Was it you or one of your brothers that was in my class back there at ‘ol St. Francis High? Read your article & brother, did it bring it all back ….lots of memories, mostly bad one I suppose. Like you, was brought up in an Italian, conservative environment where no one questioned authority, certainly not the Catholics or the Government.

As far as the politics goes, it’s become apparent that neither side of the aisle is looking out for the +300 million Americans they supposedly represent. Furthermore, the pillaging of our country by these ‘elected officials’ (where do we start – with the Bush family owning Diebold, our voting machines; the electoral votes, not popular votes, decide our election winners; the fact that Corporate America IS our government – anyone notice how many ex-Goldmans are in positions of power? etc.).

The real problem isn’t the basic human nature being demonstrated by our government officials (and every government globally) – it’s the same basic human nature exhibited by the many Catholic priests gone mad with power.
We can’t change human nature, but we can focus on the root of the problem – the money.

If you study how our central bank (the Fed) and it’s counterparts in nearly every other country on the planet have inserted their fiat currency into our economic system, you’ll have a better understanding of what’s really wrong with man’s nature.

Central banks were repulsive to our founding Fathers – Thoma Jefferson wrote:

I sincerely believe…that the banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
–Thomas Jefferson

I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.
—Thomas Jefferson

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have.
—Thomas Jefferson

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.
– Henry Ford

The idea that the Fed creates fiat currency (backed by nothing), then loans to our country at TAX-FREE INTEREST (sound interesting yet?) Do you know what our country payed in 2011 on just the interest? Over 230 BILLION dollars – no principal, just the interest. Sound like the Fed’s got a good business model?

Ever wonder why our own Treasury Department (which mints our coins) doesn’t simply print U.S. Dollars? At no interest?

Educate yourselves, learn of the history of debt-based currency & our never-ending reliance on borrowing it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936

Rob, I’ll have to track down more of your work – while I don’t agree with all your opinions, I do believe that if we can educate ourselves about how the world actually works, we can collectively begin to ‘overturn the tables of the moneychangers’ (the only time Christ ever got angry).

Cheers –

John Aiken

Ignorant people, regardless of sides, are just infuriating.

As people become less educated, logical fallacies such as Jack’s become more effective. It is possible for someone to become less educated over time, which apparently has happened to many racist torture supporters over the last 10 years (prior to that I didn’t pay much attention).

Of course left wing and right wing are ill defined, probably generally the definition is “I consider myself X wing, therefore all that disagree with me are Y wing”, which is a pretty crappy definition. It is possible to have a socialist dictatorship, but that could not be fascist unless control of the social infrastructure reverted to the dictator or companies controlled by him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

I would put fascism in the top right corner, which, btw is where almost all of the Republicans and Democrats fall, too. The bottom right corner is pretend.

It certainly is mystifying that so many Catholics embrace torture, given that the Church itself condemns it (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sec. 2297-98), and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a whole web tutorial on the immorality of torture: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/stoptorture/

But perhaps they’re just not pushing the parish priests to do much on the issue at Sunday Mass.

But I have the same sorts of issues in my Irish Catholic family as you report… and all of the more religiously observant (and pedantically pious) are the Faux sNooze watchers, the torture-lovers and war-mongers, and are the most fact-averse regardless of issue.

Propaganda works… and is working. There seems to be little concern in the Congress that such deliberate manipulation-by-disinformation is being engaged in, so its likely that there won’t be any relief from the constant barrage of lies and distortions any time soon.

To me, it seems more and more obvious that the time to get out is sooner rather than later… before all of the local police departments start thinking that torture ‘works.’

You see, this insistence on bowing to power and accepting AUTHORITY with all caps indeed, seeds the growing mind of youngsters to accept that they will be sheep and the masters will rule them.

That is the biggest reason religion sucks. It destroys the creativity of the masses.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/obama_confronts_the_corporation.html

Problem: The fundi ministries and fascist news surrogates have so dumbed Americans down they are now unable to even know history and what fascism is.

Ladies and gents: This is precisely how Germany did it in the thirties.

-

Great work TPR and welcome back.