Friday, March 24, 2017

The Deep State's Dominant Narratives And Authority Are Crumbling

by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog

This is why the Deep State is fracturing: its narratives no longer align with the evidence.

As this chart from Google Trends illustrates, interest in the Deep State has increased dramatically in 2017.

 



















The term/topic has clearly moved from the specialist realm to the mainstream. I've been writing about the Deep State, and specifically, the fractures in the Deep State, for years.

Amusingly, now that "Progressives" have prostituted themselves to the Security Agencies and the Neocons/Neoliberals, they are busy denying the Deep State exists. For example, There is No Deep State (The New Yorker).

In this risible view, there is no Deep State "conspiracy" (the media's favorite term of dismissal/ridicule), just a bunch of "good German" bureaucrats industriously doing the Empire's essential work of undermining democracies that happen not to prostrate themselves at the feet of the Empire, murdering various civilians via drone strikes, surveilling the U.S. populace, planting bugs in new iPhones, issuing fake news while denouncing anything that questions the dominant narratives as "fake news," arranging sweetheart deals with dictators and corporations, and so on.

The New Yorker is right about one thing--the Deep State is not a "conspiracy:" it is a vast machine of control that is largely impervious to the views or demands of elected representatives or the American people. The key to understanding this social-political-economic control is to grasp that control of the narratives, expertise and authority is control of everything. Allow me to illustrate how this works.

The typical politician has a busy daily schedule of speaking at the National Motherhood and Apple Pie Day celebration, listening to the "concerns" of important corporate constituents, attending a lunch campaign fundraiser, meeting with lobbyists and party committees, being briefed by senior staff, and so on.

Senior administrators share similarly crowded schedules, minus the fundraising but adding budget meetings, reviewing employee complaints and multiple meetings with senior managers and working groups.

Both senior elected officials and senior state administrators must rely on narratives, expertise and authority because they have insufficient time and experience to do original research and assessment.

Narratives create an instant context that "makes sense" of various data points and events. Narratives distill causal factors into an explanatory story with an implicit teleology--because of this and that, the future will be thus and so.

For example: because Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the future promises the terrible likelihood (more than a possibility, given Iraqi deployment of poison gas in the Iraq-Iran War) that America or its allies will be devastated by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This teleology leads to the inescapable need to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by any means necessary, and remove the political will to use them by removing Iraq's leader from power.

Politicos and senior administrators rely on expertise and authority as the basis of deciding whether something is accurate and actionable. Professional specialists are assumed to have the highest available levels of expertise, and their position in institutions that embody the highest authority give their conclusions the additional weight of being authoritative. The experts' conclusion doesn't just carry the weight of expertise, it has been reviewed by senior officials of the institution, and so it also carries the weight of institutional authority.

So when the C.I.A. briefing by its experts claims Iraq has WMD, and the briefing includes various threads of evidence that the institution declares definitive, who is a non-expert to challenge this conclusion and teleology? On what technical basis does the skeptic reject the expertise and authority of the institution?

We can now define the Deep State with some precision. The Deep State is fundamentally the public-private centralized nodes that collect, archive and curate dominant narratives and their supporting evidence, and disseminate these narratives (and their implicit teleologies) to the public via the media and to the state agencies via formal and informal inter-departmental communication channels.

By gaining control of the narratives, evidence, curation and teleology, each node concentrates power. the power to edit out whatever bits contradict the dominant narrative is the source of power, for once the contradictory evidence is buried or expunged, it ceases to exist.

For example, the contradictory evidence in the Pentagon Papers was buried by being declared Top Secret. The bureaucratic means to bury skeptical (i.e. heretical) views or evidence are many. Sending the authors to figurative Siberia is remarkably effective, as is burying the heretical claims in a veritable mountain of data that few if any will ever survey.

Curation is a critical factor in maintaining control of the narrative and thus of control; the evidence is constantly curated to best support the chosen narrative which in turn supports the desired teleology, which then sets the agenda and the end-game.

The senior apparatchiks of the old Soviet Union were masters of curation; when a Soviet leader fell from favor, he was literally excised from the picture--his image was erased from photos.

This is how narratives are adjusted to better fit the evidence. Thus the accusation that "the Russians hacked our election" has been tabled because it simply doesn't align with any plausible evidence. That narrative has been replaced with variants, such as "the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee." Now that this claim has also been shown to be false, new variants are popping up weekly, with equally poor alignment with evidence.

The primary claim of each Deep State node is that its expertise and authority cannot be questioned. In other words, while the dominant narrative can be questioned (but only cursorily, of course), the expertise and authority of the institutional node cannot be questioned.

This is why the Deep State is fracturing: the expertise and authority of its nodes are delaminating because its narratives no longer align with the evidence. If various Security Agencies sign off on the narrative that "Russia hacked our election" (a nonsense claim from the start, given the absurd imprecision of the "hacking"--hacking into what? Voting machines? Electoral tallies?), and that narrative is evidence-free and fact-free, i.e. false, then the expertise and authority of those agencies comes into legitimate question.

Once the legitimacy of the expertise and authority is questioned, control of the narrative is imperiled. The control of the narrative is control of the teleology, the agenda and the end-game--in other words, everything. If the institution loses control of the dominant narrative, it loses its hold on power.

This is why the Deep State is in turmoil--its narratives no longer make sense, or are in direct conflict with other nodes' narratives or have been delegitimized by widening gaps between "definitive" claims and actual evidence.

There is indeed a Deep State, but its control of dominant narratives, and thus its source of control and power, is crumbling. The gap between the narratives and the evidence that supports them has widened to the point of collapse.


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TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. If you enjoy TRC's work, please consider donating. Any amount is generous. Receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Podcast Archive: The Lifeboat Hour w/Michael C. Ruppert || 10-10-10

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

On this podcast, Mike Ruppert speaks with Janaia Donaldson of Peak Moment TV and also discusses the devaluation of the dollar and other currencies as well as another bailout [QE] that occurred at that time. He mentions food production and a story from the Denver Post regarding 1500 water main breaks that were a daily occurrence in the US.

TRC will share The Lifeboat Hour archives in chronological order in an effort to enlighten patrons about how important Mike's work has been in regards to where we're headed as a nation and as a species.


 
Updates on a new collaborations TBA. Please consider donating to TRC to help keep the refreshments and archives coming.


TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. If you enjoy TRC's work, please consider donating. Any amount is generous. Receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Podcast Archive: The Lifeboat Hour w/Michael C. Ruppert || 10-03-2010

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

On this podcast, Mike Ruppert speaks with Dmitry Orlov. A Russian-American engineer and a writer on subjects related to economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the United States, something Orlov has called "permanent crisis".

TRC will share The Lifeboat Hour archives in chronological order in an effort to enlighten patrons about how important Mike's work has been in regards to where we're headed as a nation and as a species.

 
Updates on a new collaborations TBA. Please consider donating to TRC to help keep the refreshments and archives coming.

Audio excerpts are coming soon!

TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. If you enjoy TRC's work, please consider donating. Any amount is generous. Receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!

Thursday, March 9, 2017

How We Got Here: Truth and Lies - The Deep State's War On Democracy

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

Michael C. Ruppert at Portland State University, Nov. 28, 2001
 #RIPMCR
#SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheWinds

[Please note: fromthewilderness.com is mirrored at copvcia.com.]


Wednesday, March 8, 2017

COLLAPSE: A Documentary featuring Michael C. Ruppert

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

Michael C. Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American writer and musician, Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer, investigative journalist, political activist, and peak oil awareness advocate known for his 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.

From 1999 until 2006, Ruppert edited and published From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website covering a range of topics including international politics, the CIA, peak oil, civil liberties, drugs, economics, corruption and investigating the motives behind 9/11. It attracted 22,000 subscribers. This 2009 documentary film Collapse, is based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy and received The New York Times' "critics pick". He served as president of Collapse Network, Inc. from early 2010 until he resigned in May 2012. He also hosted The Lifeboat Hour on Progressive Radio Network until his death in 2014.




I'm honored to be administrator of Mike's fan page, archivist and admin for his book, Crossing the Rubicon's Facebook page. With permission from him in 2012 and from the book's copyright holder, I'm able to to share essays from his book exclusively on TRC.

Donations help TRC continue to archive his important work.
TRC is currently fixing broken links on Mike's website, From The Wilderness.
It is a monumental task and we need your help.

Audio excerpts are coming soon!

TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. Any amount is generous.
Your receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!

Saturday, March 4, 2017

House of Cards Against Humanity: Cheap Oil, Chess & Hunter S. Thompson

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

I heard someone utter, "George W. Bush was pretty cool on the Ellen DeGeneres talk show yesterday."

The Edge...there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We can't stop here. I invite you to go over the edge rather than stay in bat country. After today, I'll only be sharing excerpts from Michael C. Ruppert's book, Crossing the Rubicon, blistering social critique and announcements about a collaboration for an audio book [or several] for archive and download. I'm working on more podcasts where I plan to bring back some Gonzo. Donations help keep these coming. The political shit-show has hit the fan and is best left in the rear view mirror. Good riddance.

There's no sense resisting what one has no control over. I'm not talking about what you can -- and should -- do locally, that's where it will count. I'm talking about limits to growth. Have control over mind and heart growth...and no longer suffer fools who believe this system can be salvaged with George Dubya's kind of magical thinking. Willful ignorance is a disease and there aren't many inoculations left in America unless you look to the arts. They don't exist in the media-infotainment complex. Mutually assured destruction? Only if you stay locked in the tower like Rapunzel waiting to be saved by a corporate system that bangs on nuclear warheads with stupid hammers.

Post-petroleum Jesus Freaks who hate basic liberties and worship money on the right -- meet the post-petroleum shell of a left now war-mongering with a nuclear power for $15 an hour justice from a nearly bankrupt country creeping with McCarthyism while the rest of the world watches in horror.

Stick a fork in the two-party goose. It's cooked in cheap oil. Can I get a witness? I might be asking too much from this insane asylum...



"Let go or be dragged" reads my favorite Zen proverb. Damn fine advice I took up 7 years ago when I learned of peak oil. The only information left worth sharing is the kind that will help decent people prepare and stay sane. You'll not find me 'resisting' in the streets. I tried peaceful protest during Occupy and saw good people pepper sprayed, bloodied and others involved in media behave like the monsters they railed against. Anyone getting arrested for protesting now runs the risk of entering for-profit-prisons in a police state that just deported immigrants -- many who had labor-intensive jobs which privileged white folks won't do -- most of those in big agriculture. Those same privileged folks aren't going to give a social justice fuck if prison inmates are picking their organic produce. As long as comfortable people are comfortable, there will be problems for the marginalized. Until this president dismantles the deep state's apparatus, assume you're being watched.

This new president is a total wildcard. The last one turned out to be a wildcard for those involved in Occupy and other social justice movements that followed and no one paid attention to those warnings then, either. Because Obomber was pretty cool, too...even after signing the NDAA which allowed brutalizing of water protectors in North Dakota. The left is worried about Russia because they are COMFORTABLE. Ask a water protector, a homeless vet or a black family in Detroit if they're worried about Putin. I'll wait...

Prison labor replacing deported immigrant labor is just one symptom of collapse that Mike Ruppert predicted with stunning accuracy. I saw it when cheap prison labor was used to clean up the Gulf after the BP disaster in 2010, rather than hire locals for decent pay who needed the money because of income lost from environmental damage done to seaside businesses and fishing industries. What has been seen cannot be unseen. To ignore the truth is one man's small step backward but mankind's giant leap into the nuthouse. Some folks stroll right in like morons falling in manholes because they can't be bothered to look up from their iDevices -- the same idiots that claim they have nothing to hide, share their whole boring-ass lives online, 'check in' at a bar on Foursquare and wonder why they've been robbed when they get home four hours later.

Privilege makes people stupid. A woman I worked for [who thought she was above everyone] once tried to sue the local police department for 'pain and suffering' because she was strip searched after a DUI. I sympathized until she told her story. She was driving drunk on the interstate when a rock hit her car's windshield from an overpass. She was so affronted, that in her mind she was better than the rock throwing delinquents [she assumed were there] and promptly called the cops. She expected justice! Instead, they were happy to escort her drunk ass to jail.

It was a female cop who strip searched her...

In the East: lose your illusions. In America: delusions reign

America needs to snap out of its fossil fuel addiction. We've acted like zombies in the eyes of the old world, including Russia. Like the woman in the story above, we're behaving like rude awakened children who just learned Santa Claus isn't real. Russian people know about collapse better than spoiled Americans do and we can learn a great deal from them. Trump happens to be the peak oil president in charge of decline [whether he knows this or not. I'm betting not]. Many analysts saw this coming and many hoped for at least a Libertarian decline. The only hint of those values in this administration, would be move to dismantle the damage done to the Bill of Rights under The Patriot Act, continued loss of liberties under NDAA which all started with Bush Jr. [If you think that's 'pretty cool' you can eat shit with a side of bullet...if you can find bullets.] If any of the aforementioned things are considered less than civil rights, it is as bad as I thought. In fact, it is worse.

My silver lining? I'm thankful a woman won't be blamed throughout history of the oil crash, even one as repulsive and corrupt as Hillary. The DNC rigged a primary election, unless your cognitive dissonance won't allow you to read the emails that Russians didn't write and still believe whistle blowers are "conspiracy theorists" when it suits your political narrative. I'm moving on to more important things happening at the adult table, Dorothy. We're not in Kansas anymore. Clicking heels is for kids.

From Things that Can and Cannot Be Said
Arundhati Roy & John Cusack

What we are witnessing, along with the acceleration of cheap energy decline, is societal collapse. In a globalized economy, Mike Ruppert warned about this. At home, Hunter Thompson saw the political/cultural aspect with collapsing of liberties and predicted perpetual war with an unseen enemy in his ESPN column right after the Twin Towers fell. He knew. Mike and Hunter were worlds apart with similar visions and warnings of what this country might become. They both loved this country and both left this world in the same manner. I had hoped to see Wall Street bankers jumping out of windows instead but those swine learned to fly after 2008. Now they're tapping phones and smart TV's. They'll get another pass at the remaining social and environmental funding while feeding at the zero percent interest trough. Who will bail them out next time?

You got it, Rapunzel. I've practically had to sell my hair to get out of debt. Though, my soul never had a price. I've found that this is what I have in common with people who truly love liberty. Now that IS pretty cool.


I can't judge how Mike and Hunter chose to leave this mortal coil and often wonder what Hunter took to his grave after that prescient ESPN column. I know what I know because of whistle blowers. I choose to remember and honor the American spirit, wisdom and grit of Hunter S. Thompson and Michael C. Ruppert as 'road men for the lords of karma'.

I've distanced myself from this increasingly insane and complex society, toward a simpler way of living, being, and loving. Hopefully others will follow suit but I'm not holding my breath for the willfully ignorant. I like breathing more than beating my head against brick walls. I'll enjoy watching mother nature take them back like so many abandoned places that capitalism forgot.

Which brings me back to the tarot card of radical transformation: The Tower. Change is inevitable whether from outside forces or choices we make ourselves. Both Mike and Hunter lived as far from the shadow of empire's tower as they dared while flipping it off. I'd recommend the same to anyone wise enough to see the cracks in the foundation and instead of fear and self-loathing, take action for your loved ones and local communities now. Preparing is always preferred over the shock and awe of a lightening-bolt fate you believe you have no control over.

Religious folks believe in angels, miracles and 'acts of God'.  Mother nature deals in science; laws of physics, gravity and mathematics. Yet science has become an economic religion content to poison water, air and soil...after building nuke stockpiles and teaching children to 'duck and cover' under little wooden desks. Do we really need cartoon turtles from the 50's to educate adults in 2017? We very well might. Science is still too pompous to imagine humans can conquer nature with more man-made techno-saviors in a debt-based economy for another 100 years without the miracle of cheap oil. It's the same lunatic hubris that built the Titanic and believes in a different benevolent god: 'the invisible hand of the market'. [Psst: It's not too big to fail.]

My dear departed friend, Otto the Comic used to say: "Numbers don't lie, people do."

I've been called an alarmist. I don't talk to those folks anymore. If you're not alarmed now, you're fucking brain dead and I prefer to stick with people who have gone over the edge. They're funny, honest, generous, helpful, wise, love music and are pretty cool for refusing to normalize war and war criminals. If that's really what it means to be politically correct in America, we should be fitted for straitjackets.



Audio excerpts are coming soon!

TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. If you enjoy TRC's work, please consider donating. Any amount is generous. Receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!

Friday, March 3, 2017

How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality & Protect the Powerful - Chomsky & Greenwald

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

From an interview that aired on C-SPAN2, Book TV on 10/29/11. Keep in mind this was during the height of my media travels for the Occupy movement, just two short months before Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act at midnight on New Year's 2012. I remember this night as clearly as remember 9/11.

Twelve days later, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges and others, including Chomsky, sued the Obama Administration and won. The presiding judge ruled for a permanent injunction and deemed the NDAA unconstitutional. Obama sought a second judge who lifted the permanent injunction, holding that "none of the challengers had a right to pursue their claim because they could not show that they were harmed by the NDAA."

I often wonder if this can be challenged by a second group of plaintiffs who have certainly been harmed by this unconstitutional practice and now states are creating unconstitutional laws making protest illegal under the NDAA with this new administration. This effects ALL Americans who believe in freedom of assembly, speech and journalism. If this president wishes to dismantle the deep state -- we the people should dismantle the laws it put in place. Otherwise, the new boss proves himself the same as the former deep state boss. Just a thought.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Podcast Archive: The Lifeboat Hour w/Michael C. Ruppert || 09-26-10

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

In loving memory of Michael C. Ruppert, I've decided to share The Lifeboat Hour archived podcasts at TRC in chronological order by air date. There will be little to no commentary, but I feel it is important to know where we've been if we're to understand where we're headed.

Everything up to this point in history was predicted with startling accuracy in his book, Crossing the Rubicon and in the documentary from 2010, called Collapse. The Lifeboat Hour podcasts began shortly after the documentary's release.

TRC will continue to share these archives twice a week on Friday and Tuesday [schedules permitting]. Updates on a new collaborations TBA. Please consider donating to help keep the refreshments coming.




Audio excerpts from Crossing the Rubicon are coming soon!

TRC is run solely on donations from patrons via PayPal. If you enjoy TRC's work, please consider donating. Any amount is generous. Receipt will read The Road Home, Inc. Thank you!