Will the shit hit the fan in Israel?

Licks you are amazing, you still haven’t answered the question.

You keep reaffirming the comments I made about your views originally -

That you think voting useless

That you think doing anything to oppose the elite useless

That you think people should just wait for a collapse, which you believe will come but which you don’t actually know will come, you just hope it will.

But you still refuse to answer the question about the result of spreading such views.

All these things if imitated would allow the elite to gain more wealth and power so why do you seem to want to help them when you claim to be against them?


**

So in the absence of a reply from Lick to my question, I began to wonder why someone like him - who claims to have the same ideas as me about the desirability for a better world - would want to be helping the wealthy elite that as I see as the main obstacle to positive change.

For a time I couldn’t fathom it then it struck me.

What if he so believed in this Mad Max kind of collapse he thinks is coming and the progressive restructuring of society would he thinks inevitably would follow, that he wasn’t just hoping for it but was actually trying to bring it about in some way?

What if he thought the wealthy elite in their corruption where the most likely people to bring about a collapse?

So to bring about the collapse sooner they just have to be unopposed.

So if he tried to stop people opposing the wealthy elite they would gain more power more quickly and thereby hasten the collapse’s arrival?

Well besides being a tad megalomaniac it would fit his actions.

It fits his recommendations as to doing nothing to oppose the elite and his reasons for not wanting to talk about it.

I mean he is not likely to want to advertise the fact that he is trying to con people. It also seems to me like an awfully big gamble to be playing with peoples lives, what if the collapse doesn’t come or doesn’t happen for many years, what if it comes but the rich are so powerful and entrenched that they actually come out of it stronger not weaker?

Lets face it lots of things could go wrong with this plan.

But remember this is all conjecture and as soon as Lick gets around to answering the question we’ll all know his real reasons for wanting to help the wealthy gain more power.

 

You really do have an overactive imagination Balbus. Not much by way of substance to any supposed views of your own (as evidenced by your constant refusal to do more than make assertions about what Ive clearly stated several times already), but certainly an amusing circular logic in which you have immersed yourself.

Any necessary recognition of the multiple mechanisms established to safeguard and perpetuate the present order at national/internaitonal levels be damned from your happy Christmas wish list of "should be" changes.

No response, as expected as, to HOW you plan to eliminate these mechanisms in order to realise your utopian dream, but plenty of criticism and presumtpion about the activities of others who see the current charade for what it is and recognise its impending implosion.

Equation with "religion" smacks more of a PB jibe than any serious intellectualy honest search for truth so you run off to those with whom you apparently share a greater affinity for narcissistic delusion and we'll see what great social revolution you've brought about in 20 years time.

If I were a betting man, I'd say the odds of the elite being any worse off due to your activities are far more astronomical than the growing disparity between rich and poor itself. Good luck to you whatever it is that you actually do.

 

Lick you are amazing, you still haven’t answered the question.

Is it too complicated, do you wish me to explain it?

You seem to be say that voting isn’t worth it, which favours the wealth sponsored political parties.

You seem to say that it isn’t worth trying to organise for change, which gives the wealthy elite a free hand to organise for changes that favour them.

You seem to be saying that the only thing people can do is wait for a possible ‘collapse’ that you think just might bring about some progressive reordering of society.

If this advise was followed it would basically leaves the wealthy elite completely unopposed.

So Lick why do you claim to be against the wealthy elite, but seem to be supporting so much that would favour the wealthy elite and make their position stronger?

**

Now I've asked you this several times and you still don’t answer, why?

 

You were answered a considerable time ago Balbus, but you apparently have some mental dissociative issue which prevents you from comprehending what has been said to you. Your inability to acknowledge that the elite mechanisms are ALREADY fully entrenched and that (obviously unbeknownst to you) the US electoral system, from vote accumulation to vote counting, is now fully in the hands of but two major corporations both tied firmly to the Republican Party, leads me to understand your inability to grasp anything Ive said.

So feign your silly disbelief and your self assumed informed protest and come show us all just how significantly you've overthrown the whole system, whose features you refuse to even admit apart from the simplistic soundbite of rich v. poor.

That you should presume me, of all people, favouring elite control because I can recognise and admit the extent of their institutionalised control mechanisms and name the fraud for what and where it manifests itself to a predominantly misinformed and smugly unconcerned public, is what any intellectually honest mind would find astounding.

When you are able to differentiate between grassroots efforts to improve people's immediate conditions at the local level and recognising the necessity for a major institutional collapse at the national/international systemic level, be sure to let me know. Until then, this broken record you present to the forum has worn itself out. Find a new subject for your obsessive compulsions.

 

LOL

Ok Lick, still no straight answer then!

**

But I’m beginning to get the impression of a reply -

Are you saying that you think it is worthless opposing the wealthy elite because you think they have in some way already won?

That to you voting is useless because the elite control so completely the electoral system that it wouldn’t matter if a majority of people actually did oppose them it wouldn’t make any difference?

That to you trying to change things for the better is useless because the elite are able to block or kill it so there really isn’t much point. (Even the grassroots efforts you’ve said are ultimately useless)

That you are trying to convince people that the ONLY thing they can do is hope that one day a collapse will come, which just might bring the elite down.

**

The thing is that I can’t stop thinking that this is exactly what the elite would want people to think, that they are all powerful and so entrenched that it is impossible to defeat them.

So what you’re pushing is just the kind of propaganda that would be circulated to give just that impression. What was it Sun Tzu said in the ‘Art of War’ that the best way to win is not to have to fight? I mean if you can convince the other side that they just cannot win and that there is no point in fighting, you win without having to fight.

But we all pay an awfully heavy price if people follow Lick advice and he turns out to be wrong

**

I’ve met many people from many countries around the world (even Americans) that believe that they are fighting for a better world, for the benefit of the many not the few. All of them are deeply involved in politics and on many different levels, but they all have one thing in common they believe change can be accomplished. The going might be harder in some places than others and there are victories and defeats, but even in the darkest moments they don’t loose that conviction.

So are all these people wrong and Lick right?

**

People have been fighting for a better world for generations, people fought to get the vote, to stop slavery, to end apartheid, to bring in work place regulations, to stop child labour, to get cleaner water, to get cleaner air, and so on and so on.

As far as I’m concerned people still have things that need fighting for if we are to try and change things for the better.

Or we can believe Lick and decide it just isn’t worth it.

**

 

Or you can believe Balbus and simply impose whatever cognitively dissonant reading you wish on another's clear and concise responses with assumptions about his/her views on social change.

For Blabus, he imagines that an electoral system hijacked and now controlled from ballot box to "official proclamation" of the (pre-selected) winner, and that essentially from a pool of TWO "viable" offerings (the only ones allowed nationwide coverage thanks to a equally consolidated corporate media control), can somehow provide the means for some sweeping stsem reformer to take the reigns and bring about some blissful utopia of egalitarianism.

Nevermind the mechanisms of Federal/Private Corporate response (CIA, FBI, corporate hitmen) which past and present have been employed to round up, smear or even eliminate any social revolutionary whose impact was gaining sufficient populist support to threaten the established order.

Does that suggest one does nothing? No, one acts within one's immediate environment at the local or perhaps at most state level to expose elite corruption (corporate or political) and inform the citizenry within that immediate environment of other options. Will this have any immediate impact on the overarching National or International system, no. It MAY engender incremental progressive continuity over generations though and thereby PERHAPS achieve a critical mass sufficient to reach into the strongholds of elite planning and power, but that is a matter of "hope" and "belief" which are neither certain nor far reaching so long as the majority subscribe to the smug complacency of "business as usual".

To suggest therefore that a requisite catalyst for SWEEPING social revolution would be the collapse of the present economic order through its own shortsighted reliance on the immediacy and unlimited growth of profit is a call to inactivity is simply evidence of the utopian predelection for avoiding the crucial first step in determining an alternate systemic model, namely recognising the facets and capabilities of the current institutionalised threat to be opposed.

Unfortunately, Balbus makes it clear that he would rather stumble ahead with his placard and wish list of "should be's" whilst subscribing in so many ways to very paradigms of thought established by those he claims to oppose. Such a uncritical approach is what truly reinforces elite aims.

Once again I wish you luck while you chase your own tail.

 

LOL

So that’s a yes then

You do think that voting isn’t really worth it

You do think that any changes that a person might bring about can at best be small and local and are anyway just patches over a corrupt system that is too far gone to save (so not really worth it then)

And you do believe that being ‘active’ is waiting around for some future ‘collapse’.

**

All in all it is better in your opinion to hope for a future collapse than actually oppose the elite now.

**

Can you begin another thread and explain how this ‘collapse’ is meant to bring about a progressive reorganisation? I mean you talk about a depression, but many of the great rich families and companies of pre-1920’s American survived the depression. You also talk of revolution but the people that stormed the Bastille didn’t foresee the terror or the Emperor Napoleon and I think Karl Marx would have been horrified by Stalin’s perversion of a supposedly communist revolution.

Hoping to here from you soon

Balbus

 

Casting votes in a system engineered and administered of, by and for the predetermined results of the elite is indeed an exercise in futility. Until those parties are divested of control over that system and their fraudulent aparati are similarly eliminated from the equation, it remains a status quo-affirming charade.

I suggest you go educate yourself on the US electoral process. Else, feel free to keep parroting this ill informed phrase ad naseum.

Yes and No (its worth the moderate improvements one can afford to those on whose behalf one is endeavouring within that immediate environment). Again, if you subscribed to more than utopian fantasies without any proper recognition of the National and International mechanisms currently entrenched to serve and perpetuate elite interest, youd understand that point without my having to repeat it.

No, thats your delusional hobgoblin idea. Apparently you dont comprehend written English too well.

You carry on believing whatever silly notions you wish, you've made it perfectly clear you are incapable of distinguishing between assessments of social reality and the efforts one might make in spite of those realities.

There you go regressing almost back to the beginnin of your presumptuous assertions. This point has been addressed already. Collapse is not "MEANT" to bring about. It is the impending catalyst which would suffice to shake the majority of smugly complacent citizens out of their non-participatory disregard for the manner and model of their governance and provide a greater CHANCE that alternate models could gain a fair hearing.

Somehow you fail or refuse to comprehend the distinction there as well.

Keep chasing your tail.

 

Lick

Really I’m just seeking understanding, it seems to me that it is you and your contradictions that are making understanding hard to find.

I say you seem to imply voting is worthless. You say it is, you even say in the last post it “is indeed an exercise in futility”.

I say that you say this because you believe it is completely under the control of the elite and you agree with me saying the elite has “control over that system and their fraudulent aparati”.

You then seem to tell me that I’ve got it completely wrong.

**

I say you think that any changes that a person might bring about can at best be small and local and are anyway just patches over a corrupt system that is too far gone to save (so not really worth it then)

And you say “Yes and No” and explain that, Yes, you think it can only done locally and in small ways and that YES it cannot do any more because the system is too far gone.

So where is the No bit?

**

I say you do believe that being ‘active’ is waiting around for some future ‘collapse’

And you say I’m “incapable of distinguishing between assessments of social reality and the efforts one might make in spite of those realities”

But you have said several times that the only way that things can change is if we have a collapse. So the reality must be that we have to wait for it to happen.

**

I ask how this ‘collapse’ is meant to bring about a progressive reorganisation?

And you tell me that the “Collapse is not "MEANT" to bring (it) about”

Then in the very next line you give an explanation of how the collapse is meant to bring about a progressive reorganisation by bringing about the conditions that “provide a greater CHANCE that alternate models could gain a fair hearing”

**

Lick pull yourself together how are people meant to understand you when you say one thing then contradict or deny it in the very next breath.

 

The No "bit" is the parenthetical response to your presumptuously misinterpreted parenthetical assertion. I had hoped that much at least would be apparent to you.

As for the last part, I suggest you research the imperative tone of your choice of wording. "Meant" implies that the collapse was purposed specifically for the end result in question. It is not "meant" to bring about anything, it simply is the inevitable consequence of the present myopic pursuits of the present order and those who administer it. The resulting loss of status quo comforts for the bulk of our complacent societies would be sufficient to provide a fertile soil for alternative models of governance along more egalitarian lines, but that depends on the direction of present local efforts to which I have previously alluded, repeatedly.

This discussion is finished.

 

Lick seems to believe that the elite have in effect ‘won’ and are in such a position of power that they are virtually impossible to oppose. That they have all the power they want and will not ask for more, not more tax cuts or the lessening of people’s rights, because they already have all they want.

So the only way out is if a ‘collapse’ comes and the suffering and death it would cause brings about a revolution, and that that revolution will then bring about a progressive system.

On all this we just have to trust Lick.

But what if Lick is wrong?

The idea of a collapse that changes everything is a potent one and has been the theme of many books and films, hell, I’ve even written stories involving them myself. But these are fictions not fact. No one, not me, not Lick, not anyone can accurately predict what the future might bring, some have tried, but them history is littered with foretold ‘dooms days’ that never happened.

But maybe a large economic collapse will happen and maybe a revolution does follow, there still is no way to predict what way events might travel. It could just as likely to bring about an authoritarian dictatorship as an enlightened progressive state.

I don’t think hoping for suffering and death and wishful thinking about a glorious revolution is a sound or rational policy.

So what about his views on the supreme power of the elite?

As far as I can tell it is only a theory based on personal belief and tenuous evidence.

History shows that many times doom sayers have told people that powerful interests would make something impossible to change, but those things have changed.

US Slavery was abolished, men and women did get the vote, empires have fallen and regimes being toppled.

Yes things are bad now but it seems to me that they could get a lot worse if people stop opposing those that would want to strip us of rights and benefits already fought for or stop trying and change things for the better.

To me it seems foolhardy in the extreme to tell people that really these things are just not that worth it and that the ONLY hope is some possible ‘collapse’.

 

Out with a whimper, Lick? You're waiting for a disaster, but after that, "it depends". That's quite a plan.

 

Unless you are omniscient as well as derisive, yes PB. The success of any alternate system of democratic governance will "depend" on the mobilisation of the presently complacent masses. No wimper involved.

 

Another demonstration of Balbus's predelection for imposing assertions on other's posts which were never once made nor remotely suggested. If anything the elite are demonstrating that there is no upward limit to their grasping lust for power and wealth consolidation.

Again repeating the same false reading that has been answered repeatedly. Not WILL, MAY. Just as it could lead to an even greater tyranny and despotism.

Again false. Your idea of discussion is clearly dependent on lies and selective readings of others' posts. That is now perfectly clear. I have in fact stated that full systemic change would be achievable only if the present order collapses of its own exhaustion or THROUGH armed uprising. The very manners in which those previous empires to which you have alluded were overturned.

Seems you've finally descended to the level of intellectual dishonesty and absurdity regularly evinced by PB & his merry men. More's the pity.

 

Wow, this plan just keeps getting better and better.

 

No "plan" has been presented in this circular discussion, least of all by you. But then we know you live in the delusion that your cozy little status quo will carry on indefinitely.

*awaits next inane PB quip

 

But Lick

“If anything the elite are demonstrating that there is no upward limit to their grasping lust for power and wealth consolidation”. But “whilst I, you and any number of individuals may strive in limited scope to realise some incremental changes in one's immediate environment, overall these changes cannot reform what is inherently, institutionally corrupt. You can't patch a rotten tooth and expect an infection not to spread beneath.”

So while the rich get power and wealth, we can do little and it will not help anyway? Really why should we bother?

Not exactly a rousing call to oppose then getting this extra power is it?

**

I said - So the only way out is if a ‘collapse’ comes and the suffering and death it would cause brings about a revolution, and that that revolution will then bring about a progressive system

And you reply – “Again repeating the same false reading that has been answered repeatedly. Not WILL, MAY. Just as it could lead to an even greater tyranny and despotism”

But your reply is actually what I’ve been saying, your strategy seems based on nothing more than irrational wishful thinking. -“But maybe a large economic collapse will happen and maybe a revolution does follow, there still is no way to predict what way events might travel. It could just as likely to bring about an authoritarian dictatorship as an enlightened progressive state.
I don’t think hoping for suffering and death and wishful thinking about a glorious revolution is a sound or rational policy.”

Aren’t you just paraphrasing what I’ve just said (any closer and it would be plagiarism) and then claiming it is yours and that it is me that got you views wrong?

**

So let me get this straight

I say – To me it seems foolhardy in the extreme to tell people that really these things (opposing the elite) are just not that worth it and that the ONLY hope is some possible ‘collapse’.

You reply – “Again false. Your idea of discussion is clearly dependent on lies and selective readings of others' posts. That is now perfectly clear”.

Yet you then say – “I have in fact stated that full systemic change would be achievable only if the present order collapses”

So in other words opposing the elite isn’t worth it because only a collapse of the present order is going to bring any type of meaningful change.

But even then such a collapse and the revolution you hope comes out of it may just lead to even greater despotism?

 

How can 5 million spoiled brats stand up to the 300 million pissed off Arabs whose lives they have destroyed? Israel will fall, it is a historical inevitability. It is only a matter of when and how.

 

Objection!

Your honour, the badger is counselling the witness.

 

ummm....do you think you could......uhhh.....i mean if you could just.......what?