The BigEye Blog

Cogitations from the Home Front

November 15, 2011

Protest, Revolution, or Mischief

I recall reading, years ago, an essay by Ernest Jones, the disciple and eventual biographer of Freud. It was in two volumes of �Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis�, which I happened upon in Ohio State University's library. It's thesis, simplified, was that adult political expression is likely to result from familial parental dynamics. This has, for years, struck me as an interesting thought. Regardless of to what degree, if any, that Dr. Jones' analysis is applicable, the destruction of the traditional family combined with TV fare has, unquestionably, produced a distressingly large alienated and hostile generation.

Highly intelligent persons often attribute motives and principles to political candidates and their competitors, as well as to protesters, that spring from subjective factors, particularly wishful thinking. As something of an idealist myself, this is a trap which I attempt to avoid. Dr. Jones' Freudian analysis is not necessary for us to agree that roots of human action are seldom what they seem, particularly when they take the form of political expression. At the risk of being charged with cynicism, I offer a couple of examples:

First - During the Vietnam debacle young men faced with the draft gave outspoken support to anti-war demonstrations and promoted the now familiar peace symbol. Christian ethics? Pacifism? Political awareness? Ghandi-like passive resistance? A combination of principles? Why didn't they, decades later, display similarly firm opposition to colonial wars, the Gulf War massacre? Afghanistan, Iraq? Did they instead actively elect war criminals?

Second � Today's college students, drop-outs, graduates, and the unemployed, a preponderance of whom are facing oppressive interest-bearing student loans and credit-card debt, are voicing outspoken criticism of bankers. I suspect that their opposition to the Federal Reserve System is more an outgrowth of the former than a result of having read Murray Rothbard, Eustace Mullins, Ron Paul, and G. Edward Griffin's definitive work, The Creature From Jekyll Island. Will their ardor cool should existing public debt, including student loans, be �adjusted�?

There is one thing you can be assured will not change, regardless of what happens to the Federal Reserve System. Usury is what the business is all about. Usury is far too profitable to even question, especially now that it has been accepted by spiritual leaders of Christendom.

Mass hunger, expressed politically during The Terror, generated fear in the ruling class. A growing bourgoisie's sympathy for the reasoning of Voltaire and others ushered in what is absurdly termed, �The Age of Reason�. Rulers of the Old Regime had failed to follow the strategy of Roman emperors who had kept their internal masses docile with bread and circuses. Our rulers have the strategy down to a science. Today's Bread and Circuses are Fast Food and TV. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Should today's Occupy protests become widespread rioting, we may have systemic changes. Will they solve society's poverty problem better than issuing huge amounts of fiat currency did? Overlooking, for the sake of argument, that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed, for which Ben Bernanke recently apologized, without huge capital formation what would have been the financial means to address the dust bowl's agrarian crisis - future profits of small farmers? How about rural electrification, TVA, and two World Wars? We can now agree, finally, that war itself is a racket. Its defects are not offset by, but include corporate capital formation.

Will we adopt a tax policy decidedly non-libertarian where Peter is obliged to help Paul who is many miles distant and in a mess that does not directly affect Peter? Who is going to make the rules? Can we depend solely upon eighteenth century political documents to solve today's problems? Our reasoning on these matters will not stop those bent on active revolution, especially if they get hungry. It is the job of our present leaders to keep them fed and reasonably docile until worldwide central banking and centralized control of national currencies is in place. After that, the deluge.

Having exhorted the mob to frenzy following the assassination of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Mark Anthony commented, �Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt!�

---