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Feb 9, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Artful politics is: "the purposeful creation of an illusion of options for the audience." ~ Sundance

We are fooled to believe we have 2 parties in the U.S. or Canada. What we have is one uniparty controlled by the same corporations.

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After Obama gave the bankers the keys to the kingdom and Democrats didn't flinch, after watching how easily the left was manipulated about Trump, watching how the left embraced the surveillance State, embraced censorship and seeing how they weaponized race, gender and the media, screaming for social justice while giving a free pass to the accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, while seeing an opportunity to pit the minority working class against the white working class, it was a no brainer for the banks to embrace the Democratic Party.

One of my concerns is, as they seem able to justify just about anything to "save democracy" I wonder what they will justify in the handling of elections? And I wonder if they will be led into conflict with Russia and China, half-thinking it will help them win in 2022.

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"Let them know that you disapprove of anything short of immediate action to investigate criminal activity that has affected society on a large scale. Let them know loudly. Let them know that they cannot be reelected if action does not begin now. "

Nobody needs a Washington career or time on Capitol Hill to understand the first job of Congress is to be reelected and grow their own power. The biggest influence on MoC after corp largess is public pressure. When these swamp dwellers hear public anger they do adapt their actions to follow the voters & get those votes.

Nothing works better than phone calls, brief and polite is best; folks who answer phones do not make policy they take messages. Sounding unhinged and angry lands you in the "Crackpot File" and every MoC office has them.

Capitol switchboard will locate MoC by zip code if you don't know which gem is yours & every Committee has its own staff so messages can be left there as well. Most district offices also have walk in hours and every meeting or call there is recorded and sent with a daily "District Activity" packet to Washington. District staff are always locals living in the community and typically friendlier than the sharks that thrive inside the Beltway as another option.

Capitol 202-224-3121 .... let them hear you!!

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Feb 9, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Thanks for the reminder to donate to Ron Johnson !

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Feb 9, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

In a reply to a comment here, Mathew links to one of his older posts. It is definitely worth a read, so I'm bumping it here:

https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/the-monetary-wars-part-vi

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I made an advanced order of the Fareed and Tyson book, and was just notified that the order is cancelled. What happened? Did the publisher cancel at the last minute? Are they being censored?

Politics is all theater. Trump won with huge margins. When they saw that, they shut down counting in only the 4 states needed to change the outcome and then manufactured enough votes to put a demented old man over the top.

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Feb 9, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Steve Sweeney’s loss was a miraculous and beautiful thing.

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"And for whatever reason, it does seem that within the past several decades, the banking networks around which so much of the corporate world revolves seems to have chosen the Democratic party as a place to consolidate power."

I think you have this backwards. It was the left that realized the power of controlling the banks as a way to consolidate power that has led us to where we are now. Consider CRA, ACORN and the control they had over bank mergers back in the 90s and early 2000s. Their leveraging of well-intentioned regulations to achieve their own policy goals was a template for the party. Obama took it to the next level with Operation Choke Point and showed how government muscle, when flexed in the face of heavily regulated industries, can be far more effective than legislation in achieving policy goals.

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What institution has proven itself worth saving?

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What do you think the odds are that someone or ‘something’ rises from the right, a legit authoritarian that gets things done. I know some are kind of worried that will happen as a reaction to everything we’re seeing from the left right now. Not to say that we aren’t seeing authoritarianism now though.

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Feb 9, 2022·edited Feb 9, 2022

As to not being able to handle a landslide, well, they did pretty well conjuring up a few million fingers on the scale last time. The question that bothers me is why? It seemed the threat was well enough contained. Why be so obvious?

One take is fear of an alliance between the bourgeois and the working class against the managerial class, the kunlageta, the pathocracy ... I don't know if there are hard divisions to be made.

https://thecirculationofelites.substack.com/p/class-dynamics

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"Let them know there is great need to rein in powers of unelected bureaucrats."

This is a point that Michael Knowles has been hammering on his podcast for several years. He lays the blame for our unelected bureaucracy mess at the feet of Woodrow Wilson.

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Being inside the industry for 27 years, I can see where the perception comes from. But left to their own devices, the banking and financial services industry would gladly be left alone and contribute equally to both sides to ensure optimal outcome for their desired results. But look at which side is threatening to drop the regulatory hammer as the banks go farther and farther to appease both congress and the several bureaucracies (the Fed, the OCC the SEC, the CFPB etc) that have a say in their day to day operations. The banks contribute to the Dems BECAUSE Elizabeth Warren is pounding the table so damn hard, not in spite of it. The banks are curtailing lending and investment to oil and coal interests, firearms manufacturers, payday lenders and the like not out of their own societal belief but because they are being pressured by regulators to do so. It can be covert but when environmental groups get ahold of congress and then congress holds hearings and then asks questions like "what is your institution doing to help cutail the cycle of violence in our cities?" the message is clear.

The funniest example of this was when Maxine Waters tried to hold the banks responsible for the student loan crisis and made each CEO answer how much money they made on student loans. One by one they each answered, zero, we got out of the business when the federal government made itself a monopoly in that space. These are the people running the show.

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Like always very good.

Can we trust politicians? Hell no!

Can we trust institutions? Hell no!

Can you trust yourself?

The Individual is confronted with a conspiracy so vast and so enormous that it fades away in its presence - Edgar Hoover

I try as you do to bring to light the darkness that surrounds us and I value your input and I value your contribution for we all are Humans and unite in our spirit and our soul.

https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/mk-ultra-covid-19-unit8200-israel

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"there is great need to rein in powers of unelected bureaucrats" AND elected ones!

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I fail to see the need for institutions at all. Perhaps you can help me out -- and I'm quite serious.

Let me explain this perspective.

Let’s take the need to assure safe medicines. Easy. People like Yeadon can start their own companies as third party certification companies, a bunch of other people do that and compete… problem solved. Then people like me would shortly be in business, making millions and saving thousands of lives. And Pfizer would be out of business.

More broadly... every single case of the government punishing individuals for ingesting, injecting, or inhaling a substance that harms nobody else, is a serious violation of individual rights.

I don’t particularly even care if people want to take Covid vaccines…. lack of third party certification, for instance, could mean there’s a high potential for fraud. People might die, that’s on them -- so long as the product isn't forced. Darwin Doin Work.

It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about cannabis, ivermectin, covid vaccines, or Coley’s toxins. A truly free market would rapidly sort out the truth. (How to get there is another question: I suspect we agree more on decentralization as a possible solution.)

Given that the large majority of those incarcerated in the U.S. are there over non-objective laws, particularly drug laws - and that this rate is highest in the world - objectively makes the U.S. government the most rights violating government on earth, leaving out corner cases such as North Korea.

Not only does it *not* argue for its supposed ability to "do good" worldwide by changing other governments, it argues that the U.S. government is logically at the top of the list of governments that have no legitimate sanction to exist.

Covid only made this much clearer because it *very rapidly* affected a far greater swath of people in the “respectable” classes.

That is why I did not get all that worked up over the suppression of HCQ and ivermectin in 2020. Same fascism, different decade, returning us to 1990 mortality levels. Yawn. The government has been depriving terminal cancer patients of treatment for decades, and 500,000 of them die every year.

Only in 2021 did the rights violation become much more severe, extending not just to denial of medicine (which has been going on for 6 decades), but to outright invasions of bodily autonomy.

That’s the distinction I saw in early 2021 which clearly demarcated the beginning of Nazi policies.

But of course, it’s all the same rot.

My position for 8 years has been:

We Don't Need Reform. We Need to Burn it to the Fucking Ground.

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