Revenge of the Nerds: Are Americans Being Brainwashed Into Mass Servitude?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Revenge of the Nerds:

Are Americans Being Brainwashed Into Mass Servitude?

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THE GOP HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN KEEPING
AMERICANS MISERABLE, ANGRY, AND UNEMPLOYED

I gave up watching television about a year ago. One day I got tired of simply complaining about how silly and inane television shows were and decided to do something about it. So I called Direct TV and told them to shove it, and I haven’t regretted that decision for even one second since. 
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But last week I had occasion to spend a night in a motel, and for lack of anything else to do, I decided to turn on the television and let it lull me to sleep. That decision not only confirmed why I stopped watching it in the first place, but much more. After not watching it for a year, its aggressive propagandizing was not only much more apparent to me, but its blatant and heavy-handed approach to controlling the public’s collective mind was all but oppressive.
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The problem - and danger of television - is that it lulls the mind into a hypnotic state and then presents ideas and concepts as though it goes without saying that they’re valid. That causes the public to accept the most ridiculous and dysfunctional propositions as valid without the scrutiny of critical evaluation.
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One of the most destructive propositions that television promotes in this manner is the concept that brawn is superior to brains. How many times have you watched movies or television shows that portray the dumb and clueless jock as superior to the "nerdy" intellectual? These shows will show a jock who can’t chew gum and tie his shoes at the same time as a handsome, sharp dressing, and confident lady’s man, while portraying the most intelligent student in the school as disheveled, awkward, and a turn-off to women. In short, they routinely profile intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge as a dysfunctional condition to be avoided at all costs.
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That is the exact opposite of the message that we should be sending our young people. So it’s no wonder that America is rapidly sliding downhill. The fact is, just because an individual is intelligent, that doesn’t mean that he or she is either awkward, nerdy, or, socially dysfunctional. One simply has to look at many of the elegant denizens of Wall Street or Madison Avenue to recognize the fallacy of that portrayal - in fact, many of the struttin’, jock-strap-wearing "lady’s men" from high school are now the chauffeurs, flunkies, and "gofers" of these so-called nerds.
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But perhaps that’s why many of the rich and accomplished have so little sympathy for middle-class America - they remember how they were treated in high school and college while they were trying to lay down their foundation for success. Many were looked down upon and treated as outcasts, so now, it’s payback time - and we’ve made that payback extremely easy to accomplish.
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When many of us should have been hard at work laying down our own foundation to become competent individuals, we were so busy trying to be popular, and living vicariously through the exploits of our favorite celebrities and sports heroes, that we never learned to think. Instead of learning HOW to think, we were taught WHAT to think. As a result, we’ve become so thoroughly programmed in group-think that we’re now mired in a cesspool of intellectual dysfunction. That accounts for why we routinely hear, and never question, comments like, "President Obama is a socialist - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to provide my family with healthcare." Many Americans have been so brainwashed with respect to the "isms" that they fail to recognize the stupidity of such a statement.
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A sizable number of Americans have also casually accepted the ridiculous concept that by making the simply rich, filthy rich, it will help to create jobs - and that’s in spite of the fact that the American middle class has been plummeting downhill for the past 35 years under the fallacy of that economic concept. Far too many Americans lack the simple intellectual competence to recognize that regardless to how much money we give to the rich, they will never use that money to create jobs unless they have someone to purchase the products in which those jobs produce - and the American middle class no longer possess those funds, because we’ve already given the rich our money . . . for free. So the one-percenters have absolutely no incentive to create jobs - they don’t have to. They can just sit back and play the stock market with the money they’re already getting from the American taxpayer. So why should they take on the additional headache of actually having to produce a product? 
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The scheme to convince the American people that jobs are created by the rich was conceived during the Reagan administration by USC economist, Art Laffer. His name is quite appropriate, because the rich have been falling out laughing all the way to the bank every since. Even many Republicans were absolutely shocked when the American people fell for such a transparent scam. George Bush Sr. called it "voodoo economics," because the scam was, literally, predicated on the assumption that the American people were so gullible, undereducated, and dumb, that they could reintroduce Santa Claus back into our lives - and the amazing part was, it worked.
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That was an eye-opener for the corporate community and their political cronies. The mere fact that they could get America to embrace a concept as ridiculously self-defeating as "trickle-down economics" clearly demonstrated to them that they could get the American people to embrace ANYTHING, as long as they could convince us that it would hurt a targeted group that they could conditioned us to hate, the concept was repeated often enough, and it was wrapped in the appropriate patriotic vestments. That’s why every time you turn on your television set you’re served up the virtual equivalent of "The Night Before Christmas" - even though Christmas Day has been eluding us for the past 35 years now.      

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The reality is, jobs are created by a vibrant and healthy middle class who has the money to purchase goods and services. Thus, it doesn’t matter how much money we give Gucci, he will never hire anyone to produce handbags if he’s forced to try to sell them in a homeless shelter - and for good reason - because no one would have the money to purchase the product that he’s produced - and essentially, that’s what we’ve allowed America to become, a homeless shelter.
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So when we turn our money over to the rich, they’re not going to use it to create jobs and re-circulate that wealth; they’re going to let that money draw interest, and dust, in offshore accounts. We’ll never see that money again. That’s why the top 5% of the nation controls 83% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% of Americans only control 7% of the wealth, and the gap is widening with every day that passes. So consider what happens when the 7% of the wealth that’s controlled by the middle class becomes only 3%, or even 1%. At that point, for all intent and purposes, we’ll be slaves. The only difference is, we’ll have to provide our own housing and maintenance, and therein lies the corporate whip.
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So if there’s a moral to this story, it’s that the American poor and middle class need to wake up, begin to educate ourselves, and stop allowing corporate interests and their political cronies to keep us fighting among ourselves. It’s way past time for us to recognize that we’re no longer engaged in a race or ethnic war; we’re now in the middle of a class war, and we’re losing badly.
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Now, that isn’t to say that racism and bigotry is a thing of the past; on the contrary, it’s still being used to great effect. But there’s a major difference in its character. Today, bigotry is no longer the war itself. Racism and other forms of bigotry have now become a TOOL of war. It’s being used to keep the poor and middle class divided, because as long as they can keep the masses at one another’s throats, the people will never come together to defend their mutual interests.
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Another important distinction of a class war is the fact that we can no longer assume that because a person is of the same race or ethnic group, that they’re on same side. That fact should have been made abundantly clear to White America during, and subsequent to, the 2008 Wall Street calamity. It wasn’t just Black people who lost their homes and jobs, and they’re not just sending the jobs of women and gays overseas, the corporatists are targeting ALL of poor and middle class America. Be you Black, White, Asian, or Eskimo, if you’re not independently wealthy - and comfortably so - you’re the new "nigger" on the block. 
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That point was driven home in graphic detail during the recent school board election in Los Angeles, when two Black politicians (Alex Johnson, and his mentor and boss, Mark Ridley-Thomas) mounted a highly financed campaign (funded by charter school interests) that brutally slandered Dr. George McKenna, a nationally recognized and respected educator who was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the movie, "The George McKenna Story." Even though Johnson and Ridley-Thomas are Black, just like Dr. McKenna, they weren’t concerned about the interests of the Black and minority community, their alliance was with the corporatist agenda. 
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And again, the same is true of White corporatists. They don’t care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do Black people, women, or gays. This is true of corporate feudalists of every stripe. All these people care about is subjugating the poor and middle class to big business - period.
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So the next time you turn on your television set, or allow yourself to be swept away by any component of the mass media, keep in mind who’s tailoring the message being propagated. Because chances are, that message was specifically designed - or at the very least, promoted - to cloud your mind (and the minds of your children) with nonsense that undermines your way of life - all "isms" notwithstanding.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.comCitizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Black Racists and Their Thinly Veiled Racist Rants Against Obama

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Black Racists and Their Thinly Veiled Racist Rants Against Obama

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In a comment on Electronic Urban Report (http://www.eurweb.com/2013/08/an-open-letter-to-tavis-smiley/#comme...), a gentleman by the name of Earl Wilkerson said the following:

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"Many of the arguments Mr. Smiley and Mr. West have concerning the African American community still exists and always will. Oh My how have we often forgotten President Obama Mother is a White woman to many this does not truly represents a African American fully. In fact, many may call him a half breed."

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Mr. Wilkerson’s "half breed" comment was nothing less than a not so thinly veiled racist rant, much like those of Cornel West. I found his allusion to "half breed" laughably ironic, since Barack Obama is perfectly symbolic of the African-American culture itself – part African, and part American. MOST African Americans are mixed, and a very short excursion among REAL and PURE Africans would clearly demonstrate that fact. Afros, Dashikis, and exotic-sounding names notwithstanding, we’re clearly not the genuine article.

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Our mixture may not be as direct as Obama’s, but I’d be willing to bet that as many as 90% of us have a "White boy" lingering somewhere in our family tree – I know I do, in spite of my large lips, kinky hair, and beautiful BROWN skin. And to listen to some of you – at least, with respect to your hostile attitudes towards Obama – it’s clear that more than a few of you not only have White boys lurking in your family trees, but those White boys brought their sheets along. Clear evidence of that is, instead of heatedly discussing the Republican attempt to reverse the Voting Rights Act, all of your anger is focused on the first Black President of the United States. No other culture in America would be that stupid – do you hear me, Smiley and West?

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And about President Obama’s seeming inability to part the Red Sea

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 Why is Unemployment So High?

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It is clear that the corporate/Republican alliance have decided that it’s in their best interest to keep unemployment artificially high. We know this is true because they’re making more profits than they’ve ever made in their history, so there’s no reason for unemployment to be so high. There are several reasons why it’s in their advantage to do so.

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1). It’s to their political advantage to keep the American people angry, miserable, and divided during the Obama administration. That’s why we have gridlock in congress.

2). They know that by allowing the poor and middle class to obtain any disposable income whatsoever it will stimulate the economy and create even more jobs, because the TRUE job creators are the poor and middle class. The poor and middle class create jobs when they have the disposable income to purchase goods and services, because that forces businesses to hire people to provide those goods and services.

3). The corporate/Republican Alliance doesn’t want the economy to be stimulated because their agenda is to place so much pressure on the American Middle class that they’ll be less resistant to accepting a lower standard of living, and thereby, be dragged down to a standard of living that conforms to the new GLOBAL economy where countries are paying their workers less per week than many American workers spend on lunch per day.

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So if that is the case, and the corporatists are REFUSING to hire, is there anything in a free society that President Obama can do to FORCE corporations to hire workers if they’ve decided that it’s not is their best interest to do so?

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You see, the problem with the thinking of people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and other Obama critics is they seem not to recognize – or at least, don’t want the people to recognize – that Obama is merely the President of the United States, not the King of the United States. So these people are either not very bright, or they’re purposely trying to mislead the people – which do you believe it is?

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And by the way, it’s no accident that once Smiley and West lost the confidence of the Black community, they switched their strategy to start calling Obama a war criminal. By doing so, they’re trying to reach out to another constituency. Thus, while their lips say their interest is with what’s in the best interest of the Black community, their behavior clearly demonstrate two so-called brothers running all over the place trying to find ANYTHING that they can use to smear this Black president.

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Their antipathy towards President Obama is much like that of the Republican Party and social bigots - the only way the president could possibly appease their hostility would be to resign and apply for White House butler. So their behavior is not only embarrassing, but it’s disgustingly racist, and the Black community shouldn’t tolerate it.

A BLACK RACIST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHSH1GYJXEE

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President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2011/09/president-obama-protect-america-from.html

 

 Eric L. Wattree

http://wattree.blogspot.com/

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

The primary reason that the American people are suffering is because President Obama is allowing the GOP to define our priorities. The very worst thing that could ever happen to the Republican Party is for the economy to improve, people to start going back to work, and for the American people to be happy during the next election. So the GOP has a vested interest in seeing to it that the American people are hungry, miserable, and divided until after the 2012 election. 
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In fact, the plan is to keep us hungry and miserable beyond the 2012 election, because the overall game plan is to lower the American middle-class standard of living to conform to the new global economy. Instead of enhancing economic uniformity by fighting for the rights of workers around the world, as we've done in the past, they've now decided that it would be easier and much more profitable to simply lower the American standard of living.
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The GOP is accomplishing this agenda by turning common sense on its head. They’ve been running around telling any and everyone who will listen that the way to improve the economy and create jobs is by funneling all of the nation’s wealth to the rich, and then cutting spending - that’s politispeak for cutting all programs that will put a dollar in the pocket of the poor and middle class. But that’s exactly what we don’t need, because jobs are not created by the rich. Jobs are created by the poor and middle class spending money on goods and services. That results in businesses having to hire workers to produce those goods and services.

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For this reason, Republicans are in Washington blocking any and everything the president does to stimulate the economy, and at the same time voting for every measure that they can come up with to keep money out of the hands of the American people. They’ve voted against extending benefits for the unemployed, they’ve voted against funding benefits for 9/11 first responders, and House Republican Leader, Eric Canter, has even threatened to block disaster relief for states hit by Hurricane Irene unless President Obama agrees to more budget cuts to offset any emergency funding. They know that as long as the American people don’t have money to spend on goods and services, unemployment will stay high and they’ll have a much better chance of regaining power. So essentially - no, literally - the GOP's best interest lies in engaging in economic guerilla warfare against America. Rush Limbaugh said it most plainly -"I want President Obama to fail." So in short, they want America to fail.

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The GOP is engaged in a confidence game against America, but a grossly uninformed American public keeps going for it over and over again. Once one generation finally catches on, the GOP will simply wait eight years and run the very same game all over again on the next generation. They’ve been running the very same game for at least a hundred years. They’re currently telling the American people the very same lie that Ronald Reagan told us thirty years ago.

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I pointed out the pattern in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling the American People":

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"One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to supersede all logic. Therefore, from the moment that the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington, D.C. as we speak.

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"Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."

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"Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
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"Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.

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"And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capital gains tax cut - for the rich.

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But what’s so curious about the current situation is, this time, even though we have extensive video and internet documentation of the disaster that took place under both Ronald Reagan, and later, George W. Bush, both Obama, and the news media, are simply ignoring it as though it doesn’t exist. They’re simply sitting around debating this Republican scheme as though it's a perfectly legitimate and viable option, while they have unequivocal proof that's it's nothing but a scam against the American people, and has been proven as such time and time again for decades.

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They could blow GOP claims completely out of the water with just one carefully edited video. They don't even need a video - everything the GOP is proposing was in place during the Bush administration, yet Bush's eight-year reign created the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression. So it’s extremely curious to me why neither Obama, nor the news media, will simply say, these people are running a game on you - look. 

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While I’m not prone to buying into conspiracy theories, this an issue that we really need to take a look at. Why are both political parties, and the media, going out of their way to completely ignore facts that are so glaring that we have to shield our eyes to keep from going blind?

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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