General Betrayus, Another GOP Shill.

From the coolest advertisement this year:
http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html

Comes this review, and take on America:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-baitz/pack-up-the-moon-and-dism_b_64053.html

With which, I wholeheartedly agree, but have an additional point to make. He states, with stunning clarity that "There is tremendous overlap between neo cons and liberals in consciousness development so the lines are blurred. " Touche'.

I usually feel like the author James Burke of "Connections" fame when presented with such material, and today is no exception to this sensation. Why will become self evident. I need to explain my reasoning to the uninitiated before continuing with my point.

America, land of the Free and home of the brave, has always been based upon the rule of power. We [The national "we"- This used to confuse my literal-minded girlfriend MJ.] fought, stole, bribed or bought the land from various natives and countries. We then installed a government of equity for a reserved class of people, which at the time was rich white landowners. The government is self-correcting, because the representatives directly elected then choose the President from a qualified pool of applicants. A populist Hitler-type can't get elected. Or, couldn't, originally. But, I digress.

The people with the power, at the time, were the smartest, hardest-working, most educated people in the world. They had to be, anything less and America would have failed in the revolution, and we'd all be speaking French now. Let's leave that as an assumption, that they were smart and powerful.

As time went by, the push to a more literal Democracy occurred, a thing which the founders feared but believed that the best people would move forward and triumph. Logically, the smartest should always lead. It used to be true, then. Unexpectedly, in the late 1700s technology began to accellerate, and the iron age was born shortly afterwards. People without a great deal of brains, and often zero education, found historically unprecedented opportunities for wealth. In some cases, extreme wealth, as documented in "The Robber Barons."

Money became a goal unto itself, without morality or reason, and without limitations. Corporations sprang up which quickly began to gobble up local businesses. Macy's was the Walmart of the day. But, back then, a corporation had to sign a charter with the State promising to abide by "all laws" in order to exist. Failure to comply with regulations meant the dissolution of a corporation. Also, the now extremely wealthy Neuvo Riche had unpredictable power within local governments, such as the States and cities. There were little dicatorships, race riots, extermination of minorities, deportation of the poor, and many other sudden problems in cities that were simultaneously growing at astonishing rates.

People came to view this as the cost of Freedom and Democracy, a point pushed upon them by Media owners, IE the Newspapers. Even then the media were corporate owned and controlled. News in the USA has never been unbiased, not since the first moveable-type press went into service, and not since the telegraph first pinged-out codes over wire. The people as a whole thought, as they sank into record poverty, that this was "good business."

Then came the world wars, with the Great Depression between them, and all the evils of capitalism came home to roost, much to the chagrin of Ayn Rand. A "New Deal" was offered the public, one which swept aside some of the ills of capitalism with temporary reprieves, and the government embarked on a surprisingly wise productivity boosting program of self-investment. The quality of life in America rose until it surpassed all the known world, or so we thought.

Actually, during both WW1 and WW2, America and our allies had trashed most of the production capacity of the rest of the planet. Corporate leaders were also military leaders, and it was pretty easy to drop a bomb or two on a competitors facilities during both wars, not to mention the way we have a documented habit of bombing "Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, and Government buildings." [-N. Chomsky, 2005] The truth is, the US military had also conveniently destroyed all national and corporate competition to the United States, worldwide.

During the Cold War years, the US Military complex of joint-corporate leadership and industrialized nationalism rose to the height of power, controlling all US secrets and technology. It also began to exercise political power, and began the slow process of dumbing-down all education systems not tied into the elite military industries. Texas A&M, MIT, and other Universities with close military ties got billions, while all others began to experience funding setbacks. Public K-12 was pared back so rapidly that the new 1950's schools had trouble obtaining supplies to stock the schools. Desks were often donated by local businesses.

The average American became less educated with each generation, while the lazy and quite stupid super-rich reserved the "best" education for themselves. Fortunately for our future selves, they made some pretty large mistakes, not the least of which is the complete lack of a mathematics requirement for an MBA degree from places like Harvard. [They claim such requirements now, but people who can't do basic addition have somehow passed these classes. Bush can't even add single digits correctly without paper and pencil.]

The Uber-rich screwed up by assuming that all knowlege apart from business and management was unimportant. Anything too hard for them to master or control was unimportant, and the role of "research scientist" was born. People who were singled out to do the "hard" work of mathematics, physics, and medicine. Math really isn't hard, it's just that you've NEVER been taught how to fully utilize it. In reality, Calculus is no harder than History of Philosophy or Art Appreciation.

By the 1960s a baby boom entered US colleges and began to fill many "hard" fields with genius people. It's not that it was a genius generation, but just a big one consisting of an unusual birth rate, and as such their numbers are actually quite weak. It's not the "Greatest Generation" but the Most Wasteful Generation. There should have been TEN TIMES more geniuses, based on general population averages from previous decades. They're also known fairly accurately as the "Me Generation" for their selfishness.

Anyway, there was a surge in research, funded by billion dollar corporations and the US military complex. Companies like AT&T invented everything from the mouse to the internet by the end of the 70s, even though much of it wasn't fully public or commonplace until the mid 90s. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was playing catch up. They had to borrow in US dollars to pay our US companies to REbuild their infrastructures. By the time most of our allies had rebuilt, they owed the US billions in US dollar debt. This made the $ the defacto world currency for decades to come, and was intentional. The US formed the UN [On US soil, ignoring multinational pleas for a neutral property] and NATO and the UN Security Council, with the US in roles as solid, immobile leader on all fronts. The world still has to contend with the US being the chair on world politics, even while we constantly violate every UN charter ever ratified.

It wasn't until a few decades later, the 90s, that other nations began to find specialized strength where America had failed to develop. This is due to the lack of mathematical and analytical ability of our elite ruling class. The Harvard and Yale grads have a long record of exemplary failures in world and national politics, science, civil rights, and many other fields. Yet, they continue to rule our nation, and most of the world. We are led not by the smartest, but by the inheritors of vast wealth, who enforce their privilege through corruption, murder, and even genocide.

The US government abolished Corporate obedience to common law in 1963. Now companies can kill or maim, aid the CIA, and do anything at all, but only a single person will be arrested and the company is free to continue violating the laws. The scapegoat salves the public without actually punishing the behavior. It's a perfect crime.

The CIA formed during the McCarthy years, and the Secret Service after Lincolns assassination, but expanded to cover almost any aspect of secrecy in our government. The SS, aptly named, resembles their Nazi Germany counterpart in too many ways. People who might become powerful, or embarass our government, suddenly turn up dead from overdoses the next day. There are over TEN THOUSAND unsolved, and uninvestigated, murders in the USA every year.

Today, the USA is rated #47 out of the best 50 nations for education. #18 for health. Nowhere, on any list, in any category, is the US number 1 except: military strength, number of people executed, % of population in prison, and per-capita poverty levels. In fact, we are only #1 in bad ways. The singulare measurement of wealth is the sole "non-bad" measurement of the USA where we are first, and that is Gross Domestic Product, which is a specially contrived number that includes speculation and other non-real income. In truth, we're probably second to China.

Japan has more internet access. Mongolia has more freedom of press. Ethiopia has better education. Madagascar has better medical. In all important measurements of civil life, or freedom, the USA is far from #1. We are a stone's throw from being imprisoned just for speaking out against our government, and that's not better than China.

Our ruling class is a moron class, much like Marie Antoinette and company, educated only in how to be filthy rich, and little else. It's time to be off with their heads.

D