Skull and Bones and Hegelian Logic

[BeHereNow]

Apologies to GD, I broke the rules of posting here just now-
so I am reposting within the specifications set forth by DU admin.

The point I would like to discuss is NOT specific candidates, rather
what I see is the power behind them, which in my mind is
OUR collective problem as a nation.
I believe that what is happening is equally detrimental to
ALL people in America and that it will take our UNIFIED
efforts based in mutual awareness that what we are facing
will not be resolved as easily as we believe.

My feeling about the madness we are witnessing:

Until the American people understand the REAL
power which has taken over our country, we are doomed.
The real power is neither left not right, democratic or
republican. It is far more evolved. Evolved to the point
that it manipulates and controls both "left" and "right"
by the deceptive appearance of events that suggest
there is a separation to be defined, when in fact they are
in control of both. Don't believe it? Check the voting
of our representatives in government. Ultimately, when it
comes down to what matters to the global elite, we, the people,
lose. The actors are skilled, they debate fiercely and then
follow the agenda of the NWO at the last minute.
How can we survive the battle if we do can not identify
the real enemy? The enemy is firmly entrenched in
both the Democratic and Republican parties who
convince us that there is adversity between them
and that is very deliberate.

That is the song of Hegelian Logic
and we are dancing to the tune over the edge of the cliff.
BHN

"Anthony Sutton on "Left" versus "Right" and the Hegelian dialectic
in American politics by Anthony Sutton July 9 2003

How can there exist a common objective when
members are apparently acting in opposition to one another?

Probably the most difficult task in this work will be
to get across to the reader what is really an
elementary observation: that the objective of The
Order is neither "left" nor "right." "Left" and "right"
are artificial devicces to bring about change,
and the extremes of political left and political
right are vital elements in a process of controlled
change."
On edit: Link to Sutton essay:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_sutton.html

[hang a left]

1. Read your first post BHN, I was wondering why you were

locked out. This subject will stay on page 1 for about 30 minutes. The debunkers will be notified and will post accordingly.

Why people don't get this is beyond me. Spineless Dems my butt, they are in on it and if you can't see that by revisiting what has happened in this country in the last few years, you are in acute denial.

Thanks for the post.

[BeHereNow]

5. The GD rules

state no mention of a candidate here.
I was so riled up by the Sutton piece that I
didn't think.
Sutton sums it up so clearly; I have read his
work for years but never seen this one.
He lays it out so clearly.
We are not crazy, although it is hard not
to go mad as we watch the play, helpless, captive
audience members.
Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who
knows the theater is on fire and the doors are locked.
I want to stand up in the middle of the show and
scream a warning to the rest of the people sitting
in the theater who appear to be so involved in what
the actors are doing they can not smell the smoke around them.
Thanks for letting me know I am not alone.
BHN

[Jackpine Radical]

63. The last Democratic president

was Jimmy Carter.

Maybe not even him. He backed NAFTA.

Lyndon got us deeply into Vietnam (with a lie).

Kennedy fired up the cold war with his bogus "missile gap," and went along with the Vietnam buildup that had been orchestrated in the Eisenhower years.

[soothsayer]

2. I guess it depends whether your dialectic is spiraling up, or

spiraling down.

Are we reaching for the stars, or headed for the gutter?

[Algorem]

3. Swarm,Kerryans,swarm!

[BeHereNow]

7. You are too funny!

But seriously, the behavior is EXACTLY what
the Hegelians depend on.
Keep the people split and fighting among themselves
while TPTB continue to centralize and amass more power.
BHN

[DenverDem]

4. You are right on the money, my intellectual friend.

Since working as a TV producer in the pro wrestling business, I feel I have a great insight into politricks.

Just like in wrestling, in politics, the match you see in the ring seems to pit a babyface (good guy) against a heel (evil doer), but back in the locker room the antagonists share the same bar of soap in the shower.

The "marks" (gullible and trusting electorate) are being "worked" (mind manipulated) to think they are seeing a "shoot" (fair election between competing ideologies) but are in fact witessing a "work" (fabricated competition in which the outcome is determined in the locker room, i.e. behind closed doors).

The problem is that here on DU and in the culture at large the population is dominated by "marks" and there are too few "smart fans" (observers that understand how the match is rigged.) As in wrestling during the golden age of the early 20th century, the marks willfully suspend their disbelief so that they can believe the match is a shoot. Hopefully, as in modern wrestling, fans will smarten up and understand that what they are watching is entertainment not sport.

Also, don't feel bad. It's pretty easy to transgress the legalistic DU rules and the enforcers are rabid about their to the letter enforcement.

[el_gato]

9. good analogy DenverDem

I have to say I'm not looking forward the "general election" as I will have to listen to people getting all worked up and distracted by the latest campaign news.

However, I do think more and more people are starting to understand
the reality versus the myth.

There has been a massive amount of cognitive dissonance generated
in the effort to shift from the cold-war paradigm to the terror-war
paradigm. The elite have finally exposed themselves just a little too much.

[BeHereNow]

14. It's like a pick-pocket scheme...

Jostle the victim and as he is
knocked of balance, steal his wallet,
and it works over and over again.
Example:
As the media splayed the "capture" of the
evildoer on December 13th, Bush signed
part of the Patriot Act ll.
Now tell me, which one of those events
is REALLY going to affect us?
And yet, whcih one did America notice...
Hegelian to the core.
BHN

[DenverDem]

16. Good point, Cat!

As in wrestling, when the "storyline" exceeds plausible credibility, the marks start turning into smart fans. This leads to contrarian smart fans that boo the babyfaces and screw up the TV tapings, requiring additional video editing and audio "sweetening" to attempt to continue the con. I spent many hours in an edit suite and audio studio trying to manufacture plausible credibility with mixed results. Hopefully the power elite political "producers" are having similar difficulties with their TV shows.

Smart fans unite. Boo the "babyfaces"!!

[Eloriel]

78. Boo the babyfaces indeed

You are TOOO clever. Fascinating insights.

[Sterling]

32. Will people like us be allowed on DU during the GD?

I have been here for three years. A loyal lefty and DUer. I hope there is still room for us here. I can't help how things have turned out.

[BeHereNow]

19. Did you just call me "intellectual"???

WOW! Thanks...
Let me explain...
I am a woman.
A blonde woman.
A woman who is, therefore, in our culture
assessed as a "Bimbo" long before I open my mouth.
You just made my day...
BHN

btw...when I was kid, and my dad had the wrestling
shows tuned in, I remarked to him that I thought the whole
thing was rigged. He got really pissed off at such a suggestion.
Heh-heh.

[DenverDem]

26. Your appropriate application of Hegelian logic to politricks

shows advanced intellectual achievement.

Hardly bimbo material. Another patriarchal myth exploded.

We are making progress here.

[BeHereNow]

27. Thanks...

I have lived in this body for a long time and
only recently understood that it was my
primary hinderance in pursuing what I cared about.
The fact is, we live in a very "image" driven society.
And there is an unspoken rule that attractive women
must NOT be intelligent too.
"BAH" says I!

BHN

[Nazgul35]

81. anyone who can get through Hagel...

deserves credit where it is due!

The hardest book I have ever had to read was his Phenomonology of the Spirit...whew! I had to re-read the same page before I went to the back notes that broke it down for me, than went back and reread it....

heavy stuff....kudos to Marx for being his student...

[Taeger]

20. I'm afraid of Kerry ...

If Kerry is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him. The phony who establishes "most" of your policy is better than the phony who works against most of it.

But my most sincere concern is that he will do NOTHING about NAFTA and WTO. Even Clinton failed us on this issue. Was he merely playing us??? Were we lead down the path of despair using our better intentions to "help" people in foreign countries and better the world. Ultimately we discovered that NAFTA and WTO isn't helping anyone but rich people. The Mexicans working in the Maquiladoras are WORSE off than before. And the powerful elite become even MORE powerful.

Kerry belongs to the most elite club amongst the elite. He has played his cards on the "left" side of the table. That doesn't mean he necessarily cares about it. The presidential election could end up as a match between two wrestling bafoons. The outcome won't matter because the result is the same for the promoter. He makes money.

You see, we are fighting for fringe issues instead of core democratic values. We are being played against one another so that the class war will continue un-noticed.

I do wonder a LOT about Clinton in retrospect. Not for what the "right" side said. That was all a bunch of rubbish. I wonder because he was so enthusiastic about "free" trade. Not only that, he IS STILL talking up free trade. A lot of legislatures have seen the light and have flipped back. Clinton is STILL advocating these free trade agreements that are so loathsome to both LIBERALS and TRADITIONAL CONSERVATIVES!!!!!

I suppose we shall see. But the "Skull & Bones" issue deserves a LOT of airing. If it is nothing, than there is nothing to be ashamed of. He should put his Skull & Crossbones on his campaign materials. Voters have a RIGHT to know. It is NOT RIGHT to suppress this issue. VOTERS ARE NOT CHILDREN. THEY HAVE A RIGHT to decide whether the issue is important TO THEM!!!!

[el_gato]

23. I had that experience during the '92 "debates" b/t Clinton and Bush Sr.

To explain, I cut my political teeth learning about Reagan's murderous rampage through latin america. During those debates I kept waiting for
Clinton to mention these issues and he never did. I guess it was at this point that I started to doubt our two party system.

[Eloriel]

79. You are more optimistic about Kerry than I am

by an order of magnitude.

I can't imagine him getting anything done. He's far too waffling, uncentered, narcissistic and basically unprincipled. There no CORE there, and no backbone to support it anyway.

[burrowowl]

85. To paraphrase Gore Vidal

Amurikkka has 2 right wings.
He also qualified DK as a sensible conservative.
Should be interesting in 10 to 20 years. Maybe sooner than I think.

[BeHereNow]

92. Sooner, I vote sooner...

Especially after hearing Bushies
list of Independent WMD Intel appointee roster.
It's like appointing a bunch of pedophiles to
investigate a molestation charge.
And all I can think about when I read the news
on the Bird flu and the WHO warnings on a global
Flu pandemic is the line from the PNAC document
about the development of biogenetic weaponary
that stated,inference to such as
"...a politically useful tool..."
They sure have forced China to spend money on
the problem, now haven't they?
And were it to break en masse here,
well that would solve the problem of dropping
poll numbers and would certainly shift the
public attention away from pesky questions
about 9-11 and WMD intel...
BHN

[Sterling]

31. I often make the same analogy.

It is really just too obvious at this point we are being scammed left and right (pun intended).

[burrowowl]

86. What Left?

in Amurikkka today? What Left?

[RapidCreek]

53. She sure is

I've felt this way for years.....Oddly enough I described this exact scenario to my mother tonight. She listened and understood...most folks just get a glazed over look in their eyes and remark on the weather.

It's good to know I am not alone in my beliefs about what is really going on. I can't remember the exact character or the exact quote...but it came from a fat pampered man in a mansion who was pulling the strings on both sides of a political battle. He said..."if worse comes to worst, history has proved that we can always convince the peasants to kill each other".

RC

[lucidmadman]

6. My problem with anything from PRISON PLANET is...

...that it's run by a far right xtian loon. I would not want to live in Alex Jone's world.
I have a friend who alerts me to things he's had on his radio show and he can be a scream from a comedy stand-point. I've heard him blind side Anne ('manhands') Coulter on his show. She thought she was gonna be interviewed by regular repug stooge. She wasn't quite ready for screamin' Alex.
Can we keep our eyes on the prize for right now and concentrate on getting Boy George and his Sharonist cabal aka (The Pnac Gallery) out of office and worry about the 'lizards' and illuminati later...

[BeHereNow]

8. Anthony Sutton is the point, not PP

PP just happens to be where I found the article
through a search.
I don't know anything about PP, but I do read Sutton
avidly. He warned us. He really did, and he was
most certainly NOT a crack pot.
Can't help it if a crack pot posted his article.
I was simply glad to find it.
BHN

[BeHereNow]

10. Did you read the article?

If so, you might want to cvonsider that you just demonstrated
what Sutton is delineating about the predictable nature of
people to pay attention to the WRONG issue.
That is how Hegelian tactics work.
No offense intended, just an observation.
BHN

[hang a left]

13. I hate to say I told you so.........

n/t

[BeHereNow]

17. Actually...

As I pointed out, without judgement I hope,
the response was exactly what Sutton tries to
illuminate.
We pay attention to the WRONG issue.
Americans have been programmed to do this
if you ask me. We look at the cover and never bother to
read the book. Our judgement and critical thinking abilities
have been deliberately skewed.
It's like this in my mind:
We complaing that we are hungry.
Food is put before us.
We don't like the color of the plate,
so we don't eat the food.
We continue to complain about being hungry.
We have missed what is important by focusing
on the color of the plate.

BHN

[4dog]

29. Good ref: More Sutton links if you have, please.

I happen to be reading America's Secret Establishment (on S & B). No other publications listed there. Of course, I can Google.

On the left/right discussion: I have found, since I stopped reading newspapers for news and analysis and mostly use the Web, that I get a lot of useful information from both "ends" of the ideological spectrum. I judge what I read by whether it makes sense, not which political end it came from. Also, to think of left/right as a one-dimensional measure makes as much sense as assigning a number to a person's intelligence.

[DenverDem]

12. The problem with the ABB argument

is that the BFEE is but a subsect of the larger power elite problem.

Who do we install as Pretzeldent that is not a part of another denomination in the power elite religion?

Slamming Alex Jones as a nut does not disprove this theory, it is merely another straw man defense that misdirects us from keeping our eyes on the real prize that is a truly democratic, sustainable, transparent civic culture. Merely electing Kerry or Edwards or Clark or even, I fear, Dean, will not make the kinds of substantive changes that will be necessary for democracy and sustainable fair market economies to survive even into the next decade.

[BeHereNow]

21. AMEN!

That is exactly what the REAL problem is!
Until we understand the nature of power, and the fact that the
actors have little to do with the script writing,
(they simply do as they are told by the producers)
we can not restore a free republic governed by democractic
principles.
When is the last time 535 men and women represented
WE, the people?

[Eloriel]

80. No, but Dean would give us a much better start on the process

Let's face it -- the ONLY thing that can possibly save us from all this is a fully empowered -- and awake!! -- electorate. We have a start on that with Dean.

[burrowowl]

89. Yes! but

Dean is a Libertarian in Democrat clothing!
What to do? What to do?

[Taeger]

15. Ahh but thats the point

You see, the term "far right" is an artificial construct. You're taught to disagree with someone simply because they aren't on "YOUR SIDE".

Six years ago, I honestly didn't give a hoot about all this "New World Order" babel. It was all kooky.

But it served the ultimate goal. It put focus on the UN, a completely powerless organization. It took focus of WTO, NAFTA, IMF etc... These are international organizations with real teeth. They aren't run by elected officials. They're run by corporations and the powerful elite.

Set the two sides against each other while you pursue your business. Distract them with nonsense. Get them to cry wolf A LOT over nothing. That way, when the real wolf comes, no one will listen.

[Taeger]

11. Ideological Gerrymandering

I agree the terms "left" and "right" are dumb. So is "liberal" and "conservative". What you accomplish is pigeonholing people into two groups and pitting them against one another.

In my opinions we defined the political ideology of either side by the fringe values of the extreme left or right of each side. The 80% of the values primarily expressed by the middle are forgotten. This is what the "establishment" wants to suppress.

One could look at a group like Skull & Bones and conclude that they are merely a harmless frat. Another person could look at it and say they are a demonic force for taking over the world. The problem is that BOTH viewpoints are mere conjecture. The core problem is the secrecy. This is the same problem with organizations like the WTO, NAFTA, World Bank, IMF, Tri-lateral commission, etc...

The way that I look at Skull & Bones is "divide and conquer". One side takes the left, the other takes the right. As long as their people are in power, their "folk" keep getting promoted and moved up the line. Power is concentrated in the hands of the few where they believe it belongs. In public, they are vicious adversaries. In private, they serve the same cause.

This is divide and conquer methodology isn't limited to modern politics. The most striking example is the way that poor white folks were duped into hating poor black folk in the South. They both had the same core set of problems. The wealthy plantation aristocracy was their mutual enemy. Yet, they stealthfully portrayed the problems of poor white southerners as a "black" problem instead of a social justice problem.

Now those same folks are being wedged with issues of religion and homosexuality. Pat Robertson is most likely the biggest hypocrite in the world. He claims to love Jesus, yet he is in league (along with ALL the Republicans) with Reverend Moon who claims to be Jesus Christ himself. Religion is just a means to the end. It's a means of diverting peoples attention from what is REALLY important.

So it all becomes an exercise in Ideological Gerrymandering. You have Lunch A or Lunch B. The selections are made for you. There is no A-La-Carte or buffets.

The solution is to break the two party hegemony and establish election models like instantaneous runoff that allow you to choose what you WANT without sacrificing the lesser of two evils ;-)

[lucidmadman]

18. Yes. Instant runoff and proportional representation...

...let a thousand schools (of thought) bloom...

[BeHereNow]

24. Right on Taeger!

And Welcome to DU!

You are so right on so many observations.
The thing that really blows my mind is the
absolute devotion to anyone who declares themselves
a "Democrat."
The Clintons set the stage for what the world is
suffering now.
Very little is ever said about Hillary's connection and
corporate enabling of the Walmartization of America,
or how her husband's actions in office are connected to the success
of that operation.
No one talks about the Clinton membership in the Bildeberger
group.
There is just a herd mentality that any one who is a
"democrat" is a good guy- but as you know,
a man's truth is revealed by his actions, not his word.
No one looks at the results of actions, they just swoon
over pretty words that make them feel warm and fuzzy
because they satisfy some narcissistic need to
see their self delusions confirmed the mirror of another.
We are a sick, sick society.
BHN

[Algorem]

22. Mike Malloy was talking about it...

http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/bloodbrothers.html http://www.mikemalloy.com http://69.28.73.17/index.html

[BeHereNow]

25. Thanks for the link!

I am West Coast and I love Malloy, but
he is on at exactly the time of day when I am
the busiest, so I rarely get to listen anymore.
I am going to access the file right now.
BHN

[BeHereNow]

28. Kick for Eloriel

here 'tis...
BHN

[Eloriel]

84. Thank you!!

I finally got here.

:hi:

[Dirk39]

30. LOL

"Remember that both Marx and Hitler, the extremes of "left" and "right" presented as textbook enemies, evolved out of the same philosophical system: Hegelianism."

Complete BS, everyone who has studied Hegel and german history,would just fall out of his chair laughing. Hitler didn't understand one page Hegel. Please take your time, to really study Hegel or to at least understand half of what dialectics and phenomenology means, apart from the comical and disney-like reduction of dialectics to the synthesis of opposites.

Ask any of your friends, who did study philosophy.
This whole article is a bad collage of halfunderstood particles of Hegel, Fichte and it even gets more ridiculous, when it comes to Hegel and Marx.

I don't want to offend you in any way, really not, but everyone, who did really study philosophy will just shake his head!
Buy some good books and take some hours to really think...

To give you just the first hint, Hegel's dialectics have nothing to do with the sophistic use of dialectics as an instrument. It's within history.


Hello from the country of Hitler, Marx, Fichte and Hegel,
Dirk

[4dog]

33. The point I believe was not to understand Hegel et al. but to try to

trace the source of modern schools of authoritarian thought. If you can supply an English language reference to that, I'm sure that at least a couple of people would be interested.

[Dirk39]

34. ?

"The point I believe was not to understand Hegel et al."

So you don't have to understand Hegel, to see his "dialectics" as the secret hidden "trick" used by S&K in their world ruling dialectical fights between their democratic and republican members???

Sorry, but this whole mixture of conspiracies, half-truth, not even half-understood philosophers can't be simply unraveled, 'cause it mixes things that never were combined.

You find even more confused Americans, who see the reasons for the barbarism in Europe in Nietzsche and Heidegger - both the strongest counterparts to Hegel in the history of philosophy, with Heidegger openly supporting Hitler.

If I should explain Hegel to little children, I would introduce him as the kind of philosopher, who did prove, why David must always win against Goliath.
Among the most interesting studies about Hegel in the USA are those, who did analyse the dialectical relationship between the slaveholders and colonisalists on the one hand and their victims on the other hand and how both their consciousness was involved within one another.
Franz Fanon comes to mind.

The most prominent work of Hegel is the chapter about Masters and Slaves / LORDSHIP AND BONDAGE in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This was in a way, the origin of Hegel's dialectics.
Marx concept of class-struggle wouldn't exist without this work of Hegel and the dialecical relation between Master and Slave.

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Hegel%20Phen/hegel%20phen%20ch%204%20A.htm

It's availabe in english. But it's, unlike Kant, very hard to translate.
I wouldn't go as far as Heidegger, who was convinced that one cannot think in english - he really did state this - but there's a little bit of truth in this statement, if people try to translate Hegel:-)


And at least, if you have a chance to understand the ruling forces behind the most powerfull people in the world, it should be worth one year of reading, to look behind it all, instead of just switching from one half-truth to the next conspiracy-theory. S&B might be real, but Hegel has deserved better:-)
Dirk

[Algorem]

35. You don't really know how to speak English,do you?

just joking.

[Dirk39]

36. No,

let's discuss it in german:-)
After at least some prominent S&B members have spent at least 200 years to understand half a page of Hegel, give me a try!
Dirk

[4dog]

37. Well, what I meant was that if there was no connection

between Hegel's ideas and these threads of authoritarian thinking, which came from some other source, it would be sufficient to trace them to the other source. I 'll give your link a try (for which thanks, Dirk), but if I go off and read for a few days or months, it will interrupt the dialogue.

[joyautumn]

38. once again, the point is ...

the point is:

A) networks of elites tied together by families and secret societies do set up false dichotomies to fake out the vast majority of people who would band together and toss them in a lake if they/we all realized what they are pulling on us.

and

B) one example of this is the false dichotomy between the Democratic and Republican parties, and between right/left, liberal/conservative.

stick to the point, and stop setting forth your specious argument that anyone who uses a piece of jargon in a colloquial rather than a technical manner is thus disqualified from engaging in debate on the critical political issues of our time.

if you have an argument against proposition A) or B) above, let's hear it. otherwise, start a thread on the correct use of the term 'hegelian'.

Here, I'll add another one for you to think about:

C) the intellectual/non-intellectual and educated/uneducated dichotomy is also created deliberately by power elites to prevent alliances between elements of society who, together, could potentially figure out all of their shenanigans, because each holds pieces of the puzzle the other lacks.

and

D) the entire field of philosophy is itself also a fabrication meant to intimidate 'non-intellectuals' and entangle 'intellectuals' in pointless analytical complications that, as beherenow is trying to tell you, cause you to ENTIRELY MISS THE POINT.

[DenverDem]

39. "The entire field of philosophy is itself also a fabrication"

that "cause(s) you to entirely miss the point."

Now that's a philosophy I can buy into.

Great summation, Joy!

[Dirk39]

40. I give it a try...

I suppose somehow that Mr. Sutton used "Hegel" and placed him as a figure within his discourse about S&B. Correct?

And without this figure, his discourse might sound much less sensational.

He appeals to an ignorant public that might have heard Hegel's name and associate him with the imgage of a kind of european mastermind of thinking, without knowing anything specific about him at all.

But from that moment on, it all sounds so much more interesting and somehow mysterious. There has to be a secret strategy, a trick, carefully hidden from us - that explains it all. We're all chess figures in another one's game.


"stop setting forth your specious argument that anyone who uses a piece of jargon in a colloquial rather than a technical manner is thus disqualified from engaging in debate on the critical political issues of our time"

o.k., but don't you think, it looks much less sensational from this moment on?


"D) the entire field of philosophy is itself also a fabrication meant to intimidate 'non-intellectuals' and entangle 'intellectuals' in pointless analytical complications that, as beherenow is trying to tell you, cause you to ENTIRELY MISS THE POINT."


Who did "fabricate" it? So about 2400+ years ago, some human beings secretly did meet and invented philosophy, to intimidate 'non-intellectuals' and entangle 'intellectualls' in pointless analytical complications. And from Platon to Fichte to Kant to Hegel to Marx to Nietzsche to Deleuze to Heidegger to Epikur to Foucault to Wittgenstein: none of them did ever reveal their conspiracy?

Hegel indeed could teach you, how people and different classes and different hierarchies install themselves, behind your back and somehow against the intentions of those, who act. And how time and history have their own intentions and their own reason, although far from those acting within their own limits.

"B) one example of this is the false dichotomy between the Democratic and Republican parties, and between right/left, liberal/conservative."

If democracy is reduced to the choice between between McDonalds and Burger King, I guess you don't need Hegel to explain that there is no choice...

Like one well educated hegelian and marxist, Max Horkheimer, once did say: "No (philosophical) materialism can be vulgar enough in the world, we live in, to explain the world, we live in."

If you want to get a taste of what "dialectic" means, I post an example of Horkheimer and Adorno.

If you understand the counterplay and at the same time involvement of "enlightment" and "myth", how they are inseperable from one another and at the same time incompatible, you might at least get a taste of what dialectic means.

If you're not interested at all, then maybe at least admit, that Sutton has lost a bit of his appeal. Or do, whatever you like.

Dirk

[Dirk39]

41. Dialectic of Enlightenment

"Long before "postmodernism" became fashionable, Adorno and Horkheimer wrote one of the most searching critiques of modernity to have emerged among progressive European intellectuals. Dialectic of Enlightenment is a product of their wartime exile. It first appeared as a mimeograph titled Philosophical Fragments in 1944. This title became the subtitle when the book was published in 1947. Their book opens with a grim assessment of the modern West: "Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity" (DE 1). How can this be, the authors ask. How can the progress of modern science and medicine and industry promise to liberate people from ignorance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing work, yet help create a world where people willingly swallow fascist ideology, knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically develop lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has become irrational.

Although they cite Francis Bacon as a leading spokesman for an instrumentalized reason that becomes irrational, Horkheimer and Adorno do not think that modern science and scientism are the sole culprits. The tendency of rational progress to become irrational regress arises much earlier. Indeed, they cite both the Hebrew scriptures and Greek philosophers as contributing to regressive tendencies. If Horkheimer and Adorno are right, then a critique of modernity must also be a critique of premodernity, and a turn toward the postmodern cannot simply be a return to the premodern. Otherwise the failures of modernity will continue in a new guise under postmodern conditions. Society as a whole needs to be transformed.

Horkheimer and Adorno believe that society and culture form an historical totality, such that the pursuit of freedom in society is inseparable from the pursuit of enlightenment in culture (DE xvi). There is a flip side to this: a lack or loss of freedom in society--in the political, economic, and legal structures within which we live--signals a concomitant failure in cultural enlightenment--in philosophy, the arts, religion, and the like. The Nazi death camps are not an aberration, nor are mindless studio movies innocent entertainment. Both indicate that something fundamental has gone wrong in the modern West.

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the source of today's calamity is a pattern of blind domination, domination in a triple sense: the domination of nature by human beings, domination of nature within human beings, and, in both of these forms of domination, the domination of some human beings by others. What motivates such triple domination is an irrational fear of the unknown: "Humans believe themselves free of fear when there is no longer anything unknown. This has determined the path of demythologization . . . . Enlightenment is mythical fear radicalized" (DE 11). In an unfree society whose culture pursues so-called progress no matter what the cost, that which is "other," whether human or nonhuman, gets shoved aside, exploited, or destroyed. The means of destruction may be more sophisticated in the modern West, and the exploitation may be less direct than outright slavery, but blind, fear-driven domination continues, with ever greater global consequences. The all-consuming engine driving this process is an ever-expanding capitalist economy, fed by research universities and the latest technologies.

Contrary to some interpretations, Horkheimer and Adorno do not reject the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Nor do they provide a negative "metanarrative" of universal historical decline. Rather, through a highly unusual combination of philosophical argument, sociological reflection, and literary and cultural commentary, they construct a "double perspective" on the modern West as an historical formation (Jarvis 1998, 23). They summarize this double perspective in two interlinked theses: "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology" (DE xviii). The first thesis allows them to suggest that, despite being declared mythical and outmoded by the forces of secularization and disenchantment, older rituals, religions, and philosophies may have contributed to the process of enlightenment and may still have something worthwhile to contribute. The second thesis allows them to expose ideological and destructive tendencies within modern forces of secularization and disenchantment, but without denying either that these forces are indeed progressive and enlightening or that the older conceptions they displace were themselves ideological and destructive.

A fundamental mistake in many interpretations of Dialectic of Enlightenment occurs when readers take such theses to be theoretical definitions of unchanging categories rather than critical judgments about historical tendencies. The authors are not saying that myth is "by nature" a force of enlightenment. Nor are they claiming that enlightenment "inevitably" reverts to mythology. In fact, what they find really mythical in both myth and enlightenment is the thought that fundamental change is impossible. Such resistance to change characterizes both ancient myths of fate and modern devotion to the facts.

Accordingly, in constructing a "dialectic of enlightenment" the authors simultaneously aim to carry out a dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment not unlike Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Two Hegelian concepts anchor this project, namely, determinate negation and conceptual self-reflection. "Determinate negation" (bestimmte Negation) indicates that immanent criticism is the way to wrest truth from ideology. A dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment, then, "discloses each image as script. It teaches us to read from features the admission of falseness which cancels its power and hands it over to truth" (DE 18). Beyond and through such determinate negation, a dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment also recalls the origin and goal of thought itself. Such recollection is the work of the concept as the self-reflection of thought (der Begriff als Selbstbesinnung des Denkens, DE 32). Conceptual self-reflection reveals that thought arises from the very corporeal needs and desires that get forgotten when thought becomes a mere instrument of human self-preservation. It also reveals that the goal of thought is not to continue the blind domination of nature and humans but to point toward reconciliation. Adorno works out the details of this conception in his subsequent lectures on Kant (KC), ethics (PMP), and metaphysics (MCP) and in his books on Husserl (AE), Hegel (H), and Heidegger (JA). His most comprehensive statement occurs in Negative Dialectics, which is discussed below."

Common boys and girls, Bush jr. had to hold a lecture about this two days after he became a member of S&B, shouldn't be hard thing to do!

Dirk

[DenverDem]

43. So, Hegel invented pro wrestling?

The Heel-Babyface Dialectic, I believe.

[Dirk39]

48. No, he invented Judo:

Use the force of the enemy instead of opposing it. But then again, I don't know anything about wrestling, just doesn't look as elegant as Judo and dialectics.
Damn, have to go for my monthly cheque from S&B now:-)

From Platon upwards, we kept it secret, but now DU has seduced me and I couldn't keep my mouth shut, again.
2400+ years of conspiracy in vain, just because of DU. I will be lynched tomorrow in front of the world public. But then again, they will still don't know that they just play a part in my dialectic game.
R.I.P.

Dirk

[joyautumn]

69. anti-conspiracy theories highly implausible

>"stop setting forth your specious argument that anyone who uses a >piece of jargon in a colloquial rather than a technical manner is >thus disqualified from engaging in debate on the critical political >issues of our time"

>o.k., but don't you think, it looks much less sensational from this >moment on?

good, you admit you were using a specious argument, and now you are going to "try" to give an honest argument. you should apologize first, though, because you were being disrespectful. why are you using rhetorical tricks and intellectual-elitist browbeating? that's generally a sign of intellectual impotence.

look, Sutton's argument is good not because it's sensational. it's good because it is sensible. no, it takes nothing away from the reasonability of his argument, and credibility of it, that he does not understand Hegel the way a Hegel scholar understands Hegel. Hegel himself could not have understood Hegel in the navel-gazing way that the Hegel-scholarship-boutique-industry-within-academia does.

Seems like you are a true Hegelian -- you actually think History with a capital H is a person, a being, with a mind of its own. maybe you don't literally think that, but maybe Hegel didn't either.

The point is, you seem to think the problems we face in society are the result of "historical forces" or "systemic dynamics", some kind of process that no group of elites could possibly harness and control.

So you really just think that it's stupid for us to think that anyone can control history. That's your argument. You just say, "Nah, no group of humans are capable of what conspiracy theorists accuse some people of doing." Well, where's your evidence and argumentation in support of this thesis? This is a pretty out-there claim you're making about the overarching limits of humans' capacity to control the course of human societies, yet you expect us to swallow YOUR idea of what those limits might be, just because you do a bunch of name-dropping of has-been philosophers with century-old ideas, and then snicker at us as if it's ridiculous for us not to believe YOUR version of what makes society tick and what humans are capable of?

If it's such a ridiculous thought that elite families and networks could set up false dichotomies to achieve mass social control, then you should be able to present a clear argument why it's ridiculous. So why is it ridiculous? You've set yourself a tall order here -- prove not just that it's untrue, but that it's unreasonable even to consider it plausible.

your frustration is that you can't even prove it's untrue, so you try to bully us into thinking it's implausible. but it's not implausible.

what's implausible is Hegel's nonsense, similar to yours, that human society follows a logic of its own that no one can harness, no one can get hold of and control.

no one is saying that the elites have TOTAL control -- we can stop them, IF we figure out exactly what they're doing and counteract, and IF we stop believing people like Hegel, Marx, and you who try to tell us that:

people don't oppress people, oppression oppresses people.

well, i find that highly implausible.

[burrowowl]

88. Welcome to DU eom

[Eloriel]

82. No, Dirk

I really enjoy your remarks (while not necessarily agreeing with everything) and CERTAINLY appreciate your facile use of English and love that you're here on DU -- but

{i]o.k., but don't you think, it looks much less sensational from this moment on?

No. The point of the piece -- at least the important (to me) point that I took away -- is actually irrelevent to Hegel. If Sutton is wrong about Hegel, so be it. I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't reduce the rest of what he's saying for me.

And thus, as someone else suggested, this side discussion is off topic and becomes a distraction.

[burrowowl]

87. McDonalds and BurgerKing! The DIALECTIC

LOLROTFLMAO. Rolling on the floor, laughing....
Thanks Dirk

[RapidCreek]

52. Beautifuly stated!

RC

[BeHereNow]

59. Start Here:

In your search window type this:
"Cheney" "Kojeve" "Strauss"
Hegel will come up in nearly every link and the
Kojeve/Hegel connection to the warped PNAC plan.

BHN

[JackRiddler]

50. Lieber Dirk

sei nicht so stutzig, man sieht, dass Du Akademiker bist. Hier geht es aber nicht um Hegelsche Philosophie als solches, sondern um eine Kurzel - ein Begriff, der eine politische Strategie von falsche Opposition oder teile-und-herrsche beschreibt. Der echte Hegel ist dafür absolut egal. Es geht gerade um eine Karikatur von These-Antithese-Synthese, die nicht als komplexe Entwicklung verstanden wird, sondern als bewusst vorgenommenen Plan der Eliten: Aktion, Reaktion, Synthese. Und so was ist ja auch theoretisch entwickelt worden, nicht von Philosophen, sondern von Strategen (bei Tavistock usw.) Und man sieht die realgewordene Praxis täglich, oder? Die Politik ist wirklich zu einem Spiel von Catchen verkommen, oder?

[rman]

57. Hegel and the Elite is like Plato and Leo Strauss

I suspect you know about both Plato and Leo Strauss, and how Strauss gave a controversial interpretation to the works of Plato in order to lend credibility to what is in effect a philosophy of Fascism (which found its way into US government via the so called neocons).
It's like that with Hegel and the 'Global Elite'.

[BeHereNow]

60. I repeat:

Search "Cheney" and "Kojeve"
That is it precisely.
BHN

[BeHereNow]

61. I repeat:

Search "Cheney" and "Kojeve"
That is it precisely.
BHN

[markses]

71. Look on the bright side Dirk

At least they didn't drag poor Jean Hyppolite into their morass of nonsense. Needless to say, none of these folks have ever read a word of Hegel (much less Kojeve!), so this farcical thread is little more than entertainment. But yes, the obscene ignorance with which concepts and personalities are thrown around is astounding.

Thanks for being - at the very least - a sly objector to this foolishness.

[BeHereNow]

73. What Pomposity...

You display Markes.
To make the assertion that other posters have not read
anything other than the latest Stephen King novel.
I find your post extremely self-righteous, offensive and
insulting to the participants of this discussion.

Perhaps you would do well to start a private "Philosophy Forum"
at DU and limit participation to those you deem educated/
well read, enough to contribute.

You could require all posters to submit a completed reading list
and pass a written test before accessing your precious domain.

Talk about an elitist attitude.

Basta!

BHN

[Dirk39]

42. Just a marginal note about Hitler:

For the Nazis - those of them, who could even spell "dialectic" - it was an evil jewish idea, the ultimate jewish marxist idea, to outwit common sense and create a world, where black is white, up is down, victory means defeat and nothing is as clear, as decent fellow arian germans want it to be.
Dirk

[ngGale]

44. Never took this theory seriously until...

Bush and 2000 election. If you start with JFK and go forward, even including Republican president's, you find issues hard to deal with. Left and Right, both parties, wrong. Both begin to seem the same. The same people keep popping up even in the present administration. So, I'm giving it some thought.

[Spider Jerusalem]

45. Beware the secret Masonic Illuminati New World Order conspiracy.

<yawn>

I'm sorry, but this conspiracy theorising is unsubstantiated by any serious critical analysis of the facts. Yes, the decisions of legislative bodies tend to favour maintenance of the status quo. This is only to be expected. To do otherwise, from their perspective, would lead to revolution and the collapse of society as we know it. The primary difference between those on the right and those on the putative left is that the left believes, from the experience of history, that it's necessary to toss out a few crumbs from the table to the proles to keep them from getting surly. (See the French Revolution, the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381, the Russian Revolution, and many others for examples of what happens when this isn't done.) The right, on the other hand, is of the opinion that the social policies of Louis XVII, the Plantagenet bureaucracy and the Romanovs are to be admired and even emulated.

And I fail to see what Hegel has to do with this. What's the thesis, what's the antithesis, and what synthesis is hoped for? Mr Sutton strikes me as a man in desperate need of philosophical and historical education (not to mention a course of antipsychotic medication).

[Dirk39]

47. A voice of reason...

Although I still remain stubborn: Sutton might not have much to say about Hegel, but Hegel still has a lot to say about Sutton, not to mention the french revolution and Louis XVII.
And I would replace the antipsychotic medication with a decent psychoanalyst. I'm so moderate now.
Hi,
Dirk

[Spider Jerusalem]

49. Sutton's pretty weak on his history, too...

the Illuminati of Weishaupt were an eighteenth-century group of Enlightenment thinkers devoted to spreading the ideals of reason and logic as opposed to superstition, and of the rights of man (cf. John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and other authors on the subject) in the face of feudalism and royal absolutism, which were just coming to their end in Europe. NOT, as the mythology has it, a secret society descended from the Assassins and Knights Templar bent on world domination at any cost.

I never cease to be amazed at the capacity of otherwise intelligent people to believe fervently in patent absurdities.

[Aries]

58. Weishaupt, Illuminati, & Masonry

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/stauffer.html

"...His imagination having taken heat from his reflections upon the attractive power of the Eleusinian mysteries and the influence exerted by the secret cult of the Pythagoreans, it was first in Weishaupt's thought to seek in the Masonic institutions of the day the opportunity he coveted for the propagation of his views. From this, original intention, however, he was soon diverted, in part because of the difficulty he experienced in commanding sufficient funds to gain admission to a lodge of Masons, in part because his study of such Masonic books as came into his hands persuaded him that the "mysteries" of Freemasonry were too puerile and too readily accessible to the general public to make them worthwhile.28. He deemed it necessary, therefore, to launch out on independent lines. He would form a model secret organization, comprising "schools of wisdom," concealed from the gaze of the world behind walls of seclusion and mystery, wherein those truths which the folly and egotism of the priests banned from the public chairs of education might be taught with perfect freedom to susceptible youths.29. By the constitution of an order whose chief function should be that of teaching, an instrument would be at hand for attaining the goal of human progress, the perfection of morals and the felicity of the race.30...."

Even if this is how they started out, it seems likely that there was a tendency toward the accumulation of power common to most human systems. The element of secrecy adds to the mystique, and makes knowing the historic facts problematic.

It's interesting that David Kay in his recent Congressional testimony criticed "closed orders and secret societies" in the U.S. military/intelligence bureaucracy. It would be interesting to know exactly what he meant by that expression.

[banana republican]

46. Not having read Sutton's essay

I can only say that this nation was founded on the Hegelian dialectic; that "truth" is to be found in the dialog between opposites. The problem that we have today is that the two pole of the dialectic have been collapsed on one another leaving us with only one pole of the dialectic (e.g. republican).

The results of that collapse is that there is no longer a meaningful dialog between opposites; and; thus no systhesis to arrive at the "truth" or the best answer.

The problem is akin to one hand clapping. There is only the deafening silence....

[K-W]

51. There are such better explenations to be found,

buying into outlandish conspiricy theories does no one any good. My kingdom for a society of critical thinkers.

[RapidCreek]

55. Outlandish conspiracy theories?

You state there are such better explanations to be found....yet you offer none. That ain't terribly indicative of a critical thinker.

RC

[DenverDem]

56. There are some really outlandish conspiracy theories out there.

Like the one about the guy who lives in a cave and had some other guys study flying in piper cubs, then they executed this perfectly coordinated theft of four jumbo jets and flew around for an hour managing to elude the most powerful air defenses in the world and, despite training on tiny and simplistic airplanes, these cave dwelling pilots were able to fly with incredible precision into three buldings, hitting the two tallest buildings in the exact spots that would bring them down in a controlled demolition like collapse.

I mean, those conspiracy theorists must be completely crazy if they think we would buy into that one.

[Serenity-NOW]

54. The key to the puzzle is the 'endgame' key.

These folks are not concerned with history beyond 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar. Don't ask me why but don't expect any promise beyond that.

Ex: Mars program, Men on moon(again).

We as a civilization are toast. Prepare to live in medieval times.

Grow a garden, do what you can for heating and get a gun or four. It's happening now in the northeast. Look what happened in our lifetimes alone and explain to me why the disparity of wealth increases and the rich build gated dwellings instead of the time tested noblesse oblige principle.

Pay attention to what is going on now to anticipate the future.

I'm a businessman and I can see this all; can you? It's about to get ugly.

Don't be fooled, it's game over and darwinism (survival of the fit-est) is coming on.). Prepare yourselves. The most fit have the most cash in this twisted interpretation. Your children are in great peril; don't have anymore kids unless you are full on sadistic. And this won't be resolved by any election. Count on it.

[Mari333]

62. Mayan calendar end time prophecies?

Kali Yuga end time prophecies? entering the 5th circle of conciousness? aliens?
pfffft.

end of the world predictions that failed:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm
In the meantime, dont tell me about 11:11 either.
I think I need a beer.

[Serenity-NOW]

65. Not those, it's Peak Oil and that's for real

just a coinkydink that it coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar.

Not the end of life just the end of what we are familiar with and an interesting return to pre-inudustrialization since we haven't covered our butts for this by working on alternatives. There are some truly harsh times right around the corner.

[BeHereNow]

67. I agree-

And I think it is foolish to remain in denial of this fact.
Of COURSE the global elite are positioning themselves
for control of the masses. they know fully well what is coming.
No conspiracy here- just business decisions by those who understand
the nature of power and how it will serve them in the times ahead.
BHN

[Mari333]

68. Well, maybe its time I started walking anyway

Someone should have put a scare into the US public a long time ago about our wastefulness and usage of petrochemicals for everything, including overpackaging by industries and etc
nonetheless...I think the Mayans were just really good astronomers and fabulous at knowing it takes 472,000 years for the cosmological bodies to make a full spin Universe wise..the Hindus were pretty damn good at it too
It pisses me off to no end that in 2013 I was supposed to get my Social Security widows benefits..goddamit...right after the whole world goes to hell in a handbasket..
wouldnt you know it, I have the worst timing.

[BeHereNow]

64. For Dirk39

If I could edit the original title, I would include
(the Kojeve Interpretation of Hegel) as I think it more applicable
to the reference, I think Sutton would approve.
BHN

http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/kalo1.html
"On March 29, 1944, William Donovan wrote a memo to President
Roosevelt, recounting interviews he had recently conducted with
several French Resistance leaders, who had underscored that the
Synarchists were at the core of the Hitlerite grouping in Vichy.
Alexandre Kojeve's personal role during the Vichy period is
shrouded in mystery. His whereabouts from 1939 through the end of
World War II are not publicly documented. However, French
intelligence files show that one of his best students in the
Sorbonne EPHE Hegel seminars, Robert Marjolin, was a leading
member of the Synarchist/Worms group, who became France's
Minister of Economics in 1945, and sponsored Kojeve's own 20-year
career at the ministry.
But the ultimate proof of Kojeve's unrepentant, deeply held
fascist/Synarchist views is to be found in his writings and
teachings (see accompanying article).

- Dick Cheney's Kindergarten -
Kojeve's rabid glorification of Jacobinism, Bonapartism, and
purgative violence has clearly made its mark on the war party
apparatus in and around the Cheney-Wolfowitz cabal. Defense
Policy Board "revolution in military affairs" guru Newt
Gingrich's recent violent attack on Secretary of State Colin
Powell and the entire Near East Bureau of the State Department is
one graphic incident of the group's impulse to purgative
violence. Bloom intimate Wolfowitz' dozen-year promotion of
Hitlerian "preventive war" is another, even more ominous example.
Leo Strauss, sensitive to postwar Americans' hatred for all
things fascist, deceptively wrapped himself in the legacy of the
Founding Fathers, for public consumption. He sent his favorite
disciples to Paris--to Alexandre Kojeve's salon--for the full
fascist/Synarchist indoctrination. Despite that sleight of hand,
the stench of historical fascism is too deep to rub off
Wolfowitz, Kristol, Fukuyama, and the entire coterie of Dick
Cheney-protected putschists, who would turn the U.S.A. into a
sick parody of the first modern fascist empire, the France of
Napoleon Bonaparte.
The fact that prominent present-day American Synarchists
like Richard Perle and self-professed universal fascist Michael
Ledeen have been waging a non-stop attack against French
President Jacques Chirac and all things French is being
increasingly viewed as a weak attempt to divert attention from
their own, very nasty "French Connection."

[Dirk39]

77. I guess, I have to do some research....

Until now, Kojève according to my knowledge:
He did experience the revolution in Russia and escaped with his parents.
He later became one of the most prominent Hegelians ever in France. His reading of Hegel has a lot to do with justifiying what did happen to him as a child, thinking against his own upbringing and class.

One of the well-known anectodes about him goes like this:

One of his students did storm his office one day, telling him that a revolution is about to happen (Paris May `68)...
Kojève asked: >>Is there any blood?<<
The student replied: "No".
Kojève: >>Leave my office, I have some work to do!<<

With Merlau-Ponty being somehow inbetween, the later marxists and structuralists like Althusser and Foucault tried to read Marx in a different way. Instead of going back to Hegel, esp. Althusser thought that one has to clearly seperate Marx from Hegel, liberating Marx from his own idealism, still being a burden from Hegel. Marx wanted to put Hgel upside down, but he was still captured in Hegel's idealism.

Among most european marxists and leftists, Kojève is seen as a kind of "jakobiner", someone, who's defending terreur(terror) as the only way, history allows to reach freedom, somehow possesed with Hegel's perspective on history.

For hegelian marxists, the jacobiner and later Bonaparte were indeed fighting wars against feudalism, enforcing capitalism and a republic against feudalism and thereby being progressive. Somehow similar to the american war against slavery.

Most neoliberals and conservatives in history and philosopy claim today, that democracy - the kind of democracy we know now - would be the result of "peacefull" market forces, happening anyway. They are much more deterministic than the real Hegel, not to mention Kojève.

I guess, these conservatives would even claim that the war against slavery in the USA was unnecessary. Capitalism would have put an end to slavery anyway.

Kojève in a way is the most extreme counterpart to this: every bit of freedom, human beings did ever achieve, is due to them, fighting for it and defending it - not to some mechanical laws, written down in history's scriptbook, happening anyway.

Kojève is an example of someone thinking against himself.

I do some research about him the next days, but I never heard any dubious stories about him, during the Vichi-times in France. And I would just guess that the generation of Foucault, Althusser etc. would have mention it, but who knows?
Dirk

[Eloriel]

83. Be sure to include Leo Strauss in your research endeavors

Here's some accumulated links for you:

One more time: LEO STRAUSS AND THE NEO-CONS
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7200&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes

[Dirk39]

93. ‘Democratic Elitism’ versus ‘The Great Community’

Hello Eloriel!

I know Strauss's teachers better than Strauss - Carlo Schmitt comes to mind, who might have been his biggest influence and who has made a career in Nazi-Germany and, no comment required, in Post-War Germany.

"Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow"

Exactly this attitude doesn't sound new to me in any way. You find this attitude among U.S. elites and elites in all democratic societies for centuries. From Kennedy to Nixon to Carter to Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush jr.

You're confronted with this as a reality every day and now you're surprised that there is a theory/science/philosophy justifying it?
Did you think the speeches, we hear, the newspapers, we read, the kind of TV-news, we watch, the election campaigns, we experience, were just accidents so far?


The american politicians, who believe in democracy as a kind of society, where all citizens should participate, decisions are transparent and policy is the result of an open debatte among all citizens and interest groups are a small minority, if they count at all. And they never had much influence. Europe isn't much different.



Most political and economic elites have a concept of "democracy" that goes like this:
There's a small elite of those, who have the knowledge and understanding that allows them to rule and make the decisions. The democratic institutions, the media, the public discourse etc. are just there, to force the rest of the people, to support the decisions already made.
If the masses don't subscribe to the agenda, the elite has a communication problem. They NEVER have a problem with reality, they always have a PR-problem.

If the people still don't obey, use violence.
For those people, democracy just means that the elites use mostly deception instead of violence.



I offer you an example from WW1 and the years after WW1:

"The Wilson administration established the Committee on Public Information, headed by a former muckraking journalist named George Creel, to propagandize the home front with lurid details about “the Huns.” In a further echo of our day, jingoist mass-hysteria was whipped up causing the renaming of “sauerkraut” to “freedomkraut” and the banishing of German classes from secondary schools. This period of repression, which lasted well into the 1920s in the form of the “Red Scare,” appalled Dewey early on, as he saw fellow professors at Columbia pilloried and fired for their anti-war views.

Most of his progressive colleagues saw things differently. Social scientists like Walter Lippmann and Harold Lasswell, astounded by the efficacy of the wartime propaganda blitz, foresaw the new discipline of social psychology revolutionizing American society. In the years that followed the war, they further justified resort to propaganda in response to the reemergence of religious fundamentalism, as reflected in the meteoric rise of the 2nd Ku Klux Klan and events like the Scopes-monkey evolution trial in Dayton, Tennessee. They thus concluded that the American public was too ignorant and too easily manipulated by propaganda to be trusted with meaningful political decision-making beyond selecting between “tweedledum and tweedledee” once every couple of years. As always, “for their own good,” the public would have their affairs attended to by social science “experts” who could dispassionately, and above all rationally, evaluate society’s problems. They unsurprisingly considered themselves more qualified than politicians or businessmen to render weighty judgments. Dewey rejected this course, one which became the consensus not only of modern political science, but modern (post-suffragette) American politics, right to the present."
http://www.americanidealism.com/stories.php?StoryID=38

A later example would be, how PR-agencies destroyed the labour-unions in the USA during the 1930s.

Noam Chomsky's books "Media Control" and "Necessary Illusions" offer dozens and dozens of quotes from american politicians going back to the founding fathers that are not different in any way from "PNAC" or Strauss. There's no secret about it. I guess if one of us would study political science, which I didn't, at any university in Europe or the USA, we would come aware that the majority of our teachers have attitudes similar to those of Strauss.

We're 3/5 human beings, if at all:-)
Dirk

[BeHereNow]

66. Sutton, S&Bs and NWO

Good read with links to those who want to read more
about Sutton's work:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles5/Moore_Conflict-Profiteering.htm
btw, for those who consider some of the thoughts on this thread
"conspiracy theories" remember this:
A conspiracy implies that something is hidden.
So far, as in Nazi Germany, every step of the rise
of this dictatorship has been legal, or made law,
with the complete complacency of its citizens.
Nothing has been hidden what so ever, therefore
it can not be classified as a conspiracy.

BHN

On edit: Complacency induced by fear and controlled
conflict.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

70. If Kerry wins and puts a bunch of bonesmen in his cabinet

then I think we'd have a problem. If it's just him I wouldn't worry too much about it. I hate David Brooks but his opinion about the Skull & Bones seems to have some merit. They are a secret society but that just seems like a bunch of stuffy circle-jerkery.

[joyautumn]

72. how would we know?

like any fraternal society, secret or not, world-dominating or not, of course members will appoint other members to key positions if they can. that's what the point of a fraternal society is! so it's completely unreasonable for you to think that Kerry WOULDN'T appoint a bunch of bonespersons to key positions.

but the more important point is: how will we know whether he has or hasn't, since the memberships is secret??? someone outed a list of members up to 1986, but after that we have no information! so there are presumably about 240 young S&B members, many of whom by now would be old enough to receive key appointments to a Kerry administration, WHOSE IDENTITIES ARE UNKNOWN.

we know that some of them since 1990 might be women. there are also those, like Dick Cheney, who come from S&B families but who aren't members themselves -- Cheney went to Yale but dropped out to do something else, so he was never inducted into S&B like seven of his relatives were. For all intents and purposes, he is S&B.

Kerry should immediately and publicly renounce his membership in S&B, and expose all of their secrets, instead of refusing to talk about it at all. If it's just a little circle-jerk club, then why wouldn't he just quit and why are the secrets so important to keep that we would risk losing the presidency due to lingering doubts about it among the voting public?

Isn't defeating Bush important enough to him to take every precaution not to lose votes, even if it means he has to quit a club he obviously doesn't want to quit? If he were willing to talk about it, would he say it's because it's not a big deal and he shouldn't give credence to those who say it is? But there's enough evidence that S&B members' influence on our political system enough to raise serious accountability and conflict of interest questions to show it's not credible to dismiss it out of hand -- would you be okay with it if Kerry secretly belonged to the Christian Coalition, and refused to quit when this is found out? What if he had secret ties to the mob? It's a question of choosing's one's loyalty to one's secret association or to public service. Don't you think those two loyalties are inherently incompatible in a democratic society?

If Kerry were to make a big deal out of renouncing and exposing S&B for what it is -- whatever it is -- and use that event to launch a campaign against the Bush-Cheney secret government, hammer Cheney on his Energy commission, etc. then he'd win a lot of libertarian-leaning Republican votes, and beat Bush in a landslide. It's clearly a winning strategy, so why isn't he doing it?

[Algorem]

74. i tried to understand some philosophy,i kant.

[Sterling]

75. me 2

it maks my hed hurt. I am glad we have such smart DUers so the rest of us don't get taken advantage of by people with funny ideas.

[Algorem]

76. Kerry's mail got mixed up...

http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1075895807310150.xml

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

90. Anthonly C. Sutton, How the Order Creates War and Revolution

That's what this is from, correct?

[RBHam]

91. Plan "B"

I wrote a post about this a while ago.

If Bush becomes a liability, and the established powers that be need someone they think they can control, then Kerry would be maneuvered into the Oval Office.

At that point, any moves by Kerry to bring light to the evils of the Bush Cartel could be thwarted by a Republican controlled Congress and their well organized and well trained right wing media. Before Bush leaves office, he'd likely find some Patriot Act ennabled way to make sure the Reagan papers, Cheney's energy task force papers, and his own Presidential records are locked away for a 100 years.

Unfortunately, I can see Kerry, even if he wanted to rebel against the BFEE, being hamstrung in all kinds of ways.