Echoes of Enterprise
Back in those days everything was simpler and more confused
One summer night, going to the pier
I ran into two young girls
The blonde one was called Freedom
The dark one, Enterprise
We talked and they told me this story
Now listen to this...
I'll tell you about Texas radio and the big beat
-- The Doors; "Stoned Immaculate"
My brother called to tell me about a lecture he heard at the university he works at on the West Coast. The woman who presented on the environmental crisis that the world now faces was inspirational, but like many good people, my brother feels overwhelmed by the ultimate size of the problems we face -- including a corporate "shadow government" that is invested in ignoring the addiction to fossil fuels. And a corporate media that serves daily doses of narcotic nonsense, which dulls the senses of the public, and prevents them from grasping the certain pain and suffering that awaits just around the bend.
Ike issued the famous warning about the military-industrial complex, of course. Much of the public recognized this was a significant warning, but too many valued the statement, more than its implications. Since the end of WW2, the USA had become the most powerful nation on the planet, and the new middle class experience proved comfortable. Yet, by the time JFK took office as a new leader born in the new century, an older form of power-elite had become entrenched in the shadows of democracy.
That group, called the "High Cabal" by Churchill, and the "invisible power structure" by R. B. Fuller, had a governing philosophy based upon four social theories. Prouty notes that these include: [1] "real property," defined by the doctrine of discovery and the rights of conquest; [2] Malthus's population theory, in which humans reproduction is geometric, while resources reproduce at an arethmatic rate, before dwindling; [3] social Darwinism; and [4] Heisenburg's theory of undeterminant synergism.
In this context, Dallas wasn't a coup; it was a re-alignment of power. Likewise for the response to Watergate, in which the congressional actions were merely the visible part of a much larger iceberg. Lamar Waldron's series of three books (the first two written with Thom Hartman) document the "invisible power structure's" on-going re-alignment throughout the 1960s and '70s. (See "Ultimate Sacrifice," "Legacy of Secrecy," & "Watergate: The Hidden History."
The Reagan-Bush administration demonstrated that corruption alone did not disqualify those fronting for the machine from holding the reins of power. In fact, the Reaganites were more criminal than the Nixon gang, and did more institutional damage to our form of federal government. But the elite prospered: as David Stockman would later admit, "Reaganomics" was a lie intended to redistribute the country's wealth towards the top.
Based largely upon MIT's Jay W. Forrestor's theory of "systems' dynamics," the Reagan-Bush administrations recognized that US resources were dwindling. The example of steel shows how domestic industry was undercut, damaging the entire national economy. Yet the powerful elite became even more entrenched in a modern, updated feudal system.
This required their joining forces with the elites of other nations. This is best illustrated by its impact on US foreign policy: the Reaganites created an entity they called "the Enterprise," which ran the series of criminal activities known as the Iran-Contra scandal. A proper understanding of this "invisible government" activity includes not only a foreign policy that ignored the constitutional system, but which violated the very concepts upon which this nation was formed. It planted the seeds for Wall Street and banking "crises," which continue to undermine our society today.
The power elite's goal is not to avoid global crises, it is to prepare the 1% to survive these crises. Hence, Stockman's comments that the actual purpose of Reaganomics was to build the nation's military capabilities, while destroying the social programs that intended to benefit the masses. Often, this economic theology includes the delusional belief system voiced by James Watt, regarding not knowing how many generations were to preceed the "Second Coming."
One can debate which, if any, US President has challenged the power elite since JFK. What is beyond debate is that this tiny group has continued to increase in fortune, while the majority of citizens have endured a cold and harsh economic reality. More, our system of government has become the Jerry Springer Show. The few rational voices in DC are ignored by a media that provides a grand platform for the outrageous histrionics of jackasses unfit to hold office.
No one person, or single group, has "the" answer to the crises we face. However, in my opinion, every individual and group should focus upon the Constitution for a framework of how government can best work. More, we should study the ideas and activitiies of those who have challenged the machine in the past -- people like Martin Luther King, Jr., for example. We need to divest our investments in McAmerica. We need to stop being unconscious and unwitting participants in the destruction of the living environment, which includes humanity.
I can tell you this: no eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the opportunities of Now.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Perhaps they will. Frank "The Congo Fixer" Carlucci and Co. are banking on it:
The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles
The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.
AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010
What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?
The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.
SNIP...
Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.
SNIP...
While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank"
is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.
I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.
CONTINUED...
http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles
Outstanding essay, yours. Thank you for sharing, H20 Man!
reality television culture/mind control devices are the most important events of the week in the lives of about one half of this nation's population, most of whom have been trained since birth to think and act against their own interests in many aspects of their lives, we will need to find a way to persuade them to go along with the necessary changes.
The sad fact is that the majority of Americans are irrevocably brainwashed by capitalist marketing (economic, religious, social, political, all of the above) of some form or another, and will not willingly give up their Big Macs, Cokes, Marlboros, big screens, and Dodge Rams even if it is indisputably clear that these things are definitely going to kill them, and everything else on the planet, and the planet itself, within 5 years of right now.
I believe the preservation of this planet will necessarily fall to a relatively small, extremely committed and dedicated, highly conscious collective of like minded, altruistic people, who are willing to take chances and make hard choices with a focused radical non-violent agenda. The only solution is world revolution, in so many areas of existence.
You're working for capitalism. Is capitalism working for you?
Long time no see Waterman 
The first book did focus a great deal on the mafia. More, it made it appear that the "mafia" was distinct from certain elected officials in Washington, and government agencies, including the CIA. So I agree with you that this was a major short-coming in that book.
Both the second and third were made possible because of more and more documents being made available to researchers. (Luckily, that allows us to discuss this in the context of research in investigations, keeping this discussion from being referred to as "conspiracy theory."
One of the obvious problems with the Warren Commission is that two agencies -- the FBI and CIA -- failed to share information with the commission's investigators. This is a well-established fact. And any investigation can only be as good as the information available.
While I strongly disagree with Vincent Bugliosi's book on Dallas and the Warren Commission, I respect that it was well-researched. Yet, much of the information reported on in the three books we are discussing was not available to Bugliosi. Hence, while he disagrees with the authors, even he has said that these books are informative, important, and are not "conspiracy theories."
One of the things I believe is most important, and which rarely is reported upon, involves the ONI. By no coincidence, some of the major figures from both the first two books (Dallas) and the third (Watergate) are men who were officially in either the FBI or CIA. But, upon closer examination, they were actually from ONI, serving "on loan" as shared staff -- not uncommon, but definitely significant. Most journalists, like the general public, assume that "intelligence agency" equals CIA. Even here on DU, very few people understand the distinctions.
One of the things that the authors have learned is that ONI did its own investigation of Dallas. The study's conclusion is very different from that of the Warren Commission. The report, of course, will never be released to the nation.
As usual.