“We didn't exactly believe your story.'
Then --?'
'We believed your two hundred dollars.'
'You mean --' She seemed not to know what he meant.
'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
The unchecked influence of corporations on the election of candidates calls to mind the financial underpinnings of the Reich wherein the goals of the industrialists and the goals of the state where indistinguishable from one another. This efficiency lead to the economic welfare of the populace as similar to that of receiving a form of monetary bribe to look the other way.
When it came to the eventual cost of cross influences that become a philosophy of consensus whose aim is ever increasing productivity fated to derail, everyone was responsible, therefore no one was. Shadows and ghosts became victims with names. The shadows armed with a laptop might be at the working end of a puppeteer's set of strings. A reciprocal exchange? I think not. John Adams in a rejoinder to Thomas Jefferson's opinion that revolutions are a necessity for an eventual evolution of a democratic state, stated in essence that the populace must be protected from themselves through the legislation of boundaries by elected officials. He never thought that the foxes would find a way to pay off the farmer to gain access into the hen house.
My mother used to say that ignorance is bliss and in George Orwell's insight into the collusion of mass media in our similar state of affairs could be echoed by his statement that "ignorance is strength" A strength garnered by the trivialization of anything that resembles attention toward the issues of the assimilation of undue influence at hand. Preemptive is a word I like.
Preemptive wars, preemptive data mining, preemptive financing of elections by corporations. The rigging of the bag toss game as a recognized from of democratic principles.. Freedom to advantage the odds in one's favor in order to avoid messy dialog with the unwashed.
One could call the role of mass media a preemptive strategy of editorial purvey controlled by one of the nation's largest military contractors, General Electric, or Fox News, the home of bald propaganda countered by the propaganda of MSNBC..examples of corporate warfare where the electorate is entertained by their welfare being the gist of trivialized political gossip that deflects from the essence of corruption of the game they reinforce. Hand picked..the short list of experts they deploy corral the illusion that the situation can be fixed while the big fix is in. A talking game for shills and marks that deals with the effects rather than the causes..a trivialization of the forensic pathology required to remove a cancer from a patient that's already dead. One could call them ventriloquists of a non existent from of idealism that JP Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie had long since slayed a century ago. The names change but the playbook remains. Both opposing sides juxtaposed against the middle as a negating factor aids and abets the continuation of a ruse hiding in plain sight.
Thus, the rapid ascent of the economic fortunes once termed a miracle for the Reich at that time are mirrored by our own history as a tug of war between the industrialists and the idealism of democracy has slipped underground,greased by the media, hidden by the arbiters of survivalist philosophies of distractions, entertainments and debates surrounding elections set up as straw dogs to divide up the pie among corporations.
The manipulation of the mass media by Goebbels is matched by corporate interests whose ownership of "public" airwaves has, in large led to, large doses of a form of heroin as a misdirection of attention based upon a prescription of entertainment by technocracy.
Duck Dynasty as a metaphor for the state of the electorate as a one trick pony stereotyped as rednecks pushing the wheels of consumerism in a running joke. All while we slept....remote in hand.
Twitter and Facebook provide evidence that information does not equate to knowledge or wisdom as a microcosm of the environment where profit has been hitched to economic engines that gather personal data as a reciprocal exchange for access to the systemic selling of the populace.
“Brigid O'Shaughnessy: “I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.”
Sam Spade “You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
The NSA having lied to Congress on gathering personal telephone information being collected resulted in a collective yawn which somewhat relates to the general philosophy of more is better, whether it is the rapid cyclic stream of commercialism tethered to what constitutes the health of the nation state or the endlessly increasing amount of fuel required for consumerism to maintain an industrial base which in turn, supports the state as one hand washes the other.
George Orwell would simply observe that this amnesty for the NSA is an example of a big brother looking after your personal welfare by picking your pocket legislated with "secret courts" which no one appears to be disturbed by. This also appears to be evidence Americans exist in a post literate society when it comes to the increased cross coordination between social media, industrialists and government.
All it would take is a slight puff of wind from the a enthralled electorate to tip over the whole shebang into a fascist state as the paramount of efficiency. Non productive members of this are known identified and tagged and sidelined as an example of all the set pieces are already being in place.
All of this reminds me of the genius that was and is William S Burrough's "Nova Express" that was a walk through the dark mirror of Pax Americana..the mutated idealism that requires the metaphor of a physical deformity denoting the contortions required of the mind in the service of secret courts legislated by a viral and parasitic pathology of control. Of course then there was the infamous set up of contrived evidence for the Iraq "police action", in reality, an undeclared war by the architects of Empire in search of the fuel to keep it at the top of the heap when it came to the conglomerations of mafia protection rackets known as nation states. Disfigurement of both a psychic and physical nature on both sides continue to this day in the waning occupation of Afghanistan,
"Corridors and patios and porticos of The Biologic Courts – Swarming with terminal life forms desperately seeking extension of canceled permissions and residence certificates – Brokers, fixers, runners, debarred lawyers, all claiming family connection with court officials – Professional half-brothers and second cousins twice removed – Petitioners and plaintiffs screaming through the halls – Holding up insect claws, animal and bird parts, all manner of diseases and deformities received “In the service” of distant fingers – Shrieking for compensations and attempting to corrupt or influence the judges in a thousand languages living and dead, in color flash and nerve talk, catatonic dances and pantomimes illustrating their horrible conditions which many have tattooed on their flesh to the bone and silently picket the audience chamber – Others carry photo-collage banners and TV screens flickering their claims –"
Indeed. Petitioners come and go and the secretive court of judgments on our behalf remains buried under the hubris of a collective fantasy of freedom until we receive an invoice, a payment required to awaken.