The New Decade, the old, the forever

The great Orientation. We opened up the 2000's with a refusal to count ballots cast by 'real' people deciding a presidential election, denying free speech at its most important and fundamental; now we open up the 2010's with an opinion declaring that corporate free speech has been censored and their constitutional right to spend unlimited sums of money in politics restored. My dad disdainfully disregards talk with any semblance of "conspiracy" (conspiracy - An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.; A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design), declaring that while many are flawed they are at least sincere ("We may disagree with him but Dick Cheney thinks that he is doing the right thing for American National Security") . No hidden agendas...but is it not the nature of power and elites to organize, to be secretive, to act with desires and motives and traditions and libidos and blood and pettiness that the public will never understand; reasoning outside of national duty/public service? People of a certain stripe will do what it takes to move up the food chain...the question is what gets you up the food chain in the US...the higher you get the murkier the terrain is... What of the Federalist Society? What of the Council for National Policy? To be part of something special that no one knows, above and beyond others, the secret joy in the hidden agenda, "you gotta serve somebody", power in nobody knowing your goal, joy at seeing the crazy become real, you may not believe in it or agree with it but in your veins runs the truth- "I have taken part in the birth of a now steady growing hyperstition"- this is pure bliss. I have the power to do what I want for reasons of my own, you expect my organization to do something but you will never know why we/I do anything, you can only conjecture. That is not to say the lower level peons in the Federalist Society know what is going on...they may suspect...they may just know that this is what you must believe to get anywhere in the game...

We can argue about the merits and outcomes of the Supreme Court decision, whether regulation was ever effective in controlling corporations (it wasn't, but maybe because regulation wasn't taken seriously), but the fact remains that whatever rationale the conservative majority based their opinion on, (which i read...half of) it was not the logic of law, nor was it common sense. In ripping up precedent so haphazardly, blatantly disregarding and only barely defending against the biting dissent that they knew was coming from Stevens, they showed that they are no longer afraid of objective intellectual analysis. The conservative majority contradicts themselves.... consistency of judicial philosophy is not to be found in the legacy of their opinions no matter what they say about "originalism". The closest I have seen to a true explanation of this is this article in Slate. The question is why, who, how? How far they go in their facial challenges to the makeup of America is as far as they can before delegitimizing their own institution and are threatened with a facial challenge, ie of their legitimacy. The shell must remain intact(or does it? one way to dismantle govt is to show its ability to be corrupted and used for the wrong reasons). The tree rots slowly from the leaves toward the trunk in all places at once, perpetual outrage becomes a symptom, there is our time and there is their time. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Sell it all off to the private sector...but what have corporate interests become? Corporations abstract entities we cannot hold accountable, their profits siphoned off to who knows where, their board members and managers Gods behind the scenes doing anything besides running their business which runs perpetually of its own inertial motion. The only thing we can say for certainty is that the government is no longer for by or of the people- what Frankenstein it has become we must regain the will to understand.

What are fraternities but obsolete secret institutions, attempts to mimic the secret organizations that had actual power (Delta Tau Delta, started because the literary award at their university was rigged, so they started their own org to regain control of the org in question-if something so minor could spread all over the country...)? We mock Skull and Bones, we want to believe they have no real power (Yale preppy elites, what dorks...), secretly jealous- secretly believing they have unlimited power, wanting to believe they have an infinite scope of connection, connections beyond the ability of our neuro-connections to imagine. Conspiracy theorists lose their heads in the mapping...mapping maps like those of a globe in the 1500's- all assumptions and empty areas.

What do we do when every institute/Non-profit on capital hill, at least most of the powerful ones, is shady at its core? As we have institutionalized corruption, have we institutionalized conspiracy? But as everyone knows that it is there, nobody knows what it means, how it functions. Complexity is the the modern man's scourge, whose stubbornness and individualism/alienation lead him to one of two conclusions: either it is too much and he will never understand, or he already understands everything/enough- a lazy plea of pathetic humble-ignorance or a lazy plea of righteous arrogant-ignorance. Or a disdain of every belief system (4chan, internet-troll-forum, apathetic-cool) or belief in any system that comes along (the shooting in the dark of the "conspiracy theorist") ". Actually these four points form a wxyz chart of the last man[standing], whose presence appears in the face of a world that tells you reality is what you make of it but attempts to break in find you faced with giant unexplained fortresses rising amongst the landscape, whose members and purposes and battles are inexplicable to you (much like the Greek Gods to the Greek populace). Head Republican leaders have connections with Islamists. Private industries deal with narco-mafia. Islamists are in league with Nazis. Zionists are Communists. Corpoleaders are Nazis. Republicans support Israel, Republicans don't support Israel. Weapons are sold everywhere. The War on Terror, The War on Drugs, the Free Masons, the Free Market, all are concepts in name only, none of them unified, ideas in practice that only pretend to be what they are, and under observation quiver and are at two places at once. Greater Israel, Greater Caliphate, Greater Dominionism. Where does it start, where does it end?

"Does the Brotherhood exist?"

"That Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is yes or no. As long as you live, it will be a riddle in your mind."

From 1984 by George Orwell

In this much of the modern world is shaped by one Cecil Rhodes, of the honored Rhodes Scholarship himself. A man idolized by many of the aristocratic imperial elite, this is a man who was a megalomaniac entrepreneur racist obsessed with control and expansion. In him lie many of the symptoms and desires of modern Western civilization in general. He too had dreams...

"To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity."

Not to say that his will lives on...but the idea of what is possible behind the scenes lives on. It could be that such things are never articulated, are just there in the background, shaping the logic of the institution, the thinking of the powerful, the dynamics of capital. That people do not have to be loyal to anything, but have the freedom to follow their own elite interest, saying one thing "We must destroy Islamofascism, while doing another- selling weapons, buying drugs from so-called Islamofascists...maybe it is a modern western trait. If it is it is one that is highly contagious...cracking through even the strongest cultures believing in honor and duty (Mishima's hated "Modern Japan"), leaders who are elected immediately forgetting the people they were supposed to serve (Any post colonial democracy, look at Africa, or look at Thailand and the King's one wish for newly elected politicians to be honest), and the crushing of almost any sincere/noble person/company/agenda/tradition.

This all comes back to my dad...to be deferential to elites because they are in positions to be respected is a custom of another era, customs that elites no longer hold to. He was upset when I characterized Clarence Thomas as worthless, Alito as a Mafia Goon, Scalia as head of propoganda, Roberts as the pretty face, and Kennedy as semi-respectful of the law but fatally flawed. Maybe I took it too far...but for me this is the only way to make sense of the world I see. I call upon Cecil Rhodes, whom people of his time called a "controversial figure", but now the West would like to forget as history moves forward and with perspective we can see that he was obviously a terrible person-

But it was Rhodes who originated the racist "land grabs" to which Zimbabwe's current miseries can ultimately be traced. It was Rhodes, too, who in 1887 told the House of Assembly in Cape Town that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa". In less oratorical moments, he put it even more bluntly: "I prefer land to niggers."

Africans have not forgotten his crimes, banishing Rhodesia from the map. In this regard I also call upon tradition, a tradition my dad also respects, of Mark Twain's truth to power, cutting through the bullshit and telling it how it is.

"I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake."

Sometimes nuance fails. And I stand by my statement of Alito as High level Henchman.