dinsdag 18 maart 2014

De Mainstream Pers 169



Amerikanen, vergeleken met ons fatalistische Europeanen, [blijven] op een bepaalde manier hele optimistische mensen. Echt, dat vind ik ook fantastisch van ze! Ze blijven de moed erin houden. 
Geert Mak. Pauw en Witteman. 3 oktober 2012


A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilization could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that 'the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.' Cases of severe civilizational disruption due to 'precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common.'


The study is very revealing:

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilizations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilization:

'The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.'

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

Once more for some of us this is not news, but it is but one more case of seeing the obvious.  That such a study can come from the very science that is largely behind the anticipated collapse is somewhat reassuring.
De 'fatalistische Europeaan' Geert Mak legt Thierry Baudet uit dat ook hij niet precies weet hoe 'Thuis' hij in de tijd is. 

Amerika staat er over een halve eeuw beter voor dan Europa… Als je invloed en macht wilt hebben, moet je groots zijn. Dat is iets wat we in Europa van ze kunnen leren.
Geert Mak. Nu.NL. 22 augustus 2012

Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that 'the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.' Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to 'precipitous collapse — often lasting centuries — have been quite common.' […]
It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilizations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilization:
'The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.'
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: 'the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity'; and 'the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]' These social phenomena have played 'a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse,” in all such cases over “the last five thousand years.'
Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with “Elites” based largely in industrialized countries responsible for both:
'accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.'
The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:
'Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.'

In een essay over Herman Melville's boek The Confidence-Man schreef de gezaghebbende  literatuurcriticus Tony Tanner over de moderne samenleving zoals die in de VS was ontstaan:

In a society where self-authoring is as common as self-parenting -- people choose their parts then write their lines -- there is no longer any source of reliable authorization or legitimation, no captain to give guarantees, and reference, and orders.

Het is de wereld waarin de mainstream-opiniemakers de waarheid proclameren uit naam van de macht. Een sprekend voorbeeld is Geert Mak die publiekelijk met grote stelligheid beweert dat door het 'optimisme' heel 'Amerika er over een halve eeuw beter voor[staat] dan Europa,' maar die zodra hij door mij aan de tand wordt gevoeld ineens met een ander verhaal komt door te verklaren dat 'hoe machinaal en rationeel Amerikanen vaak ook denken, ze tegelijk zeldzaam ontvankelijk [zijn] voor magische oplossingen.' Met andere woorden: die 'hele optimistische' Amerikanen geloven in een wonderlijke vorm van irrationele 'magie.' Het zogenaamde 'optimisme' is in de praktijk dus een geloof in 'magie.' Als we uitgaan van de oorspronkelijke betekenis van de gebruikte woorden dan is 'optimisme,' ik citeer Van Dale, 'de neiging om gunstige uitkomsten te verwachten' en 'magie' niets anders dan 'toverkunst.' Het begrip 'optimistisch' is in dit verband dan ook gevaarlijk misleidend. Volgens de gedachtenwereld van Mak zijn 'Amerikanen' zowel irrationele gelovigen in 'magie' als rationele 'optimistische mensen.' Mak probeert deze tegenstrijdigheid uit commerciële overwegingen te verhullen, omdat hij zijn mainstream-publiek met een 'hoopvolle' boodschap in slaap wil sussen. Maar in werkelijkheid hebben we dus niet met 'optimisten' te maken, maar met dwazen. En dat is kennelijk 'ook fantastisch van ze!' 

Dit Makkiaanse waanbeeld duikt vandaag de dag weer in volle hevigheid op, nu de Koude Oorlog helemaal terug is en het aloude manicheïsme van de westerse 'vrije pers' het grote publiek moet mobiliseren tegen het ultieme kwaad in de wereld: POETIN!!! De propaganda van de mainstream-opiniemakers geeft op dit moment een levensgevaarlijke voorstelling van zaken, gevaarlijker nog dan tijdens de eerste Koude Oorlog, toen bijna iedereen besefte dat een gewapend conflict tussen beide grootmachten zou uitmonden in een nucleaire oorlog waarmee het einde van de mensheid zou worden ingeluid. De regelmatig op de rand van het absurde balancerende Henk Hofland schrijft in De Groene Amsterdammer van 12 maart 2014 met weemoed dat 'In Europa en Amerika eerzucht en strijdlust verloren [zijn] gegaan,' en wel omdat 

ten aanzien van dit conflict onze politieke en strategische verbeeldingskracht niet toereikend is. De gang van zaken in Oekraïne en op de Krim doet meer en meer denken aan de manier waarop in 2008 Georgië als onafhankelijke staat ten onder is gegaan… 

Zowel in West-Europa als in Amerika zijn bij een zeer groot deel van het publiek de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust verloren gegaan. Een belangrijke oorzaak daarvan wordt gevormd door de twee vruchteloze oorlogen, in Afghanistan en Irak. Daarbij komt de permanente crisis in Noord-Afrika. En deze reeks van echecs moet worden verdragen door volken waarvan het grootste deel zich de afgelopen tien jaar in een proces van toenemende verarming bevindt…

Misschien is het tijd om eens te proberen ons voor te stellen hoe een nieuw soort mondiale krachtmeting eruit zou zien.
De Groene-opiniemaker Henk Hofland met zijn speelgoed. 'Eerzucht en strijdlust.' 

Wat beweert de hoogbejaarde nestor van de Nederlandse journalistiek hier allemaal? Allereerst dat het Westen collectief geen 'eerzucht en strijdlust' meer bezit. Wat is 'eerzucht' precies? Van Dale: 'dorst naar eer of roem.' Wat is 'eer'? James Bowman, jarenlang de Amerikaanse redacteur van The Times Literary Supplement schreef over dit onderwerp het onthullende boek Honor. A History (2006), waarin hij op pagina 4 meteen ter zake komt door over dit begrip te stellen:
At its simplest, honor is the good opinion of the people who matter to us, and who matter because we regard them as a society of equals who have the power to judge our behavior. This is what Professor Derek Brewer has called the honor group… Honor groups form naturally around any corporate enterprise, but especially those — like the armed services, police forces, fire brigades and sports teams — that are male-dominated. In such an environment, loyalty to the corporate entity, and a willingness to subordinate one's individual inclinations to the greater good, will naturally be regarded as honorable; disloyalty and selfishness will be correspondingly dishonorable. 
Ik blijf wat langer stilstaan bij dit begrip aangezien 'eerzucht' één van de twee motieven is die Hofland aanvoert voor een 'nieuw soort mondiale krachtmeting,' tussen de twee supermachten, uitgerust met kernwapens. Een mogelijke nucleaire holocaust zal daarbij het resultaat zijn van 'eerzucht en strijdlust.' Nogmaals: 'eerzucht': 'Overdreven hang naar vroeger uit behoefte aan respect. Verlangen naar roem.' http://www.encyclo.nl/begrip/eerzucht En nogmaals de Amerikaanse intellectueel James Bowman: 
Two developments of the nineteenth century in Europe and America have contributed to the obscuring of this essentially local quality of honor. One was the rise of the modern nation-state. Patriotism in its modern sense depended on an idea of the whole nation as a single honor group…
in spite of the discrediting that honor has undergone, the basic honor of the savage — bravery for men, chastity for women — is still recognizable beneath the surfaces of the popular culture that has done so much to efface it. If you doubt it, try calling a man a wimp or a women a slut…
Today, cultural honor survives only in a degraded form, in places where the official socializing process is weakest, as among urban gangs and the hip-hop culture, with its high-profile 'disses' and 'beefs,' that has grown up out of them and so introduced the popular culture to a kind of parody of old-style honor talk…'
Met andere woorden: zoals James Bowman terecht opmerkt bestaat het begrip 'eer' alleen nog in een subcultuur, maar dan als 'parodie.' In dit opzicht behoort Hoflands zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' tot de straatcultuur waar  begrippen als 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' zich nog in de vorm van een bespottelijke imitatie manifesteren. Want laten we duidelijk zijn: niemand bij zijn volle verstand kan nu nog, na Auschwitz en Hiroshima, naar eer en geweten volhouden dat een moderne oorlog ook maar in de verste verte iets te maken heeft met 'eerzucht.' Er is niets eervol aan massaal geweld waarbij de meeste slachtoffers gewone burgers zijn, vrouwen, kinderen, bejaarden, ongewapende mannen. Een opiniemaker als Henk Hofland die met de begrippen 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' goochelt is een gevaar voor de geestelijke volksgezondheid en dient ook tegen zichzelf beschermd te worden door hem geen platform te geven om zijn fascistoïde gedachten te verspreiden. Wanneer deze hoogbejaarde nog steeds niet weet dat zijn machismo niet alleen pathetisch is, maar veel erger nog levensgevaarlijk, zal het nooit leren. Kennelijk wil hij ook nog eens over zijn graf heen regeren. Zijn 'zucht' en 'lust' en alle andere onbeheersbare driften passen niet in de politiek van het nucleaire tijdperk in de inmiddels global village van meer dan zeven miljard bewoners. Hoewel enkelen van mijn collega's in dit polderlandje Hofland hebben uitgeroepen tot de grootste journalist van de twintigste eeuw moeten we voor enige wijsheid toch over de dijken heenkijken. 'War does not determine who is right,' aldus de Britse filosoof Bertrand Russel, 'only who is left,' terwijl Albert Einstein op zijn beurt erop wees dat
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Het Duitse gezegde dat 'een grote oorlog een land met drie legers achterlaat — een leger kreupelen, een leger rouwenden, en een leger dieven' vat de realiteit treffend samen. Hofland past naadloos in de categorie oude mannen die jonge mannen elkaar op het slagveld laten afmaken omdat de oude garde van mening is dat hun 'eer' is geschonden. Hun 'strijdlust' komt voort uit een combinatie van verveling en machismo. De oude mannen voelen hoe hun macht en kracht wegvloeit, en de kleinburger onder hen compenseert dit door rancuneuze en soms zelfs apocalyptische wensdromen. Ze gaan ervan uit dat samen met hen de hele wereld verdwijnt. Après moi le déluge. In hun paniek willen ze zich doen gelden, ze willen gehoord worden, hoe oud en versleten ze ook mogen zijn. Ze zitten gevangen in 'a strong sense of masculine pride,' waarbij hun behoefte 'to prove their strength,' niet afneemt, maar juist toeneemt. Hoe groter het gemis des te sterker het verlangen naar geweld. Daar zit de grijsaard, verslaafd aan zijn imago van weleer, vol 'jealousy, competitiveness, and pride,' terwijl 'violent encounters are... often pursued to demonstrate his strength to others.'  Aan het geweld ontleent hij een anachronistisch 'eergevoel.' Hij leeft nog, hij wordt nog steeds gezien. Hij is nog niet voor de eeuwigheid onzichtbaar geworden. Hij telt nog mee, en kan het spel nog spelen. 'The two men stared at each other. Assumptions were made, judgments rendered, dicks measured,' zo beschreef de Amerikaanse schrijfster Jennifer Estep het treffend in haar roman Spider's Bite (2010). De drijfveren van veel haantjes zijn niet veel meer dan frustratie en egotripperij, en het zijn juist de mannen met een enorme geldingsdrang die er niet in slagen om op een waardige manier in de schaduw terug te treden. Het zou verstandiger zijn wanneer Hofland de eer aan zichzelf hield en stopte met zijn larmoyante gejammer over ‘Het machteloze Westen’ en over het in zijn ogen ‘populistisch alarmisme’ dat ‘het vredestichtende Westen’ verhindert gewelddadig in te grijpen in Syrië. Hij zou moeten stoppen met zijn gehamer op de teloorgang 'In Europa en Amerika' van 'eerzucht en strijdlust.' Zijn oorlogsretoriek paste wellicht in de hoogtijdagen van de Koude Oorlog, toen beide partijen nog precies wisten waar ze stonden en waar de grenzen lagen, maar in de chaotische postmoderne tijd waarin neoconservatieven en neoliberalen de macht hebben gegrepen is Hoflands propaganda levensgevaarlijk. Het is met name ook de rol  van de hysterisch reagerende commerciële massamedia die de al even ideologisch opererende Russische pers dwong de zaak nog eens uit te spellen: 
Kremlin-backed journalist: Russia could turn US to 'ash.'
A Kremlin-backed journalist issued a stark warning to the United States about Moscow's nuclear capabilities on Sunday as the White House threatened sanctions over Crimea's referendum on union with Russia.
"Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly current affairs show.
Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast.
Kiselyov was named by President Vladimir Putin in December as the head of a new state news agency whose task will be to portray Russia in the best possible light.

Laat één ding duidelijk zijn: de westerse bevolking van de Europese Unie en de Verenigde Staten heeft niets te winnen bij een gewapend conflict met Rusland. De opiniemakers mogen dan wel denken dat in elk geval zij veel te winnen hebben bij geweld, maar die veronderstelling is net zo onnozel als hun oorlogshetze. Ondertussen gaan de bezuinigingen op de westerse bevolking gewoon door, wie anders maakt de rijke elite nog rijker? De oplopende spanningen zullen alleen maar leiden tot nog meer bezuinigingen, want iemand moet toch de rekening betalen. 


Het gevaar voor Europa is niet Rusland, maar de VS. Tijd voor de Amerikaanse cabaretier, wijlen George Carlin over zijn eigen land:
people wonder why 17 other countries graduate more scientist than we do. Education - politicians use that word, they use it on you. Politicians have traditionally hidden behind 3 things: the flag, the bible, and children - no child left behind, no child left behind. 

Oh, really it wasn't to long you were talking about giving children a head start. Head start - left behind, someone's losing fucking ground here, but there's a reason. There's a reason for this. There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it'll never ever be fixed - it's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got, because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now. The wealthy big business interests that controls things, and makes all the important decisions. 


Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice - you don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and payed for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying - lobbying, to get what they want.

Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want - they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that - that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table, and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want they. You know what they want? Obedient workers - Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do that paper work. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pension that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it - they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.

By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.

The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) - continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you - they don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all - at all - at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.

That's what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it, but say what you want about Americans folks. You can say what you want about Americans. You can call them smart, dumb, ignorant, innocent, naive, gullible, easily led, what ever you want you're going to have to deal with them. You're going to have to deal with them, because you're in the television business. You got the all suicide channel on cable TV. You need these people as viewers. You need people looking in. You got to worry about your ratings. You are going to have to be worrying about sweeps months. Most people know what sweeps months are. They're the more important ratings months of the year where they put on there biggest attractions, and their hottest stars. And try to pump up their ratings a little more. Get their local stations to adjust their advertising rates. You're going to have to compete with the mentality of network television, and I think of an all suicide channel, during sweeps months, you're going to have to go with mass suicides - big public events where hundreds of people all kill themselves at the same time right on live TV.

Now I've been resting with a way to do this. I've been trying been trying to figure this out. I swear to God, this is the truth, I've been trying to figure this part of it out for 6 months now, and I only recent have it so I'm guna tell you about it. Now we're going to have to get lots, and lots of people to kill themselves on demand. How are we going do this - that's the question. How are we going to get large numbers of people to commit suicide at a time or place of our choosing? And I mean large numbers, because don't forget besides sweeps we're going to have to be thinking about 24 hour a day programming so to make this work we're going to need organization. We need a system. Can't just wait for people to come by the studio all day, drop by, and commit suicide. What we have to do is build up a large pool of hopeless people. Suicide volunteers - people with no hope. People whom society has given up on, fate has given up on, or who have given up on themselves. Rock bottom, dead end totally fucked up people with no hope, and no reason to live.

Have we got our share of them. Think of it was a pyramid, that'll give you a visual fix on it. The pyramid of the hopeless. We're going to start building this pyramid as the very base naturally, and the bottom layer is going to be homeless people. God knows we got plenty of them. Nobody gives a fuck about them. Nobodies got a plan. Nobodies got any money for them. Nobody has a program. Nobody gives a fuck about homeless people. We don't k now how many we have even. We know 500,000 of them are veterans cause we're so good to the veterans in this country, and we know about 1 million to a million and400,000 of them are children so then god knows how many more we got. Totally fucking hopeless. Into the pyramid they go.

Now the next group we're guna put in here, these are the people in prison with these long sentences they've been given. Many of them deserved. I'll grant you that. I'm sure half the people are in prison for the things they really did. That's not a bad average, one out of every two, but nobody gives a shit about these people. Nobody's guna hire them if they do get out. They're never going to get out. Rehabilitation doesn't work, and the judges give them these fucking draconian sentences: 40, 60, 70, 80, 100 year sentences, life term, double life, one guy about a month ago was give three consecutive life term sentences, plus two death penalties. How the fuck do you serve that? Even David Copperfield can't do that shit. In order to do that you would have to be a Hindu. Then you got the people on death row. They ain't going anywhere. In the fucking pyramid they go.

Now the next layer, this group is self-selected - self-selected, and bit controversial to some ears I guess. These are these people who claim to be depressed. Okay? Apparently in this land of plenty. This richest nation in the history of the world (we're so proud of saying that). Some super markets have a hundred thousand items in them. We have 19 million americans claiming to be depressed, and some of them take medicine for it. Sometimes the medicine for it makes one of them commit suicide, and that depresses the shit out of the rest of them. Then you only have these people that think they're depressed. They think they're depressed, because they saw the commercial on TV, and the doctor looked like a good guy, the music sounded kind of peppy. And what the fuck? Probably some of these pills would pick me right the fuck up. Totally fucking hopeless mindset - in the fucking pyramid.

Up at the very top we are guna put the people who are truly sick. The terminally ill. Unfortunately no hope for a lot of them. Hundreds of thousands of them - no cure for what they have. Some of them there's no cure, because no ones looking for one. Aint enough people sick with it, so there's no money in the cure. Then there's people where there's a cure, but they don't have the money for it. Then there's one who can, but they're to far gone. Then there's one who can get the cure, but they have no social means to get to it so these people ain't going anywhere - they should be allowed to commit suicide.
Boom!

In the fucking pyramid they go.

Now think of what you got here. Think of yourself as the executive vice president of programming at the all suicide channel. Think of what you have to work with in the pyramid of the hopeless. You have homeless, imprisoned, condemned, depressed, and terminally ill, and I'm going to bet you anything in this depraved culture of ours - bet you anything with the reality show mentality we have that on the all suicide you could get 500 of these hopeless people to hold hands, and jump into the grand canyon. I'll fucking bet you - I'll fucking bet you you can get this done in this country right this now, for money - for money you got to give them something. Oh shit. They're americans, they're for sale, give them a little something.





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