work on corporate farms, as maids, laborers , construction workers, roofers, etc. I would encourage illegal immigration; so as to keep these unsuspecting people, in a constant state of apprehension - should they insist on a livable wage, or complain, when unscrupulous contractors leave them unpaid, or injured without compensation.
I would limit any real choices in voting, keeping the field limited to a two-party (monied) system - where only the wealthy (poor candidates ignored) and chosen need apply. Again, I would encourage animosity between the reds and the blues, never revealing that they are playing (these political parties) good cop - bad cop (depending on who is in power). Both parties will be given their scripted talking points, which per usual, will promise the world...and deliver nothing.
I would saturate the land with drugs, pills, LSD, marijuana, prescriptions, designer drugs etc; till the land was awash with mind-numbing, brain-damaging chemicals making crime rampant, destroying families/communities, and creating a private prison industry (the largest in the world). The costs, to states and various communities will bankrupt many - with peace officers, renamed law enforcers and gradually becoming militarized. People will be conditioned to FEAR the police, not welcome their presence.
I would allow the HMOs, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies to ravage and destroy what was once an affordable medical system. The focus will be on 'profits' with ever more exotic drugs being offered in lieu of preventive medicine.
Pollution, food additives, chemicals, and Frankenstein crops will add to create even more ill health. The Hippocratic Oath will become as antiquated as the Geneva Convention. Being on constant vacation and with their own (taxpayer subsidized) health insurance, granting them the best in prompt treatment (prescriptions), the people's representatives will, as usual, protest feebly and do nothing. Pharmaceutical companies will be granted legislative authority, to charge top dollar for needed medicines, with Congress voting to prevent more affordable medicines (made by the same companies) from being imported to the U.S. from Canada and Japan. Profits over people is the corporate mantra of the land.
I would make (except for legislators and the judicial and executive branches with their obscene pensions) retirement an impossibility for seniors. On fixed incomes, or minuscule pensions (if not already looted), they will be unable to afford rising taxes, the cost of medicine, rent, food, home heating, or medical treatment. Many will die in the land of plenty of hypothermia, cancers, malnutrition, and once treatable medical conditions that they can no longer afford to deal with (while their well-to-do neighbors sing Amazing Grace at the village church). If they don't die fast enough, they will be encouraged to embrace 'death with dignity' - an Orwellian term for execution.
I would institute perpetual war, thus killing off the best and brightest, bankrupting the country (borrowing billions for destruction) while filling the coffers of corporate gangsters, the favored, and the military industrial complex. I would privatize most of the military, hiring mercenary troops at lucrative salaries for international and domestic crises. Soldiers when returning home (due to privatized bureaucracy) will be made to jump through hoops (for benefits) and forced to prove that missing limbs, depleted uranium poisoning, and brain damage will hinder them from living happily ever after.
MEDIA - Information, education, rational discourse, and debate on all sides of an issue will be limited or prevented. Citizens will be encourage to take sides - i.e., abortion, gun rights, immigration, gay marriage, funding religion with taxpayer dollars, graphic sex education for young elementary children, etc. Issues will be kept to the superfical and emotional. Corporate control of the media (all media) is mandatory (thus Clinton's Telecommunications Act - giving away the airwaves) with entertainers, not newscasters, giving their fluff and nutter reports of the day:
OJ, Paris Hilton, pit bulls, Rosie O'Donnel, the runaway bride, the diapered astronaut, etc. PR hirelings will be presented as 'experts' be they mothballed generals or think tank suits. Citizens will be instructed what to think - not how to think. Limits will be put on speech, in public hearings, local council meetings/gatherings, letters to the editor, etc. Facilitators, stakeholders, and consensus will take the place of the democratic process (the outcome pre-determined).
PRIVATIZATION - I would give away the Commons to private industry and foreign investors including water, medical care, the infrastructure, roads, schools, utilities, bridges, rivers, waste disposal, and lands (under the guise of nature preserves, parks, heritage sites, biospheres and buffer zones, etc). As collateral for the trillions in debt, I would post the people's land with countless signs reading "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" and "Private" etc.
I would keep the multitudes entertained (distracted) throughout the years with ball games, gladiator (well-paid) sports, concerts, theme parks, shopping malls, expensive automobiles, theater, the arts, movies, various awards ceremonies, electioneering debates (senseless), arguments on war (to surge or not to surge, to invade or not to invade), liposuction, breast implants, Viagra readiness, exotic vacations, designer clothes, the newest must-have electronic gadgetry,
Air-headed starlets doping and drinking it up, NASCAR, horse racing, soccer, golf, environmental activism (safe not threatening industry), etc.
All of this and more, I would do, if I were given permission (generously-compensated, of course) to destroy a nation. I would make sure that all of these various entities, and non-governmental agencies, were compartmentalized (thinking they were about the people's business) with no one (even within these agencies) having a clue as to the final objective. It is comparable to the worker in the eastern European factory thinking he is building baby carriages. Stealing a piece a week (he couldn't afford to buy one) for his expected child. He finally has them all and assembless it on the living room floor. To his surprise, he sees an M-16 in his hands.
The greatest conspiracies aren't hidden - just fragmented into different pieces - like a puzzle. Right before people's eyes.
Whistle blowers, of course, will be dutifully dealt with making an example for others. Most of the masses - worried about their jobs, promotions, benefits and pensions - will 'follow orders.' The few who object and fail to conform to the dictated, carefully constructed 'norm' will be labeled 'conspirators, crazies, fringe extremists, communists, queers, un-American and traitors', etc.
This has always worked down through the centuries - it's the old herd instinct. Identified as 'other' has those protesting or objecting marked as 'other' and therefore blackballed, to be avoided and shunned. Nobody wants to be labeled 'other' - not in group-think. That would make him or her much like the mad cow discovered in a dairy herd - a turd in the punchbowl of society.
"Ah you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction?"
Essay By By Judith Moriarty
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