EVE OF DESTRUCTION

by Judith Moriarty

"The eastern world it tis explodin',
violence flarin', bullets loadin'
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction"

If I were given unlimited power, money, and the unknowing assistance ; of multitudes of pawns, players, shills, toadies, lap dogs etc; to take down a nation, how would I do it?

Common sense says, that first, I would want to control that nation's monetary system; with the unlimited ability to tax the population (incurring massive debt) into servitude. I might name my monetary system,  with an official sounding  title, that would fool the multitudes into thinking  I was an official governmental agency and not a private banking cartel.

I would institute various programs of entitlement to entrap and make the citizenry dependent on various handouts - thus killing their incentive to work, but most of all,  to control dissent. One doesn't bite the hand that feeds them.

I would give robber barons, and various corporate entities, through lobbyists and campaign contributions to key legislators; the power to write their own meal tickets, excusing them from various taxes, regulation, liabilities and accountability. I would set up off -shore accounts and various trusts to protect the wealth of the elite (favored). Only the working cogs will  pay strangulating taxes.

I would kill unions. Unions are not cost effective,  for companies whose sole purpose for existence is 'profits'. Unions are a hindrance; with their silliness of demanding livable wages, safe working conditions, medical benefits, pensions, vacations, etc. I would initiate a PR campaign to discredit and label those who had any thoughts of organizing. I would threaten to close down local industries,  and ship them overseas, if workers balked at lower  wages, or resented  being mere cogs in the machine.  In the event of a strike I would call in scab workers and security guards to handle unruly vocal workers. Maybe I'd kill the leaders - just as a lesson?

Next for quicker servitude, I would shut down the mills, the various plants, machine shops, manufacturing, auto companies (livable wage jobs),  and send them to foreign lands, where labor costs (no benefits - no safety standards) are mere pennies. I would grant tax incentives,  subsidies and create consulting firms to assist companies in making a smooth transition to less restrictive lands.

I would direct  Congress to vote legislation (various visas) to import tens of thousands of foreign workers, for one half, to one third of American wages (no benefits, no job security); to work at resorts, hotels, restaurants, in the medical field, engineering, teaching  and  in Information Technology.  I would propagandize the gullible public, telling them that American's won't do these jobs - or that there are not enough trained Americans to fill these slots. Congress will be instructed to reinforce this lie - in their various scripted messages (media - campaign trail - speeches in Congress).

Slowly and insidiously,  I would remove most of the major decision making,  to the Executive Branch,  under the guise of national security. Presidential Directives, and Executive Orders will replace the messiness,  of having decisions held up,  or argued in Congress.  Most importantly, the public will remain mostly oblivious.

I would open the borders to allow millions of the dispossessed (due to trade agreements)  south of the border/others; to work on corporate farms, as maids, laborers , construction workers, roofers, etc. I would encourage illegal immigration; so as to keep these unsuspecting people, in a constant state of apprehension - should they insist on a livable wage, or complain,  when unscrupulous contractors leave them unpaid, or injured without compensation.  I would organize massive marches (making them appear as grassroots uprisings) pitting victims (American workers) against victims ( immigrants) - so as to keep the focus off of the various trade agreements (constructing a global plantation). The more venom, rancor, hatred and chaos, the better. The workers of the world,  must never see these issues as pertaining to class......but rather intolerance, racism, and bigotry. Victims blaming victims, never the elite behind the curtain.

I would limit any real choices in voting, keeping the field limited to a two party (moneyed) system  where only the wealthy (poor candidates ignored) and chosen need apply. Again, I would encourage animosity,  between the reds and the blues, never revealing,  that they are playing (these political parties) good cop - bad cop (depending on who is in power). Both parties will be given their scripted talking points, which per usual, will promise the world and deliver nothing. They must not address the real issues facing Americans, and instead distract by sniping and snipping amongst themselves. I would turn over the responsibility (to assure the outcome) of voting, to corporate entities, with their easily compromised voting machines, with no paper trails (such as your local ATM machine provides).

I would keep up the pretense of  a 'representative democracy' in Foggy Bottom, with a lot of bickering, the blame game, and senseless tedious hearings (always after the fact); of scandals, the lack of response to disasters, sex , etc. This gives the 'appearance' of being busy and on top of things.

I would set up a dysfunctional Department of Education, that would dictate to the states (thus parents) various insane mandates, regulations, and policies, for the sole purpose of dumbing down (through tests not teaching - whole language etc)  the future generation. A dumb population is an easily controlled population. These various edicts,  will have the dual purpose,  of putting more and more costs, on work a day, property owners, unable to absorb the demands for higher and higher taxes ( to meet these demands). Thus everyone will be made to work two or three jobs to keep up with the newest tax bill, etc.  All of  this will result (as planned) in  turning out functionally illiterate students, fit for the local Wigget factory, Wal-Mart, Home Depot,  garbage man, prison guard or cannon fodder for war. None  of these demand calculus, or being educated in literature, or world affairs.

The teachers of old, will be replaced with 'change agents', who will focus on group think, behavior modification, and social engineering, not  teaching. Pre-school will become mandatory .The younger the child, the easier it is  to mold them into  non-thinking,  and conformity to authority.  Parents (unread - easily intimidated) will be convinced that little Johnnie or Jane, is 'learning disabled, or hyper active', and thus needs drugged into compliance. Mental illness centers will become a major part of education - with soon everyone being found at risk!

"There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction they are going!
There's no knowing where they're rowing,
Or which way the river's flowing!
Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing,
For the rowers keep on rowing,
And they're certainly not showing any signs  that
they are slowing........." Robert Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Drugs: I would saturate the land with drugs, pills, LSD, marijuana, prescriptions, designer drugs etc;  till the land was awash with  mind numbing, brain damaging chemicals;  making crime rampant, destroying families/communities, and creating a private prison industry (the largest in the world).  The costs, to states, and various communities,  will bankrupt many - with peace officers,  renamed law enforcers and gradually becoming militarized. People will be conditioned to FEAR the police, not welcome their presence.

I would allow the HMOs, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies to ravage and destroy, what was once an affordable medical system. They will write the legislation, relieving them of any liabilities, and making doctors,  mere technocrats in the 'machine',  dictated to by some HMO/Insurance  drone,  in a far away cubicle, as to what treatments their patients are ineligible to receive. The focus will be on  'profits';  with ever more exotic drugs being offered in lieu of preventative medicine. Pollution, food additives, chemicals, and Frankenstein crops will add to ill health. The Hippocratic Oath will become as antiquated as the Geneva Convention. Being on constant vacation, and with their own (taxpayer subsidized)  health insurance, granting them the best in prompt treatment (prescriptions), the people's representatives will, as usual,  protest feebly and do nothing. Pharmaceutical companies will be granted legislative authority, to charge top dollar for needed medicines, with Congress voting to keep more affordable medicines (made by the same companies) being imported  to the U.S. from Canada and Japan. Profits over people is the corporate manta of the land.

I would make (except for legislators, judicial, executive branch, with obscene pensions)  retirement an impossibility for seniors. On fixed incomes, or minuscule pensions (if not robbed), they will be unable to afford rising taxes, the cost of medicine, rents, food, home heating, or medical treatment. Many will die in the land of plenty, of hypothermia, (while their well to do neighbors sing Amazing Grace at the village church),  cancers, malnutrition, and once treatable medical conditions, that  they can no longer afford. If they don't die fast enough, they will be encouraged to embrace 'death with dignity' - an Orwellian term for execution.

WAR: I would institute perpetual war, thus killing off the best and brightest, bankrupting the country, (borrowing billions for destruction), while filling the coffers of corporate hucksters, the favored, and the military industrial complex.  I would privatize most of the military, hiring mercenary troops,  at lucrative salaries, for international and domestic crisis. Soldiers when returning home (due to privatized bureaucracy) will be made to jump through hoops (for benefits) to prove that  missing limbs, depleted uranium poisoning, and brain damage,  will hinder them from  living happily ever after?

"Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fear I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed,  there's no running away,
They'll be none to save with the world in a grave"

I would see gentrification by disaster and eminent domain; tearing apart communities,  and making the dispossessed,  all wanderers in the land of their birth.  With shuttered downtowns, concrete box stores, sprawl malls, fast food, plastic booth slop joints, consultants, and appointed committees (replacing local government) etc; I would destroy the known and the familiar. Thus scattered, unity and the security of small town America (ethnic neighborhoods) - makes strangers - struggling to exist not live.

"I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
handful of Senators don't pass legislation"

Travel: The wealthy and chosen need have no fear. With private jets - they will not be subjected to the humiliation put upon the masses. Citizens held captive;  in rushing to business, a vacation, a funeral, or medical emergency etc; will be scanned, groped (by rent a cops) made to empty innocuous liquids, questioned etc; not for security purposes (with cargo loaded not searched - millions of containers from foreign lands sitting on docks)  but for behavior modification; conditioning them to obedience and compliance. In a world of announced terrorists, all become suspect (minus the favored few), even the babe and senior in his wheelchair. Examples will be made of those daring to question or object.  Travel will thus be discouraged.

"Hate your neighbor next door, but don't forget to say grace".

FEAR: Waco, Ruby Ridge, school shootings, hijackings, serial killers, child rapists, imploding towers, danger stranger, assassinations, road blocks, taser attacks (by police), roaming gangs, identity theft, SWAT teams (getting the wrong address), invading Arabs (threat), color coded fear day, cameras, security alarms, schools invaded with police, and drug sniffing dogs, beating/arresting dissenters etc: all these and more, will be used to cause confusion, anxiety,  suspicion, and paralyzing fear ;  resulting  in ever more draconian controls, laws, and violating the rights  - of a once carefree population. Who's watching the watchers - is nobody's business.

Media: Information, education, rational discourse, and debate on all sides of an issue, will be limited or prevented. Citizens will be encourage to take sides: i.e., abortion, gun rights, immigration, gay marriage, funding religion with taxpayer dollars, graphic sex education for young elementary children etc. Issues will be kept to the superficial and emotional. Corporate control of the media (all media) is a must (thus Clinton's Telecommunications Act - giving away the airwaves);  with entertainers, not newscasters, giving their fluff and nutter reports of the day: OJ, Paris Hilton, pit bulls, Rosie O'Donnel, the runaway bride, the diapered astronaut, etc. PR hirelings,  will be presented as 'experts'; be they moth balled generals or think tank suits. Citizens will be instructed what to think - not how to think. Limits will be put on speech, in public hearings, local council meetings/gatherings, letters to the editor etc. Facilitators, stakeholders, and consensus will  take the place of the democratic process (the outcome pre-determined).

Economy: Trade agreements, unread (some hundreds of pages) not debated, will be voted on, with the results being: massive unemployment, bankrupt farms, imported suspect food stuffs/products, echoing steel mills, foreclosures, homelessness, etc. Language in these various 'agreements' will take precedence over all local zoning laws and environmental protections. Elected representatives, (federal/state)  will find these agreements almost impossible to understand with  their legalese and loophole language.

Privatization: I would give away the Commons to private industry, and foreign investors; including water, medical care, the infrastructure, roads, schools, utilities, bridges, rivers,  waste disposal, and lands (under the guise of nature preserves, parks, heritage sites, biospheres, buffer zones etc). Collateral for trillions in debt, I would post the people's land with,  "Keep Out - No Trespassing - Private etc"

I would keep the multitudes entertained (distracted)   throughout the years; with ball games, gladiator (well paid) sports, concerts, theme parks, shopping malls, expensive automobiles, theater, the arts, movies, various awards ceremonies, electioneering debates (senseless),  arguments on war (to surge or not to surge), liposuction, breast implants, Viagra readiness, exotic vacations, designer clothes,  the newest must have gadgetry, air headed starlets, doping and drinking it up, NASCAR, horse racing, soccer, golf, environmental activism (safe not threatening industry) etc.

Meantime,  I would see to it that government agencies were slowly and inclemently dismantled,  with the work farmed out to private  contractors. Positions of authority and decision making will have corporate interests appointed. Food protections, health, and safety,  and environmental regulations , will  be under - funded or disregarded - favoring corporate interest (profits). Federal and state environmental agencies,  will be mere rubber stamp mouth pieces for industry,  paying no heed to polluters,  or to  the protection of various communities health (super fund sites).

All of this and more, I would do,  if I were given permission (generously compensated of course)  to destroy a nation. I would make sure,  that all of these various entities,  and non-governmental agencies,  were compartmentalized (thinking they were about the people's business), with no one (even within these agencies) having a clue as to  the final objective. It is comparable to the worker in the eastern European factory,  thinking he is building baby carriages. Stealing  a piece a week (he couldn't afford to buy one) , for his expected child;  he finally put it together on the living room floor. To his surprise,  he   constructed an M-16. The greatest conspiracies aren't hidden - just fragmented into different pieces - like a puzzle. Right before people's eyes.

Whistle blowers will be dutifully dealt with,  making an example for others. Most worried about their jobs,  promotions, pensions  - will 'follow orders'.   The few who object will be labeled 'conspirators, crazies, fringe, extremists , communists, queers, un-American, traitors etc - It's worked down through the centuries -its the old herd instinct.  Identified as 'other',  has those protesting or objecting,  marked,  as other, therefore blackballed and to be avoided and shunned. Nobody wants to be labeled 'other' not in group think  - why that would make him(her) much like the mad cow discovered in a dairy herd - the turd in the punchbowl! 

"Ah you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction?"
Music video  - sing along

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akoukq5DvAE&mode=related&search

JM