Marching to Bastille Day

The Guillotine Will Claim Her Bloody Prize

Power Isn't All That Money Buys

“Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good.” ― Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

“Stiglitz argued that free markets have led to the exploitation of consumers by encouraging monopolies, while leading to a vicious cycle, creating wage disparities that foster bitterness, resentment, and division. This pervasive anger and frustration fuels populist movements that have led to a cultural backlash against the idea of mutual aid and shared responsibility...” -- Famed economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz speaks out against right-wing notions of economic freedom

The birth of “Neoliberalism” in the 1980s and the promise of ‘the FREE market’ solving all of society’s woes has only worked for one class, the ‘investment’ class. The rest of the country, and the world, has been left in the dust.

Neoliberalism has stripped wealth from the bottom half of the country and funneled almost $60 trillion to the top.

The core of neoliberalism, brought into existence by Reagan and Thatcher, was: “…policies of privatization, deregulations, scaling down of welfare provisions and dismantlement of trade unions…”

Big Gubment, Even Bigger Social Media

The entire crux of the “government is the problem” was/is to destroy society. Crush unions, make health care unaffordable/unreachable and control commodity prices. The result has been the elimination of the “middle class.” To protect the investor class, they divide the country between cultural clashes to take the focus off the class war for which they have subjected the country.

The introduction of “social media” has only poured gasoline on the neoliberalist fire by furthering the divisions, culturally, while the investor class continues to shake down the “society.” The perfect environment for the distraction of evil.

“In one version, the digital society is presented as a set of technologies – social media platforms, algorithmic computing, machine learning, and so on – which is increasingly penetrating the socio-political world, so much so as to influence its decision-making processes…” -- Neoliberalism Against Society? Spontaneous Order and Governance of Desire in Digital Societies

InterFEARence: Heroin

Neoliberalism is the brainchild of adherents to the philosophy of Ayn Rand (Objectivism). Most of us grew out the philosophy of Ayn Rand once we passed the age of seventeen. But in the Gordon Gekko, “Greed is good” era of the 1980s, the resurgence of immature “gimme, gimme, gimme” thinking of Rand permeated the investor class and they rejiggered the economy to make sure they got theirs.

The Gubment was “interfering” with capitalism’s ability to make a buck and the welfare state was creating a society of dependent parasites feeding off the brilliance of the American business class.

Ayn Rand hated the “welfare state,” and “government interference,” but Ayn O’Connor loved them. After a lifetime of smoking cigarettes that led to lung cancer, Ayn O’Connor took Social Security and Medicare.

“As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."” -- Conservative Darling Ayn Rand Died Loving Government Handouts

While neoliberalism has created the environment of “wage disparities that foster bitterness, resentment, and division,” the investor class created the ultimate “distraction” (Kafka) with social media.

“But that’s just the beginning of the damage these top-secret algorithms are doing to our societies and politics. By increasing our individual levels of fear and rage, they create a broader social sense of fear and rage, making these emotions far more easy to exploit.” -- Is Social Media This Generation's Heroin?

The real interference is not the Gubment standing in the way of unlimited profits for businesses, it is those same monopolies creating a drug that distracts the public from seeing their shell game that has moved all the money into the pockets of the top ten percent. They now control 67% of ALL the nation’s wealth.

As they control 67% of the wealth, they in turn control 87% of all the equity markets. So, when you see a clown like Jim Cramer on CNBC blathering about some stock, it usually means the wealth class is in the dump stage of a pump and dump. They had their run and need buyers to facilitate their exit, so they dump their inventory on the rubes through charlatans like Cramer.

The schemes are all designed around FEAR…the same way that advertisers manipulate consumers; Do your armpits smell bad? Are your teeth white enough? Is your car large enough? Hurry up, don’t have FOMO over not buying Bitcoin…get in, NOW!

The word Diablo (Devil) literally means Divide and Abolish. “Evil is whatever distracts.” They’re eating the dogs! There’s drones in the sky! Rabbit hole, meet human.

They set society against each other with fake culture wars and insane conspiracy theories. While they are fighting with each other you can fleece the fuck out of them.

“Thus, if you could invent a drug that would cause people to be fearful — and thus stimulate the rage that comes from fear — you could have incredible control over a population if you could simply tell them where and against whom to direct that fear-induced rage.” -- Is Social Media This Generation's Heroin?

The MSM is in bed with the oligarchs. All media is going to toe the line for the billionaire class because they are the ruling class. Resources such as AllSides or GroundNews can help filter out the bias, but consumers are left with independent journalism (while it is allowed to exist) to sift through the bullshit. GroundNews is handy for sniffing out bias…they claim you can “Rise above the noise,” but it leaves the consumer swimming in the sludge pumped out by MSM trash such as the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. It’s all high fructose corn syrup poured liberally on information.

The sad truth is that finding information that is not skewed is a boondoggle. This is what makes the oligarchs social media schemes of conspiracy, disinformation and fear (Doom Scrolling) so successful.

“It’s like, heroin is heroin, whether you snort it or shoot it. It’s still an opiate for the masses, as is television. You’re just getting it in smaller bites.” –Jon Stewart

We’d be better off living in the hills and sharpening the guillotine blades while planning for our Bastille Day. “Long ago the mold was cast.”