Guest Post: The False East/West Paradigm And The End Of Freedom

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/16/2015 22:25 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-16/guest-post-false-eastwest-paradigm-and-end-freedom

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

People are desperate for leaders and heroes. This is an undeniable condition of human life and of human civilization. Some historians and social observers, however, seem to think it is enough to simply point out this condition and pretend as if they have made some grand declaration; as if they have come to the root of the problem of mankind. In their laziness, they have mistaken a symptom for the cause.

Why do people so often demand leaders and heroic figures? What drives the institutionalization of hierarchy, celebrity and geopolitical idolization? I believe this condition is caused by three factors – fear, ignorance, and apathy.

This is not to say that there are not people throughout history that are worth looking up to, or that looking up to a particular hero figure is wrong. Heroes and sometimes leaders can act as points of reference, helping us to aspire to greater personal accomplishment and extraordinary achievement. The problem is many historical figures labeled heroic are in fact monsters in masks paraded as saviors by history writers with agendas. Real heroes (in the past hundred years in particular) are most often unsung, and remain little known.

This is why the idolization of puppet leaders is so disturbing to those of us in the Liberty Movement. We witnessed the blind militancy of the so-called “right wing” in the support of George W. Bush after 9/11, only to be led into quagmire, economic despair, and a surveillance state based on numerous lies. We then had to witness the insane cult-like fervor of the so-called “left wing” as Barack Obama took office, only to continue and accelerate the same draconian policies of the Bush Administration while conjuring new methods for the division and destruction of American society and prosperity.

Yes, the Liberty Movement has examined every detail and is well versed in the horrors of the false Left/Right paradigm. Again, I'll have to quote the ever useful elitist member of the Council on Foreign Relations and mentor to former president Bill Clinton, Carroll Quigley, on this particular issue, from his book 'Tragedy And Hope':

“...The argument of two parties should represent opposed ideas and policies, one perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinate and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. The policies that are vital and necessary for America are no longer subjects of significant disagreement, but are disputable only in details of procedure, priority, or method.”

What truly disturbs me is that our movement can be so awake and aware of the false left/right paradigm while remaining astonishingly naïve and short sighted when it comes to the false East/West paradigm. And once again, I have to attribute this naivety to a desperation for heroes caused by fear and apathy.

I have written on the reality that Eastern political interests are just as controlled by globalists as Western political interests for years. Readers can review the considerable amount of data and evidence I have collected on Russia and Vladimir Putin in particular and the ties between the East and international financiers and well known globalists in recent articles such as 'Russia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too', 'False East/West Paradigm Hides The Rise Of Global Currency', and 'The New World Order And The Rise Of The East'.

In fact, I predicted almost every aspect of the current Syrian crisis based on the knowledge that the East versus West dynamic was purely an engineered conflict designed to diminish American power and economic influence through the use of planned chaos, and I did this years before events were ever triggered in the region.

I knew what was about to happen in Syria only because I understood one important fundamental – that there are no “sides” in any modern conflict, only proxies fighting on a global chessboard controlled by the same elitist interests. Syria represented a perfect catalyst for a planetary scale conflict triggered between East and West in a way that could divert attention from internationalists. Modern war, whether through kinetics or economics, is almost always theater designed to distract and terrorize the masses, which are the true target of any conflagration.

We must set aside childish assumptions on war. Wars are not about resources. They are not about territory. They are not about the hegemony of any particular nation state. If you buy into such notions, you have been duped. No, war is about something much bigger. War first and foremost is a tool for the manipulation and molding of public psychology. As Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda said:

“The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.”

War is meant to forcefully change the “inertia” of civilization, and thus, forcefully change the direction of civilization in a manner that benefits the engineers of the conflict.

One great threat to the mechanism of globalism and the elites behind it is the liberty movement, which is slowly but steadily growing in popularity and influence as America edges ever closer to economic and sociopolitical oblivion. As the U.S. is homogenized, harmonized, and brought down to third world status for the benefit of a one-world system, resistance continues to grow.

You see, one negative side-effect of the rush towards centralization and a single global power (often referred to by the elites as the “New World Order”) is that the harder the globalists push society toward their Utopian ideal, the more individuals (not controlled governments or political puppets) wake up to the threat. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The Liberty Movement is the equalizing reaction to forced globalization.

In order for the elites to neutralize the threat we present, they must either destroy us or co-opt us. I believe the East/West paradigm is being used in part to attempt the co-option of liberty elements.

Despite the fact that many liberty analysts are beginning to understand the nature of the false East/West paradigm and the truth behind the rise of Russia, the predictable escalation in Syria is energizing a strange brand of Putin-worship once again. Liberty elements WANT to believe that Putin is somehow in opposition to globalization, that he is somehow morally superior to the Obama Administration, and that Russia is on the side of right in the fight against ISIS and the evil Western empire.

They want to believe this because they are afraid – they are afraid that they are alone in the fight against the NWO. They are afraid that they will have to commit to personal sacrifice and struggle against a vastly technologically superior opponent. They are afraid that they alone will have to take responsibility for America's destiny and that no great leader on a white horse is coming to blaze the path ahead of them.

Because of this fear, they sometimes commit the crime of cognitive dissonance in order to protect their false belief in a heroic Putin. They will ignore the fact that Putin is a long time friend of Henry Kissinger, the most publicly vocal proponent of the “New World Order, and that Putin describes Kissinger as his “trusted foreign policy adviser”.

They will ignore the fact that Russia's primary economic adviser is none other than the hitman of the international banking syndicate, Goldman Sachs, and that Goldman Sachs has been deeply involved in Russia's economic affairs since at least 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union.

They will ignore the fact that Putin and Russia have allied closely with the IMF (an institution supposedly dominated by the U.S.). Putin and the IMF are so intertwined that it was Putin who demanded that the IMF take over the management of Ukraine's finances after the regional crisis began, and, it was the IMF thatblatantly supported Putin's call for a change in Ukraine's bond status from private to “official”. Russia also demanded that Ukraine's debts be repaid in Special Drawing Rights, the global currency basket which the IMF plans to use to replace the U.S. dollar as the world reserve mechanism.

They will also surely ignore the fact that Putin and the Kremlin have on multiple occasion called for the IMF to take over global management of the worlds financial systems through the implementation of the SDR as the new world reserve currency.

And of course, the fact that Russia is a member of the Bank for International Settlements and the BIS is the policy dictator of ALL central banking (do I really need to quote Carroll Quigley on the BIS yet again?) does not bode well for the affiliations and intentions of Russia as a whole, yet we are still bombarded in the liberty movement with platitudes on how Putin is “sticking it to the bankers”. No, I'm afraid not.According to the evidence, Putin is just like Obama: Yet another whore for the internationalists. Post all the pictures you want of the guy holding an uzi or finishing a judo throw, but his public persona does not fit reality.

The mainstream media in the U.S. has for the most part run on the narrative that Putin is the next Stalin, and if you are going to perpetuate a false East/West paradigm this makes perfect sense. But there is also a separate narrative being presented to the liberty movement and the rest of the world.

The talking points coming out of outlets like RT (Russia Today), a media machine controlled by the Russian government, has for the past few years stolen brilliant observations by American liberty proponents and repackaged them as video fluff. Most of these observations are negative in their view of U.S. government policy as well as central banking dictatorship, and they are also entirely correct. The problem is, RT does not apply the same standards of journalistic skepticism to the Russian government or its ties to the central banking cabal.

Time Magazine publishes pro-Putin articles naming him “man of the year” in every other nation where they have distribution, but removes these stories and covers when publishing in America.

The general American public is being sold on the idea that Putin is a calculating danger to global stability and that Western governments must become more aggressive to counter the threat. The rest of the world and the liberty movement are being sold on the image of a benevolent Putin and a Russia standing firm against the corrupt war machine of the West, but this image simply is not real.

The danger for the liberty movement in the near future is considerable. Our blind support of the false East/West paradigm makes us vulnerable to easy co-option, for if we as a movement are tricked into closely affiliating with Russia then we lose our identity as a force for American independence and become nothing more than an “Eastern created” faux revolution. Think it can't happen? Mainstream media outlets are ALREADY building the narrative. The Atlantic was the first, with an article directly connecting “right wing” movements and “conspiracy theorists” in the U.S. with Russian influence and propaganda.

As the false East/West confrontation grows, the real purpose of such a crisis will become apparent. ISIS agents conveniently shipped out of Syria among millions of "refugees" before Russian forces finally decided to strike will wreak havoc in Western nations. Economic chaos will become prevalent.  The U.S. will lose the dollar's petro-status as the East subsumes Eurasia.  Fear of another world war will haunt public perception. The ever uneducated and terrified mass majority will become far less tolerant of intelligent dissent. And, the Fabian Socialists infesting global institutions will suggest a clever solution to the problem they created - the dissolution of all sovereign nations and the complete centralization of governance into the hands of a select few to save humanity from such destructive divisions.

If you understand that a primary goal of globalists is to fully remove constitutional protections in America and assert a totalitarian framework, then you have to admit that a conflict with Russia is an excellent opportunity for them.  War fever makes men delirious and malleable, and outside threats make internal despotism more tolerable.

In the meantime, if the liberty movement refuses to treat Russia with the same x-ray vision it has used against western governments (a Russia clearly working with international financiers and globalist institutions) then we make it far easier for the elitist propaganda machine to paint us as Eastern backed traitors rather than freedom fighters down the road, thus crushing our chances at garnering increased support from the public and awakening new voices.

Mark my words, in the end we will not only be forced to rebel against centralization under our own criminal government; we will also have to rebel against criminal puppet governments everywhere. I have no doubt that when we see the ranks of the globalist enemy, there will be Russian faces standing right alongside Western oligarchs. Maybe then people will finally admit that the East/West crisis was a carefully crafted hoax all along.

Why This Feels Like A Depression For Most People

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/08/2015 20:15 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-08/why-feels-depression-most-people 

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression.When you try to tell a propaganda believing, willfully ignorant, mainstream media watching, math challenged consumer we are in the midst of a Greater Depression, they act as if you’ve lost your mind. They will immediately bluster about the 5.1% unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and stock market near all-time highs. The cognitive dissonance of these people is only exceeded by their inability to understand basic mathematical concepts.

The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions).

These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population. There are 23 million households on food stamps in a nation of 123 million households. Therefore, 19% of all households in the U.S. are so poor, they require food assistance to survive. In 1933 there were approximately 126 million Americans living in 30 million households. The government didn’t keep official unemployment records until 1940, but the Department of Labor estimated 12.8 million people were unemployed during the worst year of the Great Depression or 24.9% of the labor force. By 1937 it had fallen to 14.3% or approximately 8 million people.

The number of people unemployed during the 1930’s is an excellent representation of the number of households on government assistance during the Great Depression because 79% of all households were occupied by married couples with 4 people per household versus 48% married couple households today with 2.5 people per household. The unemployment rate averaged 19% during the heart of the Great Depression. Therefore, approximately 19% of all the households in the U.S. needed government assistance to feed themselves. That happens to be the exact percentage of households currently needing food stamps to feed themselves.

We are now supposedly five years into an economic recovery. The unemployment rate, according to the government, has fallen from 10% to 5.1%. Maybe a comparison to the the Great Depression in 1937, five years after the worst of it, would reveal some truth. It is not easy to do an apples to apples comparison because very few women worked outside the home in 1937 and the average life expectancy in the 1930s was 60 years old. Today, the majority of women are theoretically in the work force and the average life expectancy is 78 years old. In 1937 only 5% of the population was over 65 years old versus 13% today.

There were approximately 55 million Americans in the labor force in 1937, according to the DOL, and approximately 47 million of them were employed. So 85% of the eligible work force was working. There was no BLS to massage, manipulate, seasonally adjust, or fake the data to make things appear better than they were in 1937. Edward Bernay’s Propaganda techniques and methodologies weren’t perfected for a few more years. According to Census information there were 52 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 44, along with another 21 million between the ages of 45 and 64 in 1937. So even considering that very few women worked and many people died by the age of 60, we had a workforce of 55 million out of an age eligible population of 73 million at a maximum. That yields a participation rate of 75%.

These facts reveal the utter falsity of the propaganda drenched duplicitous data dumped by the BLS on behalf of vested interests who have captured our government and have an agenda requiring the public to be kept in the dark regarding their own dire financial situation. No matter how you slice the data, it reveals an absolute parallel to the situation during the Great Depression. There are 251 million Americans of working age and only 149 million are employed, of which 20 million are part-time and 8 million are self employed. Only 59% of working age Americans actually work. The BLS has the cajones to declare that only 157 million of the 251 million working age Americans are actually in the labor force.

This outrageous assumption flies in the face of all reasonableness, facts, and truth. In 1937, even with women not working outside the home and very few people living past 65 years old, the participation rate was 75%. Today, with the majority of women capable and willing to work and older Americans working well into their 60s, the BLS actually expects a critical thinking person to believe the participation rate is only 62.4%, the lowest since 1977. It’s a pure and simple despicable lie. The true participation rate should exceed the rate in 1937, based on the facts. Using the 75% participation rate today, yields a true unemployment rate of 21%, not the preposterous 5.1% shoveled by the bullshit artists at the BLS. The 21% rate ties very closely to the figure arrived at by John Williams at Shadowstats. An unbiased assessment of the facts reveals unemployment numbers and people on government assistance numbers that match or exceed those of the Great Depression.

I also wonder whether the corporate mainstream media purposely chooses not to show pictures of the poor waiting in long lines to be fed because their function is not to report facts and truth, but to perpetuate the lie that all is well in America.  I pass the Grace Lutheran church at 36th and Haverford Avenue in West Philly everyday on my way to work. Every Thursday is when the church, in partnership with the Philabundance food bank, distributes free food to the people of West Philly. The line stretches around the block at 7:30 am awaiting the Philabundance truck to arrive. There are old, young, black, white, Latino, and Asian in the line. It looks exactly like the line pictured in the Great Depression above. I’m sure there are similar scenes across every city in America on a daily basis. People dependent on food banks and living in homeless shelters are at record levels. Where are the mainstream media pictures? How does that jive with Ben Bernanke’s self congratulatory book tour about how he saved America by secretly handing Wall Street and foreign bankers $16 trillion?

For the average American family, the US economy has been in recession since 2000, with the Greater Depression arriving in 2008. The working age population has grown by 40 million since 2000, with only 12 million jobs added over that time frame. Of those, 10 million were in the government controlled health, education, social services (HES) sectors, with millions of good paying manufacturing jobs destroyed, replaced by a couple million low paying services jobs. As David Stockman points out, Bernanke and the vested interests he serves continue to spew disingenuous propaganda  to cover up the fact average American households continue to experience depression-like conditions. When your real household income is lower than it was in 1989, while your basic living costs for food, energy, transportation, rent, housing, healthcare, taxes, and education have skyrocketed, you just might be experiencing a depression.

“The Fed’s balance sheet has grown from $500 billion to $4.5 trillion or 9X during that span, but job growth outside the HES Complex amounts to less than 2%. For crying out loud, that’s a 12,000 per month rounding error in an economy which has 250 million adults. Virtually every job gained since December 2009 shown in the chart below was not a “new” job at all; it was just a “born-again” job that Greenspan had claimed credit for a few years earlier. Yet Bernanke has the nerve to boast about the Fed’s success on jobs and claim that the “labor market is close to normal”!”

Edward Bernays wrote the book Propaganda in 1928. It was utilized quite well by Goebbels and Hitler over the next decade or so. But the corporate fascist oligarchy, disguised as American democracy, puts Goebbels efforts to shame. Bernays would be thrilled by the efficiency and professionalism with which the invisible Deep State governing power is able to utilize mass media, the internet, public schools, and academia to shape, mold, manipulate and alter the minds of the masses.The unholy alliance between shadowy billionaires, a private bank owned by Wall Street and controlling our currency, the military industrial complex, the sick care complex, mega-corporations peddling consumer goods, and politicians who are easily bought, has left a hollowed out rotting carcass of a nation, with the peasants experiencing a depression, while the lords of the manor feast like there is no tomorrow. But at least the 103 million peasants who aren’t working believe only 5.1% of them are unemployed. It’s a Bernaysian Miracle!!!

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”– Edward Bernays – Propaganda

FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST

Posted on 10th September 2015 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/09/10/fourth-turning-crisis-of-trust/

 

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

• Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
• Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
• Cultural distress, with the media plunging into a dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
• Technological distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos
• Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
• Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
• Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction” 

 The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

September 2015 marks the seventh anniversary of this Fourth Turning Crisis. The economic, social, cultural, ecological, political, and military distress propagates by the minute as the globe is besieged by economic turmoil, increased human suffering, and endemic corruption of the political and ruling classes. The Federal Reserve/Wall Street created global economic implosion was the spark which catalyzed this fourth Crisis period in U.S. history in September 2008. Neil Howe in a 2012 essay assessed the beginning of this Fourth Turning and why 9/11 was not the catalyst:

“Pending stunning new developments, I believe the catalyst occurred in 2008.  It’s a date that is looking better and better as time goes by.  The year 2008 marked the onset of the most serious U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression.  It also marked the election of Barack Obama, which could yet turn out to be a pivotal realignment date in U.S. political history. In fact, if I had to give the catalyst a month, I would say September of 2008.  The global Dow was in free fall.  Banks were failing.  Money markets froze shut.  Business owners held their breath.

9/11 will go down as one of the more famous crisis precursors in American history.  A crisis precursor is an event that foreshadows a crisis without being an integral part of it.  Other such precursors in American history include the Stamp Act Rebellion (1765), or Bleeding Kansas (1856), or perhaps the Red Scare (1919).”

The initial spark has triggered a chain reaction of unyielding responses by those in power, including: handing $700 billion of taxpayer funds to the Wall Street bankers whose reckless pervasive greed and fraudulent derivative products caused the worldwide conflagration, 0% interest rates for the last seven years, a quadrupling of the Federal Reserve balance sheet to $4 trillion through QE to infinity, government stimulus spending which increased the national debt from $10 trillion to $18 trillion in seven years, ongoing $600 billion annual deficits, using fraudulent accounting to disguise the insolvency of the Too Big To Fail Wall Street banks, and a conscious choice by corrupt politicians and captured government regulators to not prosecute one criminal banker.
None of these initial responses have solved any of our pervasive problems or averted further emergencies. Not only haven’t these responses resolved the intractable economic conundrums facing the world, but they have exacerbated the next round of monetary disasters rapidly approaching. Strauss and Howe predicted the initial catalyst event would not worsen into a full-fledged catastrophe because the powers that be would find a way to avert the initial danger and stabilize the situation “for a while”. The key point was those benefiting from the existing corrupt world order would do whatever it took to temporarily forestall a calamity which would result in their downfall, loss of power, and ultimate imprisonment. They have successfully delayed the regeneracy phase of this Fourth Turning by turning on the monetary debt spigot full throttle.

It is highly unlikely we will have a resolution to this Crisis period for at least another ten years, so if you think the worst is over you are badly mistaken. If the climax is somehow accelerated like the Civil War, it will likely result in bloody wars, with a horrific death toll. The five year lull can be viewed as the world passing through the eye of an immense hurricane. There will always be ebbs, flows and lulls within a 20 year long Crisis, as seen in previous Fourth Turnings.
The Boston Tea Party catalyst spark occurred in December 1773, but the fireworks didn’t get going until 1775 and the regeneracy Declaration of Independence event in 1776. The Civil War Fourth Turning had no lulls. The catalyst election of Abraham Lincoln to the regeneracy event of the First Battle of Bull Run was only nine months. The acceleration did not allow for cooler heads to prevail. The result was ghastly death and destruction. The 1929 Stock Market Crash catalyst was followed by a three year lull until FDR’s election and New Deal programs marked the regeneracy.

In my previous four part article Fourth Turning – The Shadow of Crisis Has Not Passed written early in 2015 I attempted to explain generational theory, provided evidence we are still early in this Crisis, pondered the potential clash between the citizens and our debased, dysfunctional, captured government, and contemplated the kind of war which will thrust the world through the gate of history towards an uncertain future. The misconceptions regarding generational theory and the Fourth Turning keep a vast swath of otherwise lucid thinkers from understanding the implications of generational mood changes which drive the cyclical nature of history. The cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias of most Americans blinds them to the lessons of history and leaves them vulnerable to the winter that has beset the nation.
The Fourth Turning is not a prophecy or some Nostradamus like predictions. It’s a logical theory based upon the average time span of a long human life and the four phases of that life: childhood, young adulthood, mid-life, and old age. The interaction of generations during their phases of life is what produces the profound mood changes throughout history. The dramatic events during the course of antiquity are less important than how society responds to them. The reaction is substantially determined by the season of the saeculum and the generational mood that aligns with that season. We’ve entered the Winter season, with bitterly cold days ahead and intense blizzard-like conditions forecast for the next decade.

The ignorance of linear thinking advocates regarding the cyclical nature of history is either due to their “progressive” public educational brainwashing or their intellectual inability to grasp the obvious. Our daily existence is cyclical with 24 hours in a day, 365 days in year based upon earth’s orbiting the sun, 12 months divided into four seasons, and the circle of life – birth through death is the ultimate cycle perpetuating life on this planet. There are dozens of astronomical, mathematical, religious, sleep, agricultural, social, economic and war cycles known to man. Martin Armstrong has a cycle theory predicting the collapse of government between 2016 and 2020. The Kondratiev Wave theory and Elliott Wave Theory are preached by “experts” and followed by millions. Of course, many of these “experts” are busy selling their predictions in newsletters to make a buck.
The thought leaders in academia, politics, business, and mass media perpetuate the myth of never ending linear progress created by technological advances and the ever increasing intellectual evolution of mankind. The hubris of these people is incomprehensible when viewing history. The myopic delusions of these arrogant egotists are easily shattered by the horrific regressions of history. Were the Great Depression and the 65 million people killed during World War II progress for mankind? Was Stalin’s murder of 20 million Russian peasants a linear progression? Was Mao’s Great Leap Forward murder of 45 million Chinese peasants really a leap forward? Was the death of 5% of the U.S. male population in the space of four years during the Civil War really progress?
Mankind and civilization do not advance in a straight line. Progression and regression alternate in a cyclical fashion. As generations die out, memories of the previous cycle are forgotten, and the mistakes are repeated again. Human nature does not change. Good, evil, greed, fear, bravery, honesty, arrogance, sacrifice, and truth intermingle to drive humans through the cycles of history.

Strauss & Howe were economists and historians who attempted to make some sense out of the seemingly convoluted twists of history. They deciphered a pattern which could be traced back for centuries based upon the age and alignment of generations throughout history. They never attempted to capitalize on their work by selling newsletters or peddling their predictions about the future. When they published their work in 1997 they couldn’t predict the exact events which would drive the next Fourth Turning, but they could estimate the general timing and the core elements which would drive the crisis: debt, civic decay, and global disorder. These areas were neglected, denied, and unaddressed during the Unraveling period from 1984 through 2008. To read their words now, eighteen years after they were written and eleven years before this Fourth Turning struck, is haunting, as they describe precisely where we stand today:

“As the Crisis catalyzes, these fears will rush to the surface, jagged and exposed. Distrustful of some things, individuals will feel that their survival requires them to distrust more things. This behavior could cascade into a sudden downward spiral, an implosion of societal trust.”

“But as the Crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. Many Americans won’t know where their savings are, who their employer is, what their pension is, or how their government works. The era will have left the financial world arbitraged and tentacled: Debtors won’t know who holds their notes, homeowners who owns their mortgages, and shareholders who runs their equities – and vice versa.”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

Regeneracy – Where Art Thou?

The regeneracy during a Fourth Turning is when a sense of urgency about institutional dysfunction and civic vulnerabilities coalesce the nation or large blocs of the homeland behind a strong leader to tear down the existing social, economic and cultural order and replace it with something different. The different can be better or far worse. The Declaration of Independence, First Battle of Bull Run, and election of FDR marked the regeneracy in prior American Fourth Turnings. They all occurred within four years of the initial catalyst. It is now seven years into this Fourth Turning and a clear regeneracy event has not materialized. This has been a frustrating development for those who are impatient to get this Fourth Turning moving at a quicker pace. But, each Fourth Turning will proceed at its own pace dependent upon events, the country’s reaction to those events, and the leaders we choose during the Crisis.
Neil Howe, in his 2012 essay pondered the regeneracy issue and described it more as an era than an event. It requires something dramatic that unifies the country or causes the people to break into separate unified factions.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that the regeneracy has not yet started.  So how long do we need to wait for it?  And how will we know when it starts?  Those are good questions.  I recently went back over The Fourth Turning to recall how we dated the stages of the each of the historical 4Ts.  And I found that we were very explicit about dating the other three stages (catalyst, climax, and resolution) for each 4T.  But we were always a bit vague about dating the regeneracy, treating it more like an era than a date.  There is a reason for this.  We may like to imagine that there is a definable day and hour when America, faced by growing danger and adversity, explicitly decides to patch over its differences, band together, and build something new.  But maybe what really happens is that everyone feels so numb that they let somebody in charge just go ahead and do whatever he’s got to do.  I’m thinking of how America felt during the bleak years of FDR’s first term, or during Lincoln’s assumption of vast war powers after his repeated initial defeats on the battlefield.

The regeneracy cannot always be identified with a single news event.  But it does have to mark the beginning of a growth in centralized authority and decisive leadership at a time of great peril and urgency.  Typically, the catalyst itself doesn’t lead directly to a regeneracy.  There has to be a second or third blow, something that seems a lot more perilous than just the election of third-party candidate (Civil War catalyst) or a very bad month in the stock market (Great Power catalyst).

We are still due for such a moment.  We have not yet reached our regeneracy.  When it happens, I strongly suspect it will be in response to an adverse financial event.  It may also happen in response to a geopolitical event.  It may well happen over the next year or two.  Given the pattern of historical 4Ts, it is very likely to happen before the end of the next presidential term (2016).”

As previously stated, The Fourth Turning does not predict what series of events will trigger a regeneracy. It lays out a generational framework regarding how generations will react to the events. As Howe points out, the regeneracy requires a 2^nd or 3^rd blow which seems even more perilous than the initial shock. His suspicion that it will be in response to an even worse financial debacle than 2008 and very likely to happen before the next election in 2016 appears to be dead on. The oblivious trusting masses will again be shocked and bewildered when the second devastating shock wave of this Crisis strikes in the next twelve months. The next global financial meltdown, caused by the Federal Reserve, along with central bankers in Europe, Japan and China, will create a fearful panic and an intense urgency for a strong self-assured leader who promises to rescue the nation from peril. The panic will coincide with the presidential election in November 2016.
The “Great Divider” Barack Obama squandered his chance to be the leader who united the nation when he proved to be nothing more than a captured political hack, bowing down to the corporate fascist establishment, while stirring wide spread resentment with his culture war rhetoric and inability to inspire confidence with his toothless hope and change sloganeering. His failure to reign in or prosecute the greedy sociopathic Wall Street criminals, his acquiescence to the military industrial complex by expanding our war mongering and sowing chaos in the Middle East, and his total disregard for fiscal restraint as the country’s long term financial picture rapidly deteriorates, proved that he would not be the Fourth Turning Grey Champion leader.
In retrospect, neither McCain nor Romney would have united the country, as they are both crony capitalist establishment figures. The mood of the country has darkened substantially in the last year as people are fed up with their deteriorating economic circumstances, sick of both political parties, and angry at the unrestrained illegal immigrant invasion on our southern border.
I’m beginning to believe the nation will not be unified behind a common cause when the coming financial eruption unleashes molten lava of chaos, punishing economic distress, civil strife, class warfare, race wars, and ultimately global war. As Strauss and Howe foretold, the establishment (aka corporate fascist military industrial surveillance state) has seen a sequential loss of popular trust as their blatant corruption, sociopathic stranglehold on the levers of power, and unrelenting greed have angered the critical thinking aware citizens of this country. The next leg down in this Greater Depression will sever the remaining trust, disintegrating any remaining support for the existing civic order. What comes next will be heavily dependent upon whether the 5% to 10% of liberty minded believers in the Constitution are able to gain the trust of the masses. The odds will be long, but no longer than they were during that bitter winter at Valley Forge in 1777-1778.

“It could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed. With savings worth less, the new elders will become more dependent on government, just as government becomes less able to pay benefits to them. Before long, America’s old civic order will seem ruined beyond repair.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

In Part 2 of this article I will ponder possible Grey Champion, prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy, try to assess which channels of distress are likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and lastly make some guesses about potential climaxes.

“Facts Do Not Cease To Exist Because They Are Ignored”

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/10/2015 13:22 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-10/%E2%80%9Cfacts-do-not-cease-exist-because-they-are-ignored%E2%80%9D
Submitted by Michael Lebowitz of 720 Global
Courage

“The kid had a 94-mile-per-hour fastball, a clean delivery, and a body that looked as if it had been created to wear a baseball uniform. He was, in short, precisely the kind of pitcher Billy thought he had trained his scouting department to avoid.”

      – Michael Lewis, Moneyball
In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis explores the irrationality and ignorance of human behavior and the opportunities it creates for those willing to resist it. The book represents a value investors guide to how the Oakland A’s, with one of the smallest budgets in Major League Baseball, consistently found and acquired quality players that were shunned under the traditional scouting matrix. These overlooked and undervalued players afforded the Oakland A’s and General Manager Billy Beane the fifth best winning percentage with the fourth lowest total payroll over the last 15 years. As the graph below from FiveThirtyEight shows, Beane dramatically outperformed his opponents when it came to maximizing the value of his budget.
Once when asked why he was willing to allow Michael Lewis to write a book about his approach, Beane responded “It won’t matter who reads it, no one would have the courage to put into practice what we do.” This same model of logic and courage should be applied in investing.
In today’s euphoric markets we also believe it takes a lot of courage for those willing to underweight, sell or avoid U.S. stocks. Arguably, even more courage is required now than was required to buy stocks in March of 2009 when fear was running rampant and the stock markets were plummeting to levels last seen in the 1990’s. We realize that is a strong statement given how at ease investors are today compared to how scared they were in 2009. When one has enjoyed the benefits of a persistently rising market that has lasted many years, muscle memory makes changing a well-rewarded posture extremely difficult. This is especially true when the alternative, moving to cash, produces zero return. Conceptually, investing is a very simple task; buy when an asset is cheap and sell the asset when it is rich. Investors are psychological beings, however, and thus are subjected to more filters than a binary decision on whether an asset is a good buy or sell.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored”

      – Aldous Huxley
Huxley’s words describe a psychological condition termed cognitive dissonance. According to the American Psychological Association, cognitive dissonance is induced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, or when a belief is incongruent with an action that the person has chosen freely to perform.
Cognitive dissonance is on full display today in the financial markets.
The U.S. economy has been supported for seven years by a zero interest rate policy, record fiscal deficits and unprecedented surges in the money supply. Despite all of the stimuli, the economy is slogging along well below trend. The actions taken by the Federal Reserve, federal government and governments around the world are unprecedented. In a normally functioning economy such actions would generate massive growth and inflation. Since growth has been tepid and inflation benign, there is obviously something amiss.
Corporate earnings and thus stock prices are driven by the economy. Despite the state of the economy and economic concerns we harbor, investors are investing hand over fist in assets whose valuations are predicated on strong economic growth in the future. As a result, most major U.S. stock indices are currently at or near all-time highs. A sizeable percentage of the gains are a result of an expansion in the price/earnings multiple. In other words investors are willing to pay more today, than they did yesterday, for the same amount of historic earnings and or forecasted earnings. The graph below shows five popular gauges of valuation, including those used by the Federal Reserve and investing icon Warren Buffett. The colored circles show where the S&P 500 would be if investors valued earnings today as they did historically. Based on these five measures the S&P 500 is adding a 20% to 50% premium over what decades of history suggests is fair. These readings range from the 80th percentile to the 100th percentile in each case. Not unlike the rhetoric of the late 1990’s or mid-2000’s, there is no shortage of rationalizations for why such extraordinary valuations are reasonable and justifiable. Yet the fact remains firmly in place, stocks are expensive.

The all-important link between stock prices, economic and productivity growth, and true corporate earnings potential are being ignored. Stock prices and many other investment asset prices are indirectly supported by the actions and opinions of the central banks. Investors have become dangerously comfortable with this dubious arrangement despite the enormous market disequilibrium it is causing. History reminds us time and again that a state of disequilibrium is highly unstable and will ultimately revert back to equilibrium – often violently so.
Are investors ignoring economic warning signs that, at a minimum, should be causing trepidation? If so, then why are investors chasing stocks and other assets that are priced for something that seems unfeasible? One answer is certainly, in some part, attributed to the lack of safe alternatives offering reasonable yields. We argue there is more to consider. Investors are once again focused on the promise of an on-going rally in equities and other risky assets and a fear of being contrarian, while seemingly ignoring the facts. Cognitive dissonance has got the best of them.
Humans are not wired to take the road less traveled. They continually look for the safety and security that is provided by being a member of a larger group. Being part of the consensus crowd doesn’t mitigate the risk of loss or prevent failure, but it does go a long way to easing the mind and the wrath of clients, in the event of failure. Human beings tend to believe mistakes are valid if so many others make the same mistake. This herd mentality overrides rationality and common sense and changes the motives behind our decision making process. As investors demonstrate this phenomena, they end up harboring a greater concern of acting differently and lose focus of the risks they bear. The predominant difference on this occasion as compared with the two previous market bubbles (2000/2008) is the Federal Reserve’s role as an agent encouraging such reckless group-think.
This conflict, or cognitive dissonance, can be our nemesis when making investment decisions. As “rational” investors we need to overcome this handicap, even if it is easier said than done. Thoroughbred race horses occasionally wear blinkers so their focus is on the track in front of them and not on the horses around them. Our simple advice; wear blinkers. As difficult as it is, make intentional efforts to ignore the commonly uninformed chatter of friends and colleagues and the self-serving guidance offered by Wall Street economists and the media. Do your own homework and make sure your clients understand the value of your independent analysis.
Value investing, when done objectively, offers a strategy for investors to ignore the herd. The best in class understand that wealth is preserved by avoiding losses. They are not beholden to trends or momentum, nor are they distracted or obsessed by others investments. They simply have the courage to divest of or shun assets priced above fair value in the midst of euphoria. Although it seldom attracts the praises of the crowd, great investors who follow this simple courageous strategy do so with confidence in a favorable outcome.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”

      -  George S. Patton Jr.

Cognitive Dissonance

When the Law Falls Silent

When the Law Falls Silent

By

Cognitive Dissonance

It was just a little more than a month ago that I posted “The Grand SCOTUS Facade” on Zero Hedge. If I may be so bold as to shamelessly quote myself, ”But if the supremacy of The Empire is threatened by external or internal forces those very same three governmental branches, either separately or in unison, will act to protect The Empire and its special interests………and the Constitution be damned if it gets in the way.”
In the very next paragraph I go on to declare,” For example in decades past the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmed slavery in America and then approved by abstention Abraham Lincoln’s blatantly unconstitutional power grab from the states, only to rule against it after the Civil War had ended and the damage had been done. Incredibly they even ratified the corralling of US citizens of Japanese descent during WW2 and the taking of their property without compensation.”
I’ll be the first to admit that I love the warm and fuzzy feeling of having my bias confirmed. From my perspective, that of the so called fringe point of view, my confirming stroke usually comes from reading other like minded people who have reached similar conclusions following different paths. Rarely do I receive affirmation from the mainstream media nor would I expect to. One must read between the lines when perusing the state media for the actual intent and meaning behind the public propaganda.
So I was a bit surprised to discover that none other than U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the latest to provide me with that deliciously naughty feeling I get between my toes when my confirmation bias has just been tickled. Thank you Justice Scalia. I won’t tell my wife if you won’t tell yours.
Its one thing to discuss among friends, neighbors and alternative media the potentially revolutionary idea that The Empire has no legal clothes. It’s another entirely when one of The Empire’s Supreme Court justices says it in his out loud voice. Wow! Clearly Justice Scalia is seated on the SCOTUS for life because no instrument of State who needs to be re-appointed, re-elected or just really interested in staying employed by the State would ever speak such truth to power.
What I find really interesting is the manner in which he delivered the bomb shell personal opinion, that of someone who was confirming what we all already know to be true. Duh……when push comes to shove isn’t it obvious the State has no legal clothes?
Replying to a question from a University of Hawaii law school student regarding the 1944 Korematsu v. United States Supreme Court decision that affirmed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying "Well, of course, Kore­ma­tsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again."

Ummm….actually Justice Scalia, it was the propaganda spouting system itself, personified by all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, who has been kidding me into believing that my “rights’ are supreme and will be held above all other interests because “We the People” hold these truths to be self evident.
Scalia went on to explain "That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot. That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification, but it is the reality."
That’s a relief. Just as long as my constitutionally protected ‘rights’ are unilaterally abridged by The Empire, then the rape upheld by The State’s Supreme Court Justice’s because of deliberate public fear mongering fanned by manufactured State propaganda in order to herd the population into cutting off their noses to spite my face….well, I’m down with that dawg. All good here bro.
The various mainstream press reports, all of which read nearly word for word as if quoting a press release, then go on to mention this little gem. “Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent."” Interestingly not one newspaper decided to name the actual Latin phrase, assuming I suppose that their readers would not care to know or that the assembled reporters repeaters didn’t understand the phrase and needed it explained to them by the students in the room. That phrase is “Inter arma enim silent leges”.
Thankfully there was a legal expert in the room (other than Justice Scalia of course) to interpret the words of the Supreme Priest who was clearly off his meds and once again mindlessly ranting in public.
The Associated Press informed us that “Avi Soifer, the law school's dean, said he believed Scalia was suggesting people always have to be vigilant and that the law alone can't be trusted to provide protection.”
Well, if you can’t trust the law who, or what, can you trust? After all aren’t we a nation of laws? Doesn’t the law apply to everyone, rich or poor, educated and ignorant? Am I to assume that this ‘mistake’ by the Supreme Court was comparable to the mistake I made last night when I sprinkled too much red pepper in the spaghetti sauce? Oops, sorry Mrs. Cog, my bad. Here, have some cold water to wash that mistake away.
“Soifer said it's good to hear Scalia say the Korematsu ruling was wrong, noting the justice has been among those who have reined in the power of military commissions regardless of the administration.”
Ok! So am I to assume that Scalia is one of the good guys? Too bad there are eight other Justices who could form a majority to confirm that my death or internment at the hands of The Empire was lawful and righteous at the first sign of public fear and panic in response to a (highly likely) false flag attack or similar State sponsored provocation.
"We do need a court that sometimes will say there are individual or group rights that are not being adequately protected by the democratic process," Soifer said.
Is Soifer talking about the Supreme Court that is supposedly immune to public, governmental and corporate pressure and is ultimately tasked with protecting my ‘rights’ above all else? You mean to say that not only the law, but the arbiters of the law, might not actually uphold my rights because of public, governmental or corporate pressure? Say it ain’t so Soifer, say it ain’t so.

Another source provides an additional quote that did not seem to make it into the mainstream media’s ‘repeating’ of Scalia’s soon-to-be-regretted comments. Of note was Scalia’s interpretation of the function of the Supreme Court of the United States.
“"The function of the court is not to keep the other two branches (legislative and executive) in line; that's not what we're for. We're there to stop harm to individuals," Scalia said.”
Interesting observation Justice Scalia, considering you just admitted that your colleagues from 1944 failed to do precisely that when the law fell silent in the face of government warmongering which in turned fanned the flames of public panic and blatant political and racial scapegoating. And I might add, a government which is doing the same thing during today’s “Global War against Terrorism” by condoning Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, extralegal killings/executions, death by drone etc.
I suspect Scalia was following the time honored tradition of politicians, despots and scalawags everywhere and speaking ‘for local consumption’. After all, he was speaking in Hawaii to a group of young adult law students, some of whom likely have family, friends, and possibly even distant relatives who were actually interned or deported during that wonderful experiment in truth and justice for all (except of course for US citizens of Japanese descent) during World War Two.
Let me quote from Josh Blackman’s blog. “Having an independent judiciary that, even in times of war, can check the other branches, is the last line of defense. This is the point Jackson’s concurrence in Youngstown conveys. ““With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.””
Got that Justice Scalia? Let me repeat that just in case you were busy confirming your own bias. “But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.”
Of course the above “Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.” opinion by the 1952 Supreme Court was speaking about the actions of the President “to avert a nationwide strike of steel workers in April 1952, which he believed would jeopardize national defense” by issuing an Executive Order to seize and operate the steel mills.
By the time the Executive Order was overturned by the SCOTUS, a scant two months later, the intent of the order (to avert a strike) had been accomplished and no personal liberties or ‘rights’ had been completely trampled in the process. So it is safe to say that the SCOTUS ruling was a ‘safe’ decision that could be presented as maintaining the facade of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ without actually encumbering or dissuading The Empire from its relentless pursuit of cronyism and expanded power.
I often say that the true measure of a society is how well it takes care of its weakest citizens. I shall amend that to say that the true measure of a society is how well it adheres to its own laws, which were supposedly put in place to protect its weakest citizens, during times of political stress or war.
The facade that constitutes the ‘belief’ that America adheres to a higher standard in all things American, including “The Law of the Land”, is not just crumbling, but wasn’t real to begin with…..except of course when it was convenient to those who held, and presently hold, the true power in America these days, the financial/military/corporate powerhouses including the mega banks and their idiot savant, the Federal Reserve.

02-15-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
Introducing a portal into the mind of Cognitive Dissonance.  www.TwoIceFloes.com