Charles Hugh Smith: The Stealth Coup D'Etat: U.S.A. 2008-2010

[DemReadingDU]

10/28/10 The Stealth Coup D'Etat: U.S.A. 2008-2010 by Charles Hugh Smith

The Stealth Coup D'Etat in the U.S. (called "The Quiet Coup" by Simon Johnson) was begun long ago, but the takeover reached fruition in the 2008-2010 timeframe.
Though incisive, Johnson's critique fails to grasp several critical features of the Stealth Coup D'Etat:

1. Once you have control of the financial powers of the U.S. via the tiny Elites of the Congress, the Executive Branch, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, then the rest of the government will follow.

2. This is how the Stealth Coup D'Etat works: the machinery of governance grinds through a simulacrum of democracy, but it's all for show; the theoretical structures are now completely different from the political realities.

3. The Stealth Coup can be traced by a simple dictum: follow the money. Once you control the money--the money supply, the manipulation of yields and bond sales, the budgeting and borrowing--then you control everything. This is how a small Financial Power Elite dominates the vast, sprawling American Empire.

4. I use the term politics of experience in Survival+ (with a credit to its originator, R.D. Laing) to describe the manner in which the apparently depoliticized context of our daily media-saturated lives are shaped by political forces we rarely recognize.

In my critique, I invoke the term parallel shadow structures of privilege to describe the formalized but masked structures of power which operate behind the facades of democracy, free markets, and all the other PR bilge drummed into the minds of the the citizenry by a media cartel which itself has been financialized into a Corporatocracy.

Over time, Americans have come to believe that the current state of governance is "democracy" rather than a mere facsimile of democracy. They have come to believe (those still covered by insurance they don't directly pay for) that the U.S. "healthcare" system is "the finest in the world" when by some metrics it is the worst, most profligate, illness-inducing system imaginable. And so on.

Thus "homeownership" was elevated to quasi-religious status as a means of stripmining assets and income from a larger pool of debt-serfs. Earlier this year I asked a simple question: how much of your household's net income flows to cartels? That would include banking cartels (mortgages, second mortgages, credit cards, etc.), Central State-banking cartels (student loans), agribusiness cartels (fast foods, packaged foods, Monsanto, etc.), energy cartels, sickcare cartels (healthcare insurance, hospital chains, Big Pharma) and so on.

If we consider that much of rent payments flow to the same banking cartels (which is why the commercial real estate sector is imploding--too much debt, etc.), then most of us would find that the majority (or perhaps as much as 90%) of our money goes to a handful of cartels dominated by Financial Elites via the steady financialization of the U.S. economy.

How much of your taxes flow to the same cartels via their partnership/control of State fiefdoms?

If you think the term Stealth Coup D'Etat is overwrought, I invite you to ponder the headline quote from the Freedom Guerrilla weblog: None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

lots more...
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct10/stealth-coup10-10.html

[CoffeeCat]

1. I want to know what their goal is...

So, ok, it's obvious to most by now that our democracy and our two-party system is a facade. Most
of our elected officials, together with elites from these cartels--control everything. They are
also pulling up wealth into their own echelons and leaving those in the lower layers destitute.

With that said, what is their end game. They've got the government, the power, the money and the control.

Is this as far as it goes? Seriously. Or do they consider scenes from the movie "V for Vendetta" their
utopia?

What we have now is bad. Really bad. I'm not saying that our current state is acceptable. But it is
worth noting that those doing this to our country have to be about as evil, sociopathic and narcissistic
as people can possibly be. So, what else do they have planned? Is this the beginning? Or are they
pretty much done, and is it simply enough for them to have the power and most of the money?

I'd really like to understand what the end game is.

[Karenina]

2. Serfdom für/über ALLES!!!

:rofl:

[CoffeeCat]

3. Glad you're enjoying yourself...

Have you ever considered switching to decaffeinated?

[bemildred]

4. George Orwell 1984:

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

[DemReadingDU]

5. Just the beginning

This is not about only the U.S.A. Whoever are these evil, sociopathic and narcissistic people around the world, they won't stop until they have global power and control of the money. There is a lot for us to go thru.
:(

[grasswire]

9. do you know about the theory of "chaos capitalism"?

Basically, it means that certain parties find massive profit opportunities in chaotic times. Natural disasters, national emergencies, wars, unrest, etc. And so they either are prepared to use those chaotic situations to their benefit and/or allow those situations to play out.

I think that's the end game. The confluence of peak oil, the aging of boomers, climate change, the new rise of the political right, the immigration issues -- all those foment unrest and disassociation. In that atmosphere lie many potential avenues for profit by the bold.

In that atmosphere, the banksters have made an enormous swindle. The insurers have written their own laws. Private armies are drawn up. Profiteers and ghouls walk over citizens. That's how it works.

[Ghost Dog]

6. The rest of the world feels very sorry for you,

and disappointed, in spite of everything.

RIP in memoriam USA.

[northernlights]

8. we welcome their pity

feel free to throw us a bone now and then. :(

[felix_numinous]

7. K + R X 10000!

More people are awake and that is good.