Lesson 1: "The American Class System and the Political Compass"
How
Citizenship
Works
101
A Satirical Look at the
Foibles and Fallacies of American Politics
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Iraq Was About Oil (But it was and is much more importantly about control.) |
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This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ... This is where a lecture will go ... not with a bang but a whimper ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
The 16 "Political Types" Matrix (The fool's errand to categorize people ...) |
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OK, where do you
stand? Are you "Blue" or "Red?" Are you
on the "Left" or "Right?" Tell me ... are you "Liberal" or "Conservative?"
Well, I guess it kinda it depends doesn't
it. Are we talking about politics or economics or our social system
or warfare and how we should be using our military?
Oversimplification is the hobgoblin of devious minds and radio pundits. The options alone are staggering, let alone knowing where you actually stand on them. Just with respect to Liberal or Conservative every one of us would have to choose one of these categories depending on our mood at a given time on a given day. Imagine the complications when you throw into the mix just how "Anarchic" vs "Authoritarian" you're feeling as well.
I mean wake up and smell the coffee, Rush Limbaugh! None of this stuff is rocket science and you know it full well. People are complicated creatures. Don't label them. It only labels you. Hell, if you think about it for a minute, it's only common sense that you'd have to break it down something like the chart below.
| 1 Economically Liberal Politically Liberal Socially Liberal Militarily Liberal |
2 |
3 Economically Liberal Politically Liberal Socially Conservative Militarily Liberal |
4 Economically Conservative Politically Liberal Socially Liberal Militarily Liberal |
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5 Economically Liberal Politically Liberal Socially Liberal Militarily Conservative |
6 |
7 Economically Conservative Politically Liberal Socially Conservative Militarily Liberal |
8 Economically Conservative Politically Conservative Socially Liberal Militarily Liberal |
| 9 Economically Liberal Politically Liberal Socially Conservative Militarily Conservative |
10 |
11 Economically Conservative Politically Liberal Socially Conservative Militarily Conservative |
12 Economically Conservative Politically Conservative Socially Conservative Militarily Liberal |
| 13 Economically Liberal Politically Conservative Socially Conservative Militarily Conservative |
14 |
15 Economically Conservative Politically Liberal Socially Liberal Militarily Conservative |
16 Economically Conservative Politically Conservative Socially Conservative Militarily Conservative |
The Three Distinct Classes In America! |
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Socially, politically, and economically we are also divided into separate and distinct Classes in America. And that explains a hell of a lot.
The Wealthy Class Who own everything. If you read your Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) you find that the wealth of a country is measured in it's land and people. It's natural and mineral resources as well as it's most precious natural resource ... people. Manual labor. Now there's a concept. A necessary evil apparently. Well, not necessarily ... necessary. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could just do away with labor altogether. Like ... with robots?"
In fact this desire on the part of wealthy industrialists has a long long history. Right back there when we were first setting up this country's economy, during Adam Smith's day in the 18th Century; one of his economist-colleagues, David Ricardo, developed the theory that "labor" when viewed in its proper light, as actually an "expense against profit." I hope you caught that. This isn't what you were taught in school, in those dreadful economics classes. They said it was an expense against "revenues" like any other expense. Nope. What Ricardo describes is what is the very foundation of this country's approach to business. After you've taken all the other expenses away, and you calculate your profit, only then do you take away the labor costs.
No wonder that manufacturers resent labor so much! They're not even a legitimate expense. It may seem like a fine point. But when you think for a moment that this is really how a business owner is expected to see his employees. That on paper and in the books, like a kind of "anti-profit." Not unlike a sort of "anti-matter" secreted in the midst of precious matter. "Anti-dollars" hidden deep in the midst of those precious profit dollars. Well, it's a little scary. But it does explain a lot.
Is it any wonder that it was "slavery," in all it's myriad shapes, that formed the basis pf the economy of the American colonies for their it's first two hundred years? Slavery was the simply cheapest form of manual labor available to the business owners of the time.
You can tell who the wealthy are, because th4ese are the guys you never see. Hell, for the most part you don't even know who they are. And they prefer it that way. And a final important note. The wealthy don't use money. They don't need to. Not personally. They only created the money system to more successfully establish and maintain power and to control both the rich and the poor with it.
The Rich Class Who work for the Wealthy and are extremely well paid. These are the guys you actually see. These are the visibly conspicuous consumers. The Bill Gates's, the Donald Trump's, etc. These are the people who are given the heavy burden of actually operating and maintaining the money system that the Wealthy Class has put in place to control the other two classes. This system moves credit around and provides a metric for tracking both the systems effectiveness and accountability for the funds dispersed.
So fundamentally it is the job of the Rich Class to make sure that you and I have only the strictest regulated access to the flow of money. While the rich unlike the wealthy do depend on the money system, you can quickly recognize them as the ones who don't have to live from paycheck to paycheck. This is because they subsist on the money they make on the investments the wealthy let them have. But in addition to that they get really big paychecks as well. But when push comes to shove they can afford to miss a few more paychecks than the rest of us if they have to. Like the rest of us, they too are always living beyond their means; but they don't immediately become destitute when their pay checks dry up. Still they too are on the company clock, so depending on just how rich they really are, they also get quite nervous if they miss too many.
The Poor Class You guessed it, that's the rest of us. And there are two important subclasses of us poor:
The "Working Poor" The working poor are those people I mentioned who do live from paycheck to paycheck and are encouraged everyday in a thousand ways by all the media to spend a good deal more than they make.
And last but not least
The "Non-Working Poor"
Well, yes. of course, the are least. But not really. That's
one of the most critically important the sell jobs of the
media. And this is because the Non-Working
Poor Class is also known as the
"Criminal"
or "Scapegoat" Class.
It is this class which is forever held accountable for the failings and
misjudgments of the Wealthy and Rich Classes. They are constantly
shown in the media to be responsible for all the problems in the world and all
the troubles plaguing it. These are the folks who
lost their jobs and their homes and everything else that came with those
paychecks. Or maybe they're the ones who never had that job or the
paycheck to begin with. They're certainly everyone in
between. These folks were just born in the wrong place at the wrong time
and generally are just a damned nuisance. Or more correctly, they are just
all those folks who weren't born in the right place or at the right
time. The academic world refers to these people as
"the disenfranchised".
That means the ones who have absolutely no stake in the action art all.
None. Nada. So if you're feeling pissed off about all the shit
you're taking from the Rich and the Wealthy, feel free to kick these
"scapegoats" around
as much as you'd like. What the hell can they do about it anyway?
You'll notice that there
is a conspicuous absence of the so-called
"Middle Class" in this breakdown.
aND There is a very
good reason for this. The Middle Class is one of America's great myths.
One of many MANY many
Great American Myths.
The so-called Middle Class actually consists of all us Working Poor who
are managing to keep a white-knuckled grasp on our job, and struggling
desperately to make ends meet, in spite of the constant flow of bullshit thrown
at us by the rich and the wealthy to take those jobs away from us.
Their
mega-corporations are so
much more profitable on
Wall Street when they
replace us with child-labor in third world countries.
OK, you've already heard all of this and it just doesn't sound right. It just doesn't fit in to everything else I've learned. and it just sounds way to out there. This kind of thinking is just way too extreme. After all, I'm a good American. Yes, you are. And if you'll just open your eyes and your minds a bit you'll be even better Americans.
OK, so lets look at some of the reasons that you think the way you do right now, shall we? Well to begin with, for most of a century our educational texts have been directed away from this entire "class" subject, and have instead sold you on the overall perspective that the good old USA is a classless society. I say "over all perspective", because none of these texts ever tries to say this outright. And that's because such a statement could never be substantiated. In fact good luck trying to find a "classless society" anywhere. There just aren't any and never have been. Never will be, it would seem. Apparently that just isn't how human beings or any other species aggregates and socializes. There is always a pecking order which in a more advanced society just becomes more sophisticated. Which brings up Giambatista Vico and his great theory of the "Cycles of Civilizations". But more about him later. (See Lesson 8 "The Great Cycles: Utopias and Other Scams")
All this perspective apparatus which defines the way you've been told to think over the years was actually given to you as part of the great American campaign to create and manipulate the "Public Mind". This wonderful little experiment was initially perpetrated by Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman, but it has since taken on a host of K Street and Madison Avenue operatives. And further this entirely engineered perception was ultimately crystallized when National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) finally released the "American Way of Life" public relations campaign in 1935. And if this all sounds a bit too much like brain washing, bear in mind Hermann Goebbels got his ideas from Edward Bernays when he used his published text Propaganda to set in motion the massive Nazi Propaganda Campaigns of 1930s Germany.
By the 1950s the "American Way of Life" had grown to become the single most successful PR campaign in history for assessing and manipulating the public mind in this country. That is to say, for assessing and manipulating your mind and my mind. In particular, it was very successful at predicting and regulating elections turnouts.
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
- This is where an item will go ...This is where an item will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
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This is where an item will go ...This is where an item
will go ...not with a bang but a whimper ...
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