Real Virtuality – Power & the Straw Man

We live in a world of illusion. Let me rewrite that: we exist in a world of illusion.

Why would I say such a thing? Because, since time immemorial, those in power have employed smoke and mirrors, monsters and boogeymen, to distract the public from what is really going on.

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

FDR, November 21st, 1933 in a personal letter to Colonel House

Our government, like all governments, is comprised of men who have no more idea what to do then you and I do. What they have is a special talent for winning elections. They are in the driver’s seat and they want to stay there. Power is addictive, more addictive than sex, crack cocaine or anything else known to man.

“Fifty men have run America, and that’s a high figure.”

Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, July 26th, 1936 in The New York Times.

No government as inept as ours, and many are far worse, could long remain at the controls were the American public paying attention. But the public is not paying attention – they have been distracted by Real Virtuality.

Real Virtuality: You know: American Idol, Y2K, Global Warming, the Yellow Peril (look it up), the Coming Ice Age, The Population Bomb and Global Starvation, the Super Bowl.

If you want to watch the Super Bowl go ahead – the outcome has been already been determined. Barring a boiler explosion in the Manning household, take the Colts and give the 6 points they are asking. Winter Olympics? The bulk of Gold Medals will go to the USA, China and the nordic nations. Meanwhile our nation is broke and the economy is in ruins and the dollar is going down the toilet like a lead turd.

In his most excellent blog, JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN , Jesse talks of gold, international trade and monetary manipulation and writes:

I like data anomalies. They are so interesting. As Holmes observed in the story Silver Blaze, “Why didn’t the dog bark?”

Gregory of Scotland Yard: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

I cannot think of any single economic phenomenon that is more interesting in recent time, say the past 100 years, than the evolution of global trade, the basis for its exchange, and of course the official reserve holdings that are a natural outcome of this.

For if one understands that the power to set and control the currency essentially trumps all local fiscal policy issues, there is almost nothing more important than the path which this evolution takes. Valuation and the ownership of the ‘standard’ of monetary valuation is key, and yet so little remarked, so little discussed in public.

I try to resist the temptation to suspicion that statists are driving towards a unified command and control economy. I do not think that this agenda is the basis for formal discussions, except perhaps tangentially in the hallways of Davos. There is an impetus to power, and more power, that can create the same effect in groups of men without the need for formal discussions. Financial engineers and bankers will alway seek more control and more power, because they are seeking to master something that is a portion of human nature, that does not lend itself easily to linear manipulation. As their plans fail, they need to keep expanding to prevent a collapse and their personal humilitation. This is inherent in what they do. This is how dictatorships are created; they seem to be the easier path to inability, if not incompetency.

But it is obvious that the theme since the 1980′s at least has been the will to power, the knocking down of laws and regulations, to allow the most powerful to do what they will, to take an even greater share of the riches of the world, to the disadvantage of the many. And my hypothesis is that the global reserve currency is a key plank in this agenda.

Perhaps this is such a perennial theme that is almost a tautology to remark about it, like a boy who first discovers the wonders of love, and thinks himself a Balboa discovering new oceans. Perhaps this boy is just discovering in a more profound way the deep roots of the darker side of human nature, the basis of evil: pride, greed, and deceit.

But there is an ebb and flow in the tides of men, and the rise and fall of nations, ideas, and fundamental values like freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, equality, and hope. And we are certainly at the cusp of a trend change, a trend in place since the second Great War, and the dog is not barking.

The game is afoot.

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