Debt, Democracy, Autonomy and Revolution: Understanding 2010-2021

by Charles Hugh Smith

The specific experiences of debt servitude and powerlessness will help create a new set of radical political ideas and ideals which will reinvigorate a passive, complicit U.S. populace.

New York City readers: I need a favor. Reader/blogger/vet/student Tommy atFreedom Guerrilla needs 100 NYCers to take a quick online survey on urban agriculture. The purpose is to support a proposed Urban Farm in New York City. Please help him with this project--thank you! CHS

Shills, hacks and apologists from the Demopublican/financial Power Elites/MSM status quo are desperately attempting to discredit the Tea Party movement, as it poses a direct threat to their cozy partnership of corrupt governance, propaganda, fraud and monopoly capital cartels.

The Democratic and Republican parties are self-serving zombies which are still shuffling forward under the power of the monopoly capital/cartel Power Elites who value the simulacrum of democracy these dried husks provide.

No one can predict if the Tea Party movement will revitalize one or both zombie parties, become a true Third Party or dissipate under the relentless attacks of the status quo into ineffective warring factions (i.e. the Tea Party People's Front and the Tea Party Popular People's Front, with a nod to Monty Python fans).

Here is what will not change, regardless of the fate of the self-organizing Tea Party movement:

The dominance of corporate/financial cartels has been masked by corrupt governance (the Savior State) and a corporate-owned Mainstream Media propaganda machine in service to the Savior State/Plutocracy partnership.

Personal independence and liberty require a decisive break from the current predatory/monopoly capital-cartel political and economic system.

A crisis will crystallize a powerful emotional understanding of a new or renewed ideology of individual autonomy and liberty. The status quo will expect citizens to act only on pocketbook issues; the Elites will be wrong.

The crisis will compel non-Elite, non-protected-fiefdom Americans to rethink their assumptions about governance, wealth, liberty, autonomy and personal responsibility.

Debt is a form of servitude, and Americans will wake up to the fact that they are serfs in a debt-based feudal state akin (as per the Survival+ analysis) to a feudal plantation economy.

Extreme concentrations of capital and power control the vast majority of the U.S. economy and Savior State/levers of governance.

The ideologies of the Zombie Parties (Democrats and Republicans) no longer have any connection with the lived experience and "social knowledge" of the bottom 80% of American citizens.

The goal is to liberate ourselves (the bottom 80%) from the clutches of a morally corrupt and oppressive status quo which is undermining our autonomy and liberty.

The status quo is morally degenerate: both politically and financially, it is based on an interlocking foundation of lies, half-truths, misdirections, misinformation, propaganda, embezzlement, fraud, prevarications, bogus statistics, fraudulent balance sheets, mis-stated assets and liabilities, collusion, trickery and corruption.

The personal experience of debt servitude and loss of autonomy will be transformed into a shared political consciousness which recognizes that each individual is part of larger political/financial systemic ills, and the the solutions require taking control away from concentrations of capital and power.

The fruits of production--the output of real work as opposed to the parasitic financial churning of transactions and digital data--will become politicized as those who are producing real value begin demanding a political voice in the governance of the nation.

The restoration of personal integrity and virtue will become political goals.

The physical degradation and decay of the American landscape, urban and rural, is connected to the misrule of the zombie political parties; a new ideology will emerge to restore the landscape and infrastructure by taking it out of the hands of the Zombie Parties and the corporate Power Elites.

The betrayal of the Public Trust, rising corruption and barely-cloaked plots against individual liberty will spark an Imperial Crisis in which the burdens of Empire are recognized and politicized.

The complacency and fatalism which characterize Americans' experience of politics will undergo a radical reformation which will be necessary lest autonomy and liberty be lost to concentrations of self-serving, over-reaching power.

Debt servitude and the fact that they now own virtually nothing will predispose citizens to finally grasp the failure of the Savior State/Plutocracy status quo; that revolution of understanding will lead to an embrace of radical reforms which were hitherto "impossible."

The specific experiences of debt servitude and powerlessness will help create a new set of radical political ideas and ideals which will reinvigorate a passive, complicit populace.

I know none of this fits in with the expectations of either the status quo or hard-core survivalists, who expect either a continuation of the lies, fraud and complicity of the status quo or a descent into violent chaos.

My own views are grounded in my study of American history and society. Maybe I will be completely wrong; I am always open to that possibility.

Let's agree to print this page out and compare notes in 2015 and again in 2020 on who had the more accurate grasp of the future.

Here are two interesting books on related topics. The first was recommended by Daniel C. and the second by Kevin L., who was kind enough to send me a copy.

Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction

Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution.

And here is an interesting commentary on corporatism, the Savior State and the destruction of competition by cartels, recommended by Alan A.:

We Are All Fascists Now

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