The Incomplete Ron Paul
by CultState on Jun.06, 2010, under Politics
The first time I heard of Ron Paul was around 2003 from my friends on the political fringe. They informed me of his platform, most notably, the appeal of returning currency valuation to a metallic standard. I immediately shook my head and said such a feat was impossible. My reasoning was that a return to a metallic standard required isolationism, which required significant curtailing of multinational players and influence. For many years, I left that as my stance, stating that political dreams are nothing without creating the blueprints for the transition.
The only way multinationals lose their footing is when economic volatility has crippled the living standards of their power base. This opens up the debate for solutions rooted in Nationalization or Mercantilism. The last political entity in Western modern history to make the switch from Internationalism to Nationalism was the Pro-Communist Leftists of the early 20th century. Citing the electrifying Humanist propaganda of the time, their efforts nationalized Unions and enhanced American manufacturing to pre-Gilded Age levels. The fruits of these labors, under Union watchdogs and stifling taxation, created an artificial and unsustainable Middle Class whose very presence ensured a return of Internationalization when their employers discovered cost-cutting techniques via outsourcing.
Once the Internationalists became the core economic engines of the world again, the Unions slowly strangled themselves to death and the Western moral framework made an amazing shift. The global code of ethics were no longer etched through the creation of a worker’s paradise. Instead, the appeal of the Noble Savage reared its ugly head once more. The shadows of European Imperialism became the public enemy and anything associated with it was handed an eternal sentence of damnation. Our moral framework no longer spoke of getting John Q. Taxpayer access to the American Dream. The moral framework spoke explicitly of exporting our American Dream everywhere else instead. Before long, billions were spent on reconstructing Post-War Europe. A trillion dollars was spent on Africa with no hope of an ROI. The Cold War handled trillions in spending to beef up international infrastructures. Monetary and foreign policy drove the ship: Moral problems were not at home. Instead, they were all overseas and our crusaders had to go to them. Anyone who disagreed had to answer to the militant Baby Boomers and their penchant for crafting new Scarlet Letters to brand people with.
Our New World Order finally put its moral guide stones in place. Cue videos of starving brown people, feel-good propaganda designed for consumer emotional logic, and other wonderful spurts of fantasy designed to tug at your guilty Western heartstrings for the next thirty years. Today, both parties represent the focus of that guide stone: The good cop/pro-Humanist (Left) and the bad cop/pro-Commerce. (Right) So when I see the anti-government fervor of today, I can describe it as the inevitable reaction of over thirty years of the “Save brown people first, not your neighbors” mentality that is rapidly coming to an end. Put a camera on a downtrodden dark-skinned fellow and money will practically materialize around him. Toss a debt-soaked, obligation-laden Westerner whose purchase habits were, essentially, dictated to him at every phase of his life on the same TV, and not one dollar of relief will come his way. Our moral guide stone compels us to, instead, bail out international banks, Europe, continue sending aid to Africa, and perpetuate the guise of “liberation” warfare overseas.
As it turns out, Ron Paul is very much aware of this moral guide stone and seeks to attack it at its economic root. However, for any attack to have a lasting impact will require a focus on overhauling our entire Pro-Internationalist/Humanist moral framework. Its adherents are vicious, fervent, and fully trained to respond to embedded hive-mind triggers Simply put, unraveling thirty years of firmly enforced Humanist propaganda will be a bloody affair. How do you tell the Baby Boomers, Nature’s perfect, holy, and flawless rebels who have “never made a mistake” in their collective lives, and their subservient spawn that their moral crusades are essentially bankrupting everything and everyone?
You can’t. Zealots become so addicted to their moral models they would rather put the entire system at risk than jeopardize the power of the facade.
How to Infer the State of a Civilization from its Propaganda
by CultState on Apr.22, 2010, under History
Democracy is a game where you tolerate petulance until you can park your army in front of the capitol. At the start of the game, there aren’t any significant armies, centralized capitols, or even very many rules. As time progresses, instructions crystallize, economies bloom, and an internal culture forms. The growth of human civilizations is about as messy and unorganized as human growth itself. Nothing is more sloppy than when economic participants of these systems are pitted against one another for influence.
The human imagination goes to work, conjuring every method it can just for an inkling of power: bravado, deceit, theft, and assault tend to be the baser methods. More sophisticated conflict soon appears: guilt, pity, manufactured outrage, distraction, feints, and other emotional smokescreens begin to clutter daily life. In the end, someone must win, and the economic engines consolidate. The rules are rewritten to favor that consolidation and innovation and experimentation is replaced with bureaucracy and models.
Here at CultState.com, we believe one can obtain a full understanding of a civilization’s economic engine at any period of time based on how internal power struggles attempted to build consensus from their plebeian core. Let’s start with this seemingly tame, dated, and innocent picture:
This artwork is from China during the Cultural Revolution. It shows a mob of impassioned Chinese proletariats moving together towards some undefined goal, accompanied by a black person in chains wielding an AK-47. This picture clearly intends to draw parallels between the aims of China and Africa in their struggle against their shared Capitalist oppressor. Given the focus on heroic posing and emotional appeal, there was no way at the time of this picture to intellectually discuss the outcome of what this picture is suggesting, even if it appears beyond obvious.
This is a picture of child’s face. The lighting is placed in a way to give his face a more circular appearance without having him look fat. The periphery of the face is painted in blue and in the center lies a satellite image of Africa. The eyes are devoid of hardship or problem and are, in fact, quite determined. The links one can pull from the association of children and Africa are many: The birthplace of humanity, a continent growing into the future, the innocence of a new geopolitical order. This picture also represents a twist in branding. Instead of the “Big African Man” image that was prevalent throughout the 1970s and 80s, the “New Age” marketing tries to appeal to the dulling outsiders who support social justice but don’t want to get their hands dirty doing it. Any attempt to criticize this picture further will rapidly result in race baiting, so I shall move on.
This is the Senegal Statue. This incredible work shows a very Romanesque interpretation of the African Liberation Movement. What is important to notice is the dichotomy between the “We are the world” concept African Self-Determinists show to their supportive New Age/Baby Boomer clientèle and the heroic strongman/breadwinner motif presented to the locals. This statue shows an almost belligerent separation of how the Western Altruists interpretation of the world and how that world interprets itself. Even a small handful of the most prominent pro-African sympathizers considered this statue tacky.
These are soldiers from the Congo performing a formation march for the locals. The Western Altruist would have to go somewhat out of his way to defend this kind of activity. However, the Western Altruist was also very vocal for their support of propaganda showing Africans doing exactly this activity. Again, the disconnection between the Western Altruist model of the world and the real world becomes evident. African Liberation propaganda has long suggested this sort of activity as a desired outcome. To give the Altruist the benefit of the doubt, this picture is not immediately showing harm, so there really is no problem if a bunch of armed soldiers get together will loaded weapons and march in unison, right?
This is a picture of an African lit on fire. The Western Altruist desperately wants to think this act is self-caused as a political statement.
This is an enraged African picture of a mob surrounding a charred corpse. The Western Altrustic impulse is to say that they found him this way and perhaps the group is seeking to salvage the body for important archaeological research.
These are two dead Africans. “Clearly another case of accidently hit-and-run.”, the Western Altrust tells himself.
And this wonderful photo? The Western Altruist laughs and holds up his copy of a hip-hop mixtape with this exact same image on it, citing the brilliance of “edgy, new marketing trends.”
As you can tell, the interpretation of Western Altruist are deeply out of touch with reality. They would rather make elaborate excuses about how to fix the problem of “African instability” instead of recognize that the propaganda they supported is manifesting exactly the way the propaganda suggested it would: Armed, violent Africans that use bravado and brawn to overcome all obstacles.
What we are left with is an understanding of two civilizations. First, Africa has spent decades gearing up for the wars that were destined to rage from the end of “colonialism”. (Also known as European intervention and regulation.) Secondly, the Western Altruist was rendered ignorant to that more-than-obvious outcome through incessant emotional appeal. (Self-determination, liberation, etc.) Finally, the Western Altruist will defend their “moral superiority” for their entire lives no matter how horrible the outcome has turned. If we are supposed to operate as a moral society according to the political Cults, then how are we supposed to address the impulsive disconnection we make when the “moral” outcome ends up being a problematic one?
While you ponder that, ponder how the Western Altruist will rationalizing this one:
The Risk of Education
by CultState on Mar.31, 2010, under Economics
When times become dire for the powers that be, the first victim tends to be state-run educational services. Given our obvious hatred of the future, (performing abortions until elderly dependents outnumber young tax sources, borrowing money to pay for events the current generation wants and having it paid for by future generations, etc.) slashes in education, at first, appear par for the course. However, upon a complete cost/benefit analysis, we begin to see something much more unsettling.
There is a known risk in educating a person from the ages of 5 to 18. The growing child may not have the mental and emotional facilities to grasp emergent technologies or organization strategies. There is little a state-run institution can do to mitigate or regulate this risk… other than by pouring more money into it’s systems. Simply put: You won’t know with certainty the outcome of a child’s education until the child is a young adult. By then, lump sums have been expended in the hope that the future youth is capable of competing on the world stage. The risk of education has long been a concern of highly-industrialized societies that requires intelligent, or at least technically-apt citizens.
So how does one bring down the risk associated with education while increasing the performance, innovation, and output of society? Revolutionary teaching curriculum? New Age educational methods? More funding? Privatization? More hugs, less drugs? <insert comfortable slogan here>?
Nay.
If we ever need technical workers in a pinch, (and we always will) we either outsource or promote immigration. The amount of money associated with promoting multiculturalism and tolerance, especially in a society that is already morally-fixated on Noble Savage worship, is orders of magnitude less than the amount of money required to educate a student. Furthermore, the effectiveness of mobilizing poverty-stricken adults with obligations as opposed to trying to rally care-free children addicted to entertainment is not even a contest. With such incredible incentives in place, only those unfortunate souls who suffer from blind spurts of emotional nostalgia favor taking on the risk of education in the face of an endless horde of labor who will do anything for a modicum of financial stability.
We learned some time ago not to sit around and wait if our education engine could keep up with the pace of our industrial society. As long as we can get access to pools of poverty that are willing to be a part of an elaborate labor process for a pittance without requiring significant schooling, there is absolutely no incentive to educate future generations born within our country. Therefore, it becomes acceptable to slash any and every fund that go towards education when times get tough. As long as we have an overabundance of bleeding-hearts on tap, it will be very obvious which demographic will be favored and which one will continue to be left with nothing.
If you somehow managed to not be part of the wrath of the irresponsible mother, you will not be taught how the world works. Instead, you will be forced to bear the burden of your elder’s entitlements without receiving any yourself. This is our future, but only if we let it.
Don’t ask me about Ronald Reagen
by CultState on Mar.05, 2010, under Economics
When asked about my opinion on Ronald Reagen, I must provide a much needed back story.
Long before Reagan, there was Nixon, and Nixon had a problem: There were far more US Dollars in circulation than Gold could back. (And we had well over 8,000 tons of gold on tap!) This was due to the amount of money flowing overseas to purchase oil for ourselves and the staggering cost of the Vietnam War.
As this problem became known, people (West Germany, in particular) left the International Gold Standard. (Bretton-Woods) Others soon followed and Nixon decided it was time to drop the Gold Standard. (1971) Within two years, international laws were made that forced oil to be traded in US Dollars. (1973)
The Petrodollar was born.
Once the US Dollar was pegged to oil consumption, the rule of the day became controlling inflation via international modernization: a very slow process that is perfect as a driver of inflation due to its stabilizing nature. (In the 70s, that generation called this process the cute name of Self-Destiny and believe themselves the champions over Imperialism!) The theory was simple: The world would grow slowly to the thirst of oil and the price of oil slowly matched the demand. The result was the dollar being in a far better leveraging position that it was under Gold as it engaged in the proto-Neoliberal global market.
Nixon had saved the day. For now.
However, not everyone wanted to modernize. It wasn’t long until regional volatility in oil-producing nations shook America to the crippling point: the OPEC oil embargo. (Thank you, Israel!) This event lead to most, if not all, of the the economic problems in the 1970s. As oil prices spiked, inflation would soar while crippling the national employment due to the cost of oil. (The infamous “stagflation” of the 70s finally explained) The stability we yearned for was not coming quite as we expected. We were left with few options and the path we did choose sealed our fate: Soften oil price volatility and its hazardous effects on the nation through massive spending.
Spending fueled through borrowing, of course.
Enter Mr. Reagen. Enter the idea that we can outpace unstable oil prices by masking it through massive domestic spending. It was quite the craze and, worse off, it was considered the moral thing to do. Revise the employment laws to employ everyone, regardless of color, race, gender, talent, need, and all that good stuff! Refactor who qualifies for loans! No credit, no problem! Your job is your credit! Distribute money to as many people as possible so when shocks hit the market, the sheer volume of currency should absorb most of it for the time being. Consumer habits and the individual had become human shields for oil volatility. Reagen’s maneuvering bought us another 8 years of being sheltered from the true nature of the Petrodollar. The borrowing model continued ever since, but lenders gradually started to ask the same question: How exactly are you going to make these Treasury Assets bear interest?
The answer, the one the Hippy Generation spent 40 years desperately avoiding, became more clear overtime: Full-time Oil Wars. Stabilize oil volatility and you stabilize the Petrodollar. Stabilize the petrodollar, and the US dollar yields interest that matters. The stability of oil prices became a more urgent issue due to the collapse of Russia and the proliferation of nuclear arms throughout Asia.
And when I say Oil War, I’m not talking about the kind of brawl where you take a few production facilities and setup a perimeter. I’m not talking about the kind of warfare where unwashed college students can simply whine their way to influence. I mean an Oil War where you cause so much damage to the national infrastructure and the population base, oil producers are forced to mirror America in their massive domestic spending to get back on par. The theory is that if the producers can’t stabilize their own output or, worse, are intentionally manipulating their own markets to gain influence, then the interest that should have gone to the American dollar will now be paid in blood.
In the midst of it all, a terrible pattern was forming that, to this day, no one has noticed except a handful of us: The more debt we sold, the more severe oil volatility becomes. (http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/05/11/KliesenGuo.pdf, Page 3) Of course, that’s nothing compared to the grand daddy pattern of all: The more chaotic oil prices become, the more the power players will destroy Democracy trying to get it stable. Dependency always has a cost that, when left unchecked, always leads to slavery.
Abortion, Morality, and the Greatest Lie Ever Told
by CultState on Feb.20, 2010, under Philosophy
Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
Which leads me to a question: How many times will you get dragged around in an emotional frenzy on behalf of some moral cause that you’ve been told is morally imperative? Can you count these experiences on two hands? Do you even remember the evolution of your own world view?
If any cause has been deemed as so morally imperative, then how on Earth did you end up getting tricked into thinking the best people for the job are a bunch of self-aggrandizing political opportunists on Capitol Hill? That’s like saying your car’s engine is stalled and taking it to a florist.
The point of this post is not to focus on the “wrong person for the job.” That brief conclusion intentionally obfuscates the fact that any and every moral calamity is completely manufactured from the top-down.
For example, abortion is a <edgyMediaJargon101>hot button</edgyMediaJargon101> topic that ignites passions and animalism. Any topic that results in such reactions means those reactions are coached and conditioned on purpose to hide the true purpose of the topic in question. The Left Cult calls abortion a reproductive right, granted from hands of the infinitely Elysian elite as themselves as a successful way to improve a female’s quality of life and earning potential. The Right Cult calls abortion a state-sponsored genocide through the same logic that the Left Cult has defined other genocides throughout history. One Cult believes their activity is holy and righteous while the other believes it to be an ultimate sin. These are moral responses designed to invoke emotional catastrophe for all parties. As long as Two Minutes Hate/Love reigns supreme, then Two Minutes Reason will be forever hidden.
The hard truth is that the unborn are the perfect targets. They cannot wage a guerrilla resistance. They cannot create convincing artistic displays of their struggles. The unborn cannot vote or stage protests. The fetus cannot bribe politicians. The zygote is unable to put themselves on media outlets to elicit pity through appeals to emotion. This means that the best target for keeping populations manageable (a very serious concern for any macroeconomist) is the unborn. The Guttmacher Institute puts the worldwide abortion count at approximately 40 million per year.
No warlord, dictator, or Malthusian has in history has ever consistently achieved such efficient numbers for population mitigation. The moral arguments about the unborn being a human or not has absolutely no importance. What we know with absolute certainty is that through the termination of an unborn human, a future human no longer exists. A future human means a burden to a system with limited resources. The old adage of “One less mouth to feed” becomes the rule of the day.
How do you get people to kill their unborn? If such people are already participants of a system that is designed to have a bare minimal transference of influence, then the fear of having such scarcity put at risk provides all the incentive one needs to agree with the “One less mouth to feed” principle. In a strange twist of irony, those who support that line of reasoning indirectly agree that a future human is nothing more than a cost/benefit investment whose risk can be mitigated via economic arguments alone. This indirect conclusion alone should be enough to make the Left Cult sympathetic to the worldview of the Right Cult, but sadly, the crusade-like emotionalism associated with this topic prevents such possibilities.
And therein lies the problem that I am discussing. Morality does not elevate mankind to be closer to purity. Morality bogs mankind down with petulance and chest-thumping. Instead of morality being used as a channel for mankind to realize he is more than his animal impulses, morality becomes the channel that grants mankind permission to become excessively belligerent. Morality is a crucial source of the Cult State because morality prevents reason.
Broken Humans
by CultState on Feb.19, 2010, under Philosophy
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE!
CultState.com is a blog that provides insight to the musings of a very complicated person living amongst broken humans.
Now, I have to ask, which phrase triggered an emotional response from you? The phrase “very complicated” or the phrase “broken human“?
“Very Complicated”
Do you sympathize with being “very complicated” or did you find the title pretentious?
- “That’s a good phrase: Broken human. I implicitly understand what you mean.”
- “Who are you to judge who is broken or not!?”
I’m complicated, too
How complicated can a human being possibly be if we all have the same emotions? The answer lies in each individual’s ability to look beyond the now. Those who have realized that they are more than a machine that outputs emotional responses do not bode well in our current Western society. In the midst of each person having the potential to access the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria, intellectual laziness remains rife enough to be considered an epidemic. Instead of embracing the natural complexity of the Universe we live in, the average person is told to wildly stab outward with an emotionally-fueled Occam’s Razor to ward off the encroaching chaos. They are panic-stricken with each moment that passes and, thus, have no alternative actions to take.
But not everyone is so fearful.
Some of us enjoy the challenge of this complexity. Some of us believe we can tame the chaos of the Universe in useful ways. You and I may not be so complicated to each other, but in the eyes of those who only know fear, we appear as mind-boggling as a Gordian knot.
“You’re right! I am not afraid of what may come!”
I’ma tough guy, so grow up
In a culture that is addicted to entertainment-at-any-cost, we have many examples of people intentionally making themselves enigmatic to increase their appeal. This activity is a clear manipulation of a social exchange and no one enjoys being blatantly manipulated by strangers. Before you finalize your conclusion, however, allow me to be blunt: I do not play political games. I’ve simply found that a mob is as intelligent as its least intelligent member and the only way to counteract that is to filter reasonable humans from the emotionally-drunk animals. That filter is complex, and thus, is the source of my complexity.
Stupid, stupid people…
Be careful with your conclusion, for the stupidest person in the room is the sharpest one who cannot communicate effectively. Do not hold your fellow man to an unachievable ideal and expect everyone to fall in line. If you truly wish for humans to achieve an ideal outcome, then you must acknowledge that most humans operate within the now. They must be fed easily-digestible instructions every five seconds to get them to march in unison. While micromanagement of this scale can be tedious and has existed in the past, the larger, more important question goes unasked: Should human behavior be pigeonholed into a single, collective motion? What are the gains and the benefits? What are the unintended consequences? It is easy to mistaken stupidity for disconnection.
“Maybe… where are you going with this?”
I defend the meek!
Ah, the ever-present altruistic hero. You will never be in short supply. Whenever Demographic X needs to be Action Y’ed for Cause Z, you’ll be there at the front lines letting the world know just how brave you are. I used to be like you until I stopped defining my life by my unexplored emotional impulses. What makes your archetype so difficult to communicate with is that you are the most susceptible to reason, yet, emotional variables will always have a unnaturally hyper influence in your decision-making process. Fortunately, the natural solution for this mind type is that, historically, they are the first to die in any conflict. One way or another, nature will balance itself and correct its errors and one day, you just might learn just enough patience to understand that.
The Objective
I claim no flag, no ideology, no clan, and no group exclusivity. I do not measure my intellectual capacity by the limitations of faith and belief. I do not limit my intellectual capacity by emotional zealotry or irrational altruistic impulses. The West prides itself in its adherence to the European Age of Reason, yet, finds itself awash in a never-ending dissonance caused by an intentional lack of reasonableness. Our technology allows for connectivity and communication never before seen, but our impulse to create walls and filters.
Or is it?
I’ve concluded that the Baby Boomer horde, the mouthpieces of modern morality whose votes and interest always takes precedence, has reached the age where collective dementia is beginning to set in. Is their political machine reflecting this irritability? Is the original “Me” generation running out of topics to polarize? This blog will specifically focus on the critical players of modern history to help us remember how we got to where we are today and to remind us that there is still something we can do about it.
