Saul Alinsky, Gruber, Ayers, and POTUS

The rules themselves are neither communist, fascist, capitalist, or any other "ist". They are merely the rules for a small group to seize power over a much larger group. They are just a road map to totalitarianism, and that is not limited to one political philosophy or another. The communists have used it, the fascists have used it, and now the capitalists are having a go at using it.

Regardless of the political economics involved, the end result is the same when viewed from the streets, from beneath the heels of the jackboots. It doesn't matter who's sliding those jackboots on in the mornings when they get out of bed.

I'd tend to disagree on a couple points.

Where are you seeing Capitalism? I look and I look...but beyond the "helpfully updated and annotated" text books of modern times to define it? I see nothing remotely like capitalism at play on a national level today and the last vestiges I saw of anything resembling it were destroyed under baby Bush in 2007 with his unbelievable statement to the effect of 'I'll break the system to save it'. Well...pardon my memory with precise words, but he sure DID break it. Not that there was much left to break by that point anyway, but hey..I kinda liked the little we had left..didn't you?

In Political theory, Obama is a text book example (literally fits the definition like a picture in the dictionary) of a Progressive. Old School, early 20th century Progressive. Economically? Well..Progressive mindsets cross the line to cover both Economic policy and politics..but I'm not sure I'd call our economics anything but self destructive.

Capitalism (or anything else for that matter) doesn't actually set as a goal and then praise when it's met...to export raw resources while domestic markets scream shortage. (Colonies do that....and the side which has BEEN colonized..not the colonial power)

No system I know of, actively works to get INTO wars and start NEW ones while viciously cutting back its own military or ability to cash the checks which mouths are busy writing. Finally, I know of no system we've seen before to put a name to...where a nation willfully and openly gives up its own language, culture and traditions for the inclusion of those well outside the nation, who have no particular love either way for it. Rome DID do that in a way, but by apathy and lack of will to prevent what caused their final crash into history books. We're doing it by actual official policy of the nation.

He's a progressive who has added yet a new aspect to the term. Progressive destruction by self selection in international evolution. A globalist...with a self-hate complex.

Also..before we say he's just a pawn working all this to some higher plan? Whose higher plan would that be? It must be hard to find an American willing to lead his own nation into the ground TO THE EXCLUSION of all others, that tend to benefit in the process. We aren't being collectively herded into a new reality, across the world.....but *WE* are, here in the Western World. It's amazing, the extent we come to believe it's an experience all 7 billion people are having at once.

You know? I have a feeling if we ever meet in the real world, we could sit down in the afternoon in a lounge and then close the place without ever running low on topics to chat about. Generally in agreement too, by the look of it. Maybe not perfect agreement..but that would be spooky if it happened too often anyway, right?

Wow.. to imagine.. I recognize so many from other places where "TPTB" as a real force of the world, and some Super-Governing Council working entirely in secret is taken as a given and simply a fact of life.

I always wondered how many people threw common sense and intelligence out the window to blindly accept that? As Alice notes...it isn't likely.

Humans are NOT naturally given to altruistic cooperation or working for greater goods which are not to our own direct benefit. Its kinda hard wired that way in our very genetics to survive as a species, first by individuals.

If we also assume absolute power corrupts absolutely, then we'd be imagining the most powerfully corrupt people in history, going against their human nature and own personal benefit...to work together in sharing global power.

Naww... I don't buy it either. It TPTB existed in that sense? They are or have torn each other up in the power struggles to reach that level and then stay there. :)

I think society is currently in a state of flux. It happens every so often, and games are played with words and symbols in an attempt to redefine them to the speaker's advantage, in an apparent attempt to reform or steer society. I've pretty much given up on discussing collectivism with collectivists, for that very reason - whatever their preference is, it keeps getting redefined from conversation to conversation, and an old guy like me just can't keep up with them whipper-snappers. Nowadays, I don't recognize "communists" or "socialists" or "progressives" or "Neocons" or any of the infinite permutations they spawn in all the redefinitions. I lump them all together as "collectivists" and forge onward.



I don't doubt that - corporations ARE collectives, by definition. It's just a matter of who is collecting the gold from the collective. With corporations, it's big wigs and stock holders. I've never ran across a collective that was actually geared towards "the community" on a grand scale - i.e. as a nation. All of the mega collectives of national import that I've ever seen were geared towards the state, and the state only - to hell with the peons and proles. Their only function was to support the state - and the big wigs and stock holders in it. The peons and proles were barred from stock holding, unless they joined the right party and climbed it's hierarchy. Then they became "big wigs" in it, even if only low-level big wigs. They have to stand on a lot of heads to do that, though.

The only semi-functional "community" collectives I've ever encountered have been small-scale... like farmer's co-ops.



I think it's the employees themselves that can foster a "family" environment - the Home Office will never be able to force it or even "help" it along. It either happens or it doesn't, and that hinges entirely upon the employees. Because of that, I think that if the corporation itself is trying to create it, they're doing it wrong.



China is a fine example of the majority stomping all over the minority that results from collectivization. If the majority didn't like the information, they didn't have to use it - but that doesn't automatically mean that barring it from everyone else was a good thing. Consider for a moment why the "people" felt a need to report it in the first place rather than simply ignore it. You're correct - that's collectivism in action, and it's only the higher-up in the hierarchy who benefit from it. Even in their reporting, the peons are only supporting the Big Wigs of the State.



Not necessarily. The idea is catching on like wildfire in urban areas. With the increasing urbanization of America, cities are becoming "hives", because they cannot function any other way. Now don't get me wrong - if people want to hive their own city, more power to them... I can always find another. The problem occurs with the expansion of the hive mind to the hinterlands, where the more individualistic of the species resides... that's why they're out there to begin with. Collectivizing your own city is on you - do as you will. Problems are going to inevitably arise when that hive expands and tries to annex the rest, however, and that is the goal of national collectivization, and what collectivism strives for. Their theory is that if a little collective is good, a big collective is better... but frictions are inevitably going to happen in that scenario. A mega-collective just can't happen without subjugating everyone within it's reach, and some of us are definitely going to kick at the harness.

I can see a future America composed of urban hives and hived-up mega-metropolises having to raid into the hinterlands because of their insistence on collectivizing individualists out there who fight back and then just stop producing quantities large enough to export to the hives for sustenance, in an attempt to starve them out. They would then have to raid just to survive. Which would lead to counter raids as punitive measures, ad infinitum.

I have a bleak outlook, but it's just a projection from observing the national hives of the last century, and observing the individualists of all centuries, and wondering how that would pan out here. It doesn't have to happen that way, but watch and see. I hope I'm wrong.



It's at the point already where the only viable option for the individual in some cases is to refuse to comply. "Civil Disobedience" if you will, but if the pressure is not relieved, that disobedience can get pretty uncivil, pretty quick.



Exactly! The concentration of power - centralization of power and thereby authority. That has been the downfall of every collective that has ever existed if it has been allowed, and our own will be no different.

"Joint ventures" aren't really "competitors", are they? That sort of thing leads to mergers, further centralization, and eventually, monopolies... then you don't have a "free market" any more. You have way too highly concentrated and centralized power.



Which is exactly why monopolization and centralization of power it engenders should be discouraged - forcefully if necessary. That applies not only to business, but politics as well. We are right now witnessing the monopolization of politics, just as we would see in financial markets. We have, nominally, only two "competitors" in the political arena, not even the postulated 5. Those two are increasingly working on "joint ventures" to the detriment of us all, and to the point that they have become nearly indistinguishable, functioning as a single "corporation". Any start-up competitors are squeezed right out of the political "market".

We. Are. Collectivized. Power is inexorably flowing to the central collection point in DC, and away from more localized centers - who, after all, would be a damn sight closer to the problems of the people.

And it happened right under our noses. We are no better off, politically speaking, than was, for example, the Soviet Union of last century with it's single Party. The only thing left for the totalitarians now are the consolidation and the inevitable purges. Happens every time. Watch for it.






Precisely. We call them "Democrats" and "Republicans" around here, and pretend like they are separate entities around election time just to watch the show. The rest of the time, non-election times, they are both busy trying to slap all of us down to our proper station in life.

Beneath their boots.

An excellent read, and the very reason i cannot support the "no borders - the land is free for all - and everything must be held in a common collective" crowd.

I cruise a lot of odd sites. This evening, in searching to try and find the Communist presidential candidate for 2016, I ran across a page at the CPUSA site that actually fosters and promotes that "misidentifiaction" of corporatism as capitalism, so that they have a clear "enemy" to "struggle with" and "fight against" to present to the proletariat. The only reason for that I can figure out is to herd more proles into the "masses" under their control, proles who would otherwise eschew the doctrine if they saw the differentiation more clearly. It's a prime example of my earlier point that lines are being blurred, sometimes intentionally, in order to force a desired result against the actual "will of the people". If one has to pull one over on the people to gain their support, they are not doing the will of the people, they are constructing the will of the people to conform to their own prejudices. We see the same thing all the time issuing forth from Madison Avenue. No difference at all in my mind, other than whether Power Broker A or Power Broker B collects the spoils.

IMO, the main difference between what we have now and feudalism of old is that there are still too many freeholders on the loose, and any serf can still run away from the manor and become a freeholder on his own with no - as yet - legal ramifications for his defection. I can see the noose tightening, but they'll probably never got the knot set in America, because we still have too much space to run to. That's one of the factors that leads me to believe that the metros will become more and more collectivized, but will not be as successful in expansion into the hinterlands, which effort will inevitably lead to conflict if left unchecked.



A certain amount of collectivism isn't a bad thing - it's necessary for larger scale infrastructure. Problems arise in the centralization of it, the outflow of power from the local, and ultimately individual towards the central, and ultimately what we have labeled in America as "federal" government. What we have now no longer resembles the federal structure initially set up here, with a weak central government whose function was merely a united front in foreign affairs, and settling disputes between individual states, which bore more power locally. Now the "federal" government has metastasized into something exerting inordinate power over the individual from far, far away where they are not aware of local issues at all, and care even less. They have made states (formerly more like their own self-contained countries) mere bureaucrats and distribution centers for federal power flowing DOWNWARD, rather than the power of the individual flowing UPWARD to empower a collective i.e. "federation".

That cannot end well. The structure is being put in place for anyone at all to seize it and abuse it - whether "communist", "socialist", "fascist", "corporatist", or any other "ist". The end result is the same for the people at the bottom of that heap, regardless of who is at the top of it. The only entity which WON'T be able to seize it is "the people", because the power flow direction is being set up all wrong for that.



I'll have to check that out when I get a chance.



I worked at a Burlington Coat Factory for a while. They had a go at that "team building" business every morning, mass store meetings with facts and sales figures and "attaboys" and all. Everyone but the managers hated it, and maybe the managers did too - I don't know. We got more "team building" accomplished over work than at any 10 meetings, and there was only one guy I ever had to say "more work, less talk" to - not that I had the authority to, it just bugged me that they guy couldn't talk while his hands were in motion doing. One on one time with the managers while we were working got more accomplished for employee relations than any number of dry meetings where we were being talked TO and handed dry figures we cared nothing about.

So my experience is just subjective. I never took any business classes, and the only business advice I was ever given was when my dad told me long ago to "drop your prices just below the other guys, and sell more units - make your money in volume. You'll get more volume than you can handle that way". Not much in the way of a business education, and certainly nothing formal.



Well, China has always had a hive-like structure, even since the days of dynasty, so they may be more conditioned to it where we are not. Japan also, although probably to a somewhat lesser extent.



There's no doubt that it's going that way - it's just the degree of the shift that concerns me. There is no amount of collectivization that will allow for unlimited expansion into limited resources, and at some point there will be a definite culling, whether we do it to each other or whether nature intervenes through something as simple as a virus.



That could be interesting, but there's no guarantee I'd be able to grasp it. I take it the opposing responses are at opposite sides of the bell curve?



They are, but they don't need to. I believe that scaling back the centralization of power and reversing the flow direction is doable, until the proper balance is reached - but it may be too late for anyone to actually want to do it. People are getting mad. Real mad. A "soft" revolution is still possible to accomplish that through the ballot box, but no one seems interested. Everyone wants to root for their own "side" of that two-headed coin we call "politics".



Most of America has traditionally agreed - search out the times when one party has had all of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and you'll see what I mean. Those times have been few and short, because what got "done" made someone mad enough to vote against it.




Well, the USSR had had a long time to perfect it since the consolidations and purges of the early 20th century, right after the Revolution up through Stalin. It's no wonder it was pretty bad. Yes, we have a long way to go, but if we keep chugging along at this rate, we'll eventually get there.

East German cities were the grayest things I ever saw. It's like they were filmed in black and white, and never made it to Oz at all.



Me too.