Fascism is Upon Us, and Other Thoughts About Our Future

Oct 11, 2010

My favorite thing to do is determine why complex things happen. Some
examples include why over half of American’s deny evolution, why women
prefer men that act a certain way, or why Scandinavian countries have such
low crime rates and such high suicide rates.

One thing I think about a lot is why America is falling. Specifically, I am
curious how it is that it’s so difficult to make a living and retire in this
country. And I think I have an answer.

I think most problems in America can be narrowed down to two human
characteristics: greed and ignorance. They are insidious by themselves, but
together they create a perpetually accelerating vehicle of destruction. They
feed off of each other–with stupid people being easily led to help fulfill
the greed of those who are smarter than them.

As I said before, I’m trying to figure out why someone can’t just work a
solid 40 years and then retire with a pension from his company. Why do
regular people not have any stability? How is it that so many can be nearing
retirement age and not have anything solid for income? How did this happen?

The answer is that freedom begets inequality. Freedom leads to a natural
world, and those who promote it in the purest form are doing so for one of
two reasons: greed or ignorance. Nature is evil. Nature means domination.
Nature means a large underclass struggles while a tiny superclass
experiences complete luxury. That’s the natural order of things. The strong
dominate the weak.

So, in the 50’s, when you went to work for 40 years and retired from a
company and were set for the rest of your life…that was unsustainable
because it meant that the super-rich were losing too much money. There was a
trade-off: All employees were taken care of, but the company made far less
money.

So, the natural decision is to screw over employees. Outsource to the
sickliest child overseas that can pretend to do the job well, and watch as
the board grants you bonus after bonus. So, the executive team (20 people)
is given millions, while thousands below them suffer.

Again, this is freedom. This is natural. It’s not even really evil. It feels
like evil, and the results are evil, but never forget that it’s natural.
Never forget that this is the tendency within us.

And that’s the point here–that greed is natural, and that the America we see
today is the result of unchecked nature–not a result of evil rich people.
Rich people aren’t evil. Not even the super-rich. They are alphas in a world
of betas. They were given advantages and they have done precisely what we
would expect anyone to do in their position.

We know the saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” Well, what is this really saying? I’ll tell you what it’s
saying. It’s explaining why the rich don’t want to be taxed. Being on top
changes how you see the world. It forces you into an isolationist world
view. It puts “me” and “my” at the top of the mind.

Even the super-liberals with money live in “nice” (see segregated)
neighborhoods. It’s a down-the-line lesson in cognitive dissonance. And
again, it’s natural.

Where the ignorance comes in is how the rich and powerful wield the masses
for their own purposes. It is trivially easy to make stupid people do
things. Show them emotional commercials. Talk to them about a shared enemy
that hates Jesus. Put on a T.V. show about celebrities dancing. Pretty much
anything will take their minds off of the gross crimes you are committing.

And thus we fall. We are soon to be a banana republic, with a few smart,
ambitious people competing with rivals using emotion-based narratives
designed to froth-up the idiocracy. It’s fucking sad.

That’s how we got here.

That’s how it takes two people working in a household to make enough money
to survive. That’s how people are basically on their own, forced to trust
the greedy super-rich on Wall Street with their life savings. If they save
for 30 years and have their money dissapear overnight, they can be appeased
with a simple explanation: “Al Quaeda did it because they hate your freedom,
and the liberals helped them by taxing too much.”

Get a weekly breakdown of what’s happening in security and tech—and why it matters.

Well, there you go. Damn liberals helping those A-rabs.

The basic idea here is that freedom is a worthy ideal, and the United States
was right for adopting it as the official mantra. And this worked for quite
some time. But at some point the concept of ambition became mixed with that
of greed. Or perhaps they always were the same.

Either way, powerful people who have the ability to influence the rules will
find ways to do so that will benefit them and their friends. That’s going to
happen. And it did happen.

Nobody is thinking about America in the long term, because anyone with the
ability to do anything at that level is in the crosshairs of the lobbyists.
And when people throw money at you, you tend to contort yourself, and your
morality, in ways unimaginable.

I don’t have a solution, but at least I can name the beast. The name is
greed, and his sidekick is ignorance. As we become more and more distracted
by shiny things, and as our education continues to decline into nothingness,
we will become a nation of proles swishing backward and forward on the whims
of a super-class.

There will be nice areas of town, and the rest of the town. Green zones and
red zones. Constant terror attacks (many of which will be condoned, if not
organized, by those in power) will keep everyone afraid and angry at the
common (mostly fictional) enemy.

This is not a potential path. It is the path we’re on today.

Freedom and greed are inexorably tied, and I don’t know how to temper that
greed without limiting freedom. Corporations as individuals? Corporations
contributing to political campaigns? Running political ads? Are you kidding
me?

It’s a race to the bottom, and we’re winning.