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The Catholic versus Protestant Dialectic:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that \u2018my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.\u2019\u201d –Isaac Asimov<\/p>\n
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM encapsulate two radically different attitudes towards \u201cauthority\u201d and expertise. An ordinary Catholic believes that the Catholic Church stands between God and him and that the Church alone is qualified to hold that role of intermediary. Its ordained officials are experts in the Catholic religion and have attained all of the appropriate qualifications.<\/p>\n A priest is authorised to provide absolution after an authentic act of penance. A priest is qualified to transubstantiate bread and wine into the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. The Pope is the divinely appointed Vicar of Christ on earth. An ordinary Catholic knows that even though he himself may have a simple understanding of Catholicism, the experts know everything there is to know about the subject.<\/p>\n Protestantism, on the other hand, cuts out the middleman. Each person, regardless of their qualifications and knowledge, gets their own hotline to God. In fact, only one qualification is necessary \u2013 faith. One of the reasons why Protestantism flourished was that it pandered to the ordinary person\u2019s vanity. Protestants regarded the many years that Catholic priests devoted to theological study as a complete waste of time. All that any Protestant has to do is say, \u201cI believe\u201d and he\u2019s the match of any priest. Protestantism, when understood for what it really is, is a protest against expertise and merit. It\u2019s a declaration that \u201cintellectuals\u201d have nothing more valid to say about life than someone who\u2019s spent his whole life on a production line making baked beans. To a Protestant, books, learning and knowledge are a waste of time, if not actually Satanic. Not for nothing did Martin Luther declare reason the Devil\u2019s whore. Luther\u2019s message appeals to the legions of ignoramuses who think their ill-educated thoughts are as acute as those of professors.<\/p>\n The \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d is almost invariably a Protestant. Not for a moment does he listen to any experts. Who are they to contradict him? He has absolute faith that he is right, and if he is right about God then he must be right about conspiracies. Of course, he\u2019s entirely wrong about both, but that thought never enters his head. Many of the greatest intellectuals have declared that the more they know, the more they understand how much they don\u2019t know. A Protestant has the opposite view. The less he knows the less he understands how much he doesn\u2019t know. How can you know how ignorant you are unless you read lots of books? \u2013 but if you read lots of books then you won\u2019t be ignorant, or at least you\u2019ll be a lot less ignorant than when you began.<\/p>\n Catholicism historically fitted in with aristocratic and monarchic societies i.e. those based on a hierarchy. Modern democracy is essentially a Protestant phenomenon since it reduces everyone to the same rank regardless of their merits. As Dean Inge said, \u201cDemocracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.\u201d In democracies, no weight is attached to the opinions of experts hence expertise becomes devalued and anti-intellectualism is rife. In many Western countries, \u201cintellectual\u201d is a term of abuse. Not surprisingly, almost all intellectuals have loathed democracy. Nietzsche despised everything to do with democracy. He regarded it as an insult to life that elevated the mediocre and actively prevented the great from succeeding.<\/p>\n Protestant anti-intellectualism abounds in the Tea Party. One of their angles of attack on Obama is that he\u2019s a sinister intellectual. In fact, they\u2019ve obviously never met an intellectual if they think Obama is one. When does Obama ever say anything smart? Even so, in comparison with the likes of Sarah Palin he must seem like one of the Seven Sages.<\/p>\n The ordinary Protestant came to believe that if he read the Bible then he was as qualified as the Pope or anyone else to decide the meaning of Scripture. He failed to comprehend that the mere act of reading a book by no means makes you an expert on that book. Anyone picking up a book by Hegel is unlikely to be much the wiser hundreds of pages later. The reason for that is that in order to understand Hegel you need to be a highly intelligent person familiar with the philosophical tradition in which Hegel wrote. In other words, a particular book is just the tip of an iceberg. It is underpinned by an enormous number of unseen books to which the author is responding. You could never hope to grasp Hegel\u2019s meaning while being ignorant of philosophy.<\/p>\n To understand Hegel you would first have to learn philosophy, which would disqualify about 99% of the population at a stroke. By exactly the same token, to understand the Bible, you need to do much more than read a single book. What was the historical context in which the book was written? What content was omitted and why; what content was changed and why? What did other religions say? Did the Bible borrow anything from other religions? Did they influence it? What coded messages were built into the Bible? What was the literary style of the day? What were the expectations of the people of Biblical days? Who were their enemies? What was the philosophy of the age? What did the heretics have to say?<\/p>\n In other words, only a total RETARD would think that reading the Bible makes him an expert in what the Bible says. But that\u2019s what Protestants think. They say to themselves, \u201cFuck the Pope and the Catholic Church and all the so-called \u2018experts\u2019. I\u2019ve read the Bible and no one can tell me that I don\u2019t understand it. In fact, I understand it much better than any of those dumb asses. God has spoken directly TO ME!\u201d<\/p>\n There are countless Protestant sects and only one Catholic Church. Why? Because Catholics believe that the Pope and the Church constitute the appropriate source of expertise regarding Catholicism. On the other hand, any Protestant can say he\u2019s the expert on the Bible, and no other Protestant can contradict him because there is no formal Protestant truth. It\u2019s all about faith, not reason and knowledge. If a Catholic rejects the Pope and the Catholic Church, he ceases to be a Catholic. If a Protestant disagrees with the teachings of a particular Protestant sect, he can start up a new Protestant sect to promote his own view. Thus there are no universally acknowledged Protestant experts. Any Protestant can call himself an expert and establish his own Church \u2013 the Church of ME!<\/p>\n In the Protestant way of thinking, a person can go into a bookshop, read a book on brain surgery then declare that he\u2019s setting up a brain surgery practice because he now \u201cknows\u201d all about brain surgery. Would you be his first patient? Or would you prefer to have your surgery performed by a recognised expert who has studied and practised for many years?<\/p>\n The idea that reading the Bible, or indeed any book at all, makes you an expert on it is infantile and absurd. This attitude undermines the whole basis of education. It exhibits an astonishing degree of arrogance and self-delusion.<\/p>\n The Protestant attitude manifests itself to a ridiculous degree in the arena of conspiracy theories. Suddenly these \u201cknow-alls\u201d (ignoramuses in other words) think they can pontificate on structural engineering, the properties of metals, aircraft technology, the modus operandi of the intelligence services and special forces, \u201csecret government\u201d, invisible, shape-shifting Reptilians and so on. Conspiracy theories should be renamed Protestant theories and indeed many of them actively accuse the Pope, the Vatican and the Jesuits of being behind almost everything.<\/p>\n Strangely, they rarely direct any bile towards evangelical Protestants. They never declare Protestant Fundamentalism to be a conspiracy against the world even though the vast majority of Freemasons are Protestants \u2013 WASPs.<\/p>\n We, the Illuminati, are Gnostics so we detest Catholicism and Protestantism, but we can\u2019t help but notice how disproportionately Protestant the conspiracy theory world is. Conspiracy theorists are all self-appointed experts and just as Protestants won\u2019t listen to anyone who tells them they know nothing about the Bible, neither will conspiracy theorists listen to anyone telling them that their views are ill-informed nonsense.<\/p>\n The Illuminati subscribe to the \u201cCatholic\u201d model i.e. it that of a hierarchy. The Grand Master is the equivalent of the Pope, the ruling council are the Cardinals, the lower degrees are archbishops, bishops and priests. The lowest degree is the laity. It would be unthinkable and preposterous for a first degree Illuminatus to say he knew more about the Illuminati than the Grand Master, and he would very quickly cease to be a member of the Illuminati since you can\u2019t teach a fool anything.<\/p>\n Meritocracy is also \u201cCatholic\u201d. The most meritorious are at the top and the least meritorious at the bottom. No one is allowed to proclaim themselves an expert in the manner of Protestants. You have to demonstrate merit to the satisfaction of your peers. The Pope is elected by his peers, the \u201cprinces\u201d of the Catholic Church, these being the best-qualified individuals within the Catholic Church. Within that context, the Pope is the most meritorious individual in Catholicism. In Protestantism, if you dislike someone\u2019s opinion, you declare your own to be superior.<\/p>\n Everyone thinks he\u2019s more meritorious than everyone else. In Catholicism, you need a priest (a qualified person) to forgive you and to mediate between God and you. In Protestantism, you forgive yourself and you communicate directly with God without any intermediaries.<\/p>\n In Gnosticism, you have to be an extremely special type of person to achieve gnosis. Only the people of the highest possible merit are eligible. In Protestantism, you just need to say, \u201cI believe in my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ\u201d and you\u2019re SAVED. You\u2019re on your way to paradise just because you said, \u201cI believe.\u201d How ridiculous can you get? Protestantism is the Ship of Fools. The Protestant attitude is painfully visible in the moronic Tea Party where a bunch of nobrain Christian Fundamentalists imagine that their embarrassingly stupid analysis of a complex world should be adopted by the whole nation. If it were, America would be destroyed within a single presidential term.<\/p>\n We live a world in which merit is neither respected nor acknowledged. Merit is attacked from two deadly angles. Privilege (\u201cwho you know\u201d) wipes the floor with merit (\u201cwhat you know\u201d). And the self-appointed expert (\u201cI know best\u201d) \u2013 the \u201cProtestant\u201d \u2013 ridicules merit. The highly qualified are labelled geeks, nerds and dorks.<\/p>\n Modern-style democracy is a Protestant ideology. People are allowed to vote on things they know nothing about. How many people could write a 10,000-word analysis of the economic system of their country? And, if they can\u2019t, in what way are they qualified to vote on who should run their nation\u2019s economic policy? Is it rational, is it sane, to give a vote to the ignorant? What must be the outcome of allowing the ignorant to vote? Are you likely to get the best government, the most meritorious \u2013 or the government best able to pander to and manipulate the delusions of the ignorant? Capitalists are brilliant at manipulating people because their whole purpose in life is to seduce people into parting with their money.<\/p>\n Protestantism and democracy provide an extremely attractive message to stupid people. \u201cYou are experts,\u201d they are told. \u201cYou have a hotline to God,\u201d they are told. \u201cYou are special people, the saved, the elect.\u201d And all the morons fall for it. Why? Because they\u2019re egotists and narcissists. They\u2019re vain, arrogant, self-deluded. They think they\u2019re clued-up about the world. They think no one can fool them, even though in truth they are fooled all the time. If you don\u2019t KNOW, you will always be deceived. Knowledge, not self-delusion, is the antidote to deception.<\/p>\n America is the archetypal \u201cProtestant\u201d nation, both religiously and attitudinally. Every American is an \u201cexpert\u201d on everything, or so they like to believe. America is the home of the conspiracy theorist. The conspiracy theorist is someone who thinks he\u2019s much smarter than the experts. In fact, the experts are invariably in on it, whatever IT is. But the conspiracy theorists can see through it all with their preternatural laser vision. American is the home of rampant ego and narcissism. Like all anti-meritocracies, America imagines itself supremely meritocratic. All the non-experts consider themselves experts.<\/p>\n The world despises education. If it respected it, the best educated and most intelligent would be running the world. But instead the money men are in charge, and they\u2019re the dumbest fucks on earth, good at only one thing \u2013 lining their own pockets. If you allow the equation money = power to form then what do you expect but inept government?<\/p>\n ******<\/p>\n What was the main problem with the Catholic approach to merit? It was the contempt that the Catholic elite had for the ordinary people. The elite kept the knowledge for themselves. They didn\u2019t let the ordinary people join in. The monks, priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes were all smart people, but the Catholic laity were dumb asses because they received no education.<\/p>\n The founders of Protestantism saw a gap in the market. They gave the people the Bible in their own language rather than incomprehensible, elitist Latin (that no ordinary person understood). Of course, it was then necessary to teach the illiterate masses how to read and write.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s what Protestantism did. And because the ordinary Protestants could now read and write, they became much smarter than the average illiterate Catholics. So although the Catholic elite were enormously smarter religiously and philosophically than the barbarian Protestants who despised philosophy and cared only for Scripture, the average Protestant soon became smarter than the average Catholic.<\/p>\n Meritocracy, unlike Catholicism, wants everyone to be as smart as possible. There can be no such thing as a meritocratic elite ruling over a dumb population. The meritocratic elite must be the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me, the best of a fully educated population.<\/p>\n What could be more sane and rational than having the smartest, most meritocratic people in charge of the world? So why has it never been tried? Money, faith, superstition, ignorance and violence have ruled our world, never merit. The Will:<\/p>\n America has traditionally been ruled by WASPs \u2013 White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, originating from England, Scotland, Wales, the North of Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. Freemasonry \u2013 which was originally anti-Abrahamist \u2013 gradually became a bastion of elite WASPs and deeply hostile to Catholicism which had banned Catholics from becoming Masons. The Anglo-Saxon WASPs via, first, the British Empire and, secondly, the power of America have in essence ruled the world for some 250 years. Britain, with the world\u2019s largest, most powerful and most skilled navy literally ruled the waves until the end of WWII.<\/p>\n Virtually no country suffered more economically from the two World Wars than Britain, even though it was on the winning side both times. The cost crippled the British Empire and led to its disintegration. Britain could simply no longer afford to run an empire and, with powerful nationalist groups demanding independence in all of its territories, it steadily granted them their wishes. Britain is now a minor nation still haunted by the huge power it once wielded and in denial about its rather pathetic status these days.<\/p>\n America, the rebellious child of the British Empire, has supplanted its frail father but now its glory days are slipping away too and it\u2019s disturbingly easy to imagine America slipping much further than Britain. Without its financial and economic clout, it\u2019s possible to imagine America as a Third World country, full of poorly paid people suffering worse conditions than the Chinese and Indians.<\/p>\n Globalisation has placed enormous downward pressure on salaries for unskilled labour. An American capitalist can just as easily set up shop in China as in America. He will only establish his business in America if it can generate higher profits than its Chinese equivalent and that means that low-paid Americans are now in competition with some of the cheapest labour in the world, despite living in a much more expensive nation. This is a catastrophic situation. America could easily go down the tubes. Its debts are mind-boggling. America is INSOLVENT. If America were a business and all of its debts were called in tomorrow by its creditors, America would be closed down, all of its workers fired, all of its assets seized and handed over to the creditors. That is the underlying reality of America today. Their capitalist leaders have no national loyalty and care about only maximising their return on investment.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t get out of this situation by savagely cutting debt, which only serves to cripple economic growth and throw the nation into recession and even Depression. Nor do you get out of it by printing money and generating more debt, combined with deadly inflation. In fact, you\u2019re pretty much screwed whatever you do. The real solution is to recognise that the system itself is rotten to the core and has failed. A whole new system is required.<\/p>\n Germany had monstrous and terrifying problems in 1933 when Hitler came to power as the \u201cstrong man\u201d to sort things out. Within six years, National Socialism had transformed Germany from a bankrupt nation in ruins to one of the greatest powers on earth. Just SIX years! Now, of course, no sane person would advocate that any modern nation should embrace Nazism. What we are saying is that a radically new political model with strong leadership can in an extremely short time transform a country\u2019s fortunes.<\/p>\n Look at the hopeless muddle and deadlock in contemporary Washington D.C. Can any rational person regard that as EFFECTIVE government? It\u2019s incapable of sorting out the mess. No one could succeed with that form of government. Its actual structure precludes strong leadership. It was designed that way, and now that feature, once such a virtue, has become a disaster.<\/p>\n Strong, decisive leadership is imperative in these dark days. You can be absolutely sure that Hitlers are waiting in the wings. If the world wishes to avoid a repetition of WWII, it must turn to strong but benevolent leadership dedicated not to war (as in Nazism) but to education (as in meritocracy).<\/p>\n It simply cannot be emphasized enough that there is only one way out of the world\u2019s woes \u2013 much smarter, higher quality, more creative, more active, more ingenious citizens. There is only one way to create a new humanity \u2013 EDUCATION. Education must be the central preoccupation and defining condition of any modern nation. Education is the ultimate production line \u2013 for creating SMART HUMANITY.<\/p>\n Adolf Hitler was a man of immense will. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche brought the concept of the will to the heart of German thinking, but whereas those two men were intellectual and cultural giants, Hitler wasn\u2019t. Hitler was a soldier, a racist, and an anti-intellectual \u2013 almost Protestant in his hatred of the intelligentsia. Any art he didn\u2019t like he regarded as \u201cdegenerate\u201d. He was infected by the Jewish idea of the \u201cChosen People\u201d, which he converted into the \u201cMaster Race.\u201d Like the Jews, he was obsessed with blood purity. Like the Jews, he was obsessed with the concept of one \u201cGod\u201d \u2013 himself! \u2013 that everyone must worship and obey unswervingly. The greatest irony of history was that in terms of his attitudes, Hitler was the greatest Jew of all time. He subconsciously identified with Judaism so much that he wanted to BECOME Jehovah. You simply have to read the Torah to see that the Nazis were doing all the things advocated by the ancient Jews. Why is it that no one points out that Judaism has always been pure Nazism by another name?<\/p>\n Hitler associated the quality of the will with the quality of the blood. A race with tainted blood was ipso facto weakened and corrupted. It had inferior will and would inevitably be defeated by those of pure blood and pure will. Much of the Harry Potter saga is devoted to the idea that mixed bloods are \u201cgood\u201d and can defeat pure bloods who are \u201cbad\u201d. Lord Voldemort is simply Hitler and much of the story is about presenting his supporters as menacing Nazi stormtroopers.<\/p>\n In their personal lives, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were both extreme individualists. In terms of his philosophy, Nietzsche practically made individualism a religion. He would have loathed the mind-controlled automata of the Nazi movement who had sacrificed all individuality in order to follow the leader. For Nietzsche, will belonged to the individual and expressed the individual\u2019s inner nature. It had no racial dimension whatever. Hitler, on the other hand, made the will political, racial and militaristic, and Nazism was the expression of national rather than individual will.<\/p>\n The true antidote to Nazism is to have a population of strong-willed individuals i.e. a nation full of strong wills rather than a nation with a collective strong will but individually weak and submissive individuals. All Nazis, by making Hitler their God, were effectively submissives. No dominants would ever have embraced Hitler\u2019s \u201cdivine\u201d leadership. The Prussian elite class regarded Hitler as the \u201clittle Corporal\u201d and mocked him, but unlike Hitler, they had no vision of how to lead Germany out of chaos, so in the end they all bowed to Hitler. The 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler was led by a Prussian and aristocratic elite. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg who planted the bomb that almost killed Hitler was from a Catholic aristocratic family on his father\u2019s side, and the Prussian elite on his mother\u2019s. The Same Old Story:<\/p>\n \u201cToughey\u201d sent us the following message.<\/p>\n I am currently reviewing your webpage \u201cGoldman Sucks\u201d. You made an issue of the SEC finally \u201ccracking down\u201d on Goldman. To quote Matt Taiibi of Rolling Stone in his article, \u201cAt least $13 billion of the taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, meaning that the bank made out on the housing bubble twice: it fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.\u201d So they made at least $26 billion. The fines they paid the SEC equalled $550 million. That\u2019s a pretty good return on your investment, showing that white-collar crime pays.<\/p>\n Another interesting fact, the head of the SEC is a former Goldman Sachs employee, as is the head of the Fed, Ben Bernanke as well as the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. Goldman also arranged the loans for Greece that they defaulted on. I think being hung, drawn, and quartered would be a \u201csoft sentence\u201d for these pirates.<\/p>\n Our Comment.<\/p>\n Toughey\u2019s completely correct. The SEC turned out to be more interested in posturing than doing anything serious. Same old story. No one ever takes the steps that need to be taken. Goldman Sachs should be closed down or nationalised.<\/p>\n Along similar lines, a Bloomberg report stated that the Wall Street aristocracy got $1.2 trillion from the Fed:<\/p>\n Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market\u2019s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke\u2019s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. \u201cThese are all whopping numbers,\u201d said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.\u201d (By Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz)<\/p>\n According to an inspector general overseeing government bailouts, the U.S. so far has committed nearly $2.98 trillion toward stabilizing financial companies and rescuing domestic automakers. \u201cThis is a huge, unprecedented financial commitment\u2026$2.9 trillion is just short of what the entire federal government spent in fiscal year 2008,\u201d said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a second United States government budget dedicated solely to saving the financial system, and that is truly surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n Are you happy that you bailed out the rich? But if you hadn\u2019t, the economy would have collapsed because the economy is actually a plutonomy and is all about serving the interests of the rich. Ever feel like you\u2019ve been swindled? Isn\u2019t it time for a new economic system that doesn\u2019t pander to the rich? The Bankers:<\/p>\n In October 2008, the people of Britain were within TWO HOURS of being unable to withdraw money from British banks. The entire banking system was about to collapse. Alistair Darling, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, described the bank chiefs that he was meeting with to avert disaster as \u201cso arrogant and stupid that they might bring us all down.\u201d Darling said of Sir Fred Goodwin, CEO of the enormous Royal Bank of Scotland, \u201c[he behaved as if he was] off to play a game of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n You have to wonder at a system that allows \u201cstupid and arrogant\u201d people, unelected and unaccountable, with a keen interest in golf, to be running a nation\u2019s economy. The Tobacco Industry \u2013 pure poison:<\/p>\n A tobacco industry memo declared: \u201cDoubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with \u2018the body of fact\u2019 that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.\u201d<\/p>\n The tobacco industry, as a matter of policy, sows disinformation, encourages misinformation and seeks to personally undermine those who carry out anti-smoking research. They use expensive, high-powered lawyers to bully their enemies. Why are these crooks allowed to get away with it? Are their profits more important than ethics and the world\u2019s health?<\/p>\n According to an academic report, smokers are heavily influenced by the glossy, colourful, stylish packaging of cigarettes. If cigarettes were instead presented in plain, brown packets, people would smoke less. Women in particular are influenced by the look and feel of a cigarette pack. A pack of cigarettes looks \u201ccool\u201d and seems sophisticated and rebellious. If presented in uncool packaging, cigarettes lose their allure. They become associated with losers, with people with no style, with the desperate, addicted underclass.<\/p>\n Capitalism relies heavily on packaging. Change the packaging and you change the perception of the product. It\u2019s essential to make socially harmful activities uncool. Capitalism uses operant conditioning to hook people; reverse operant conditioning should be deployed by the government to unhook them. The same is true of religion. The \u201cSystem\u201d:<\/p>\n The rich \u2013 the plutocrats \u2013 run the nation. The desire of the plutocrats is to keep widening the gap between themselves and everyone else because they thereby massively enhance their power and influence. The plutocrats have an active interest in the erosion of the status of the middle class.<\/p>\n The plutocrats essentially want to make themselves an old-style aristocracy: a permanent, dynastic ruling elite, incapable of being challenged by anyone else. The last twenty years have seen an astonishing rise in just such a plutocratic aristocracy. With every passing year, it becomes more entrenched. The plutocrats, with the best accountants working for them, pay virtually no tax. The plutocrats prefer to have just two classes below them: a) the working class and b) the underclass.<\/p>\n The working class is designed to be full of people mortgaged to the hilt and with enormous credit card debts (i.e. they are to be defined by their indebtedness). Such people are cowed, servile and permanently anxious. They are terrified of losing their jobs and thus being unable to keep making their debt repayments. If they defy their plutocratic masters, they will be fired and plunged into the underclass.<\/p>\n The underclass is that ever-growing cesspool of humanity \u2013 the lumpenproletariat as the Marxists called them. They live in dysfunctional family units in ghettos. They are poorly educated and unfit to hold down any job i.e. they are unemployable and have no prospect of any prosperous future within the legal framework. They often join gangs for protection and status and become involved in criminality, especially drugs, prostitution, robbery and extortion.<\/p>\n The working class have this permanent spectre of horror in front of them \u2013 that one false move could plunge them into the underclass. The working class, unlike the plutocracy, are extremely heavily taxed, and most of their tax dollars go to \u201cpaying off\u201d the underclass i.e. providing them with various welfare benefits so that they don\u2019t go to war with the State.<\/p>\n So, the System consists of an arrogant, remote elite living in gated luxury communities who never come into physical contact with the other classes. They lead parallel lives that never intersect. Their children go to separate private schools and colleges. They receive medical treatment in private hospitals and they work in private corporations or top public jobs. They heavily tax the working class and they ensure that the workers are kept in a permanent state of fear involving a) debt and b) the presence of a sewer society where the losers and troublemakers in society end up. The taxes of the workers subsidise the gutter class just enough to prevent violence, but there is nevertheless constant criminality amongst the gutter folk (usually directed against each other!) and many do long stretches in jail, which makes them even more unemployable.<\/p>\n Does all of that sound horrifically familiar? That\u2019s because we\u2019re all living in the system, and it\u2019s worse now than ever. The ultimate class traitors \u2013 the police and army \u2013 keep the plutocrats in power, brutalise the gutter class, and intimidate the workers.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t it time to change the system? The \u201cKnow Nothing\u201d Party:<\/p>\n This Protestant Party was founded in America in 1845 and flourished for fifteen years. Its modern-day equivalent is the Tea Party. It was ferociously anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, anti-black, pro-temperance and pro-money: the usual sober, materialistic, money-grabbing racist attitude that we all know so well from modern right wing Americans and Christian Fundamentalists.<\/p>\n The Know Nothings\u2019 particular hatred was reserved for Catholic immigrants from Ireland. These were fleeing the devastating Famine that killed one million people, despite the fact that Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, then the richest and most powerful nation on Earth with a vast Empire. The Protestant British were perfectly happy to watch the Irish Catholics starve to death.<\/p>\n Catholic immigrants from Germany received a barely less hostile reception. Catholics were regarded as an alien army under the direct control of the Pope \u2013 yes, you really have heard it all before. Conspiracy theorist Benjamin Fulford is always talking about Satanists in the Vatican. We call Catholics Satanists too, but we also include all Protestants, all Jews and all Muslims amongst the Satan worshippers i.e. every person who believes in the evil God of Abraham who ordered a father to murder his son. If that isn\u2019t the essence of evil, what is? If you don\u2019t call the story of Abraham evil then it means you have no moral compass whatever. If it doesn\u2019t occur to you that it\u2019s impossible for the True God to order anyone\u2019s death in a human sacrifice then it\u2019s no wonder you worship the Devil.<\/p>\n So, 19th century Protestants created conspiracy theories about Catholic immigration. The materialistic Protestant mindset is that of a natural-born conspiracy theorist and the theories are all about \u201caliens\u201d (whether Catholic, Black, Asian, Hispanic or Extra-terrestrial) coming to take away the material possessions of the Protestants and to stop them practising their \u201cGod-fearing\u201d religion. Ironically, the Know Nothings referred to themselves as \u201cNative Americans\u201d, although the actual Native Americans might have had something pointed to say about that.<\/p>\n Only Protestant males over 21 with British ancestry were eligible to join the Know Nothings i.e. they were the archetypal WASP Party. The Know Nothings (what an entirely appropriate name!) demanded immigration curbs and many, but not all, were eager supporters of slavery. The Party\u2019s origins lay in the American Republican Party (not the same as THE Republican Party) established in New York in 1843, and which then became known as the Native American Party. In 1845, it went national, and in 1855 it rebranded itself as the American Party. The Know Nothings employed the usual right-wing tactics of invoking patriotism, nationalism, wrapping oneself in the American flag and saying, \u201cGod bless America.\u201d Attached to the Party was a Masonic secret society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner.<\/p>\n \u201cKnow Nothing\u201d was the name derisively applied to the American Party because members were encouraged never to discuss the Party with outsiders and the phrase they were instructed to use with any interrogators was, \u201cI know nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n The Irish Catholics gravitated towards the Democratic Party, meaning that WASPs then favoured the Republican Party. In many ways, the Democrat versus Republican divide in America is Catholics (Irish, Poles, Italians, Germans, Hispanics) and African Americans versus WASPs (of British, German Lutheran and Dutch ancestry). It\u2019s no accident that America\u2019s sole Catholic and Black presidents both belonged to the Democratic Party. Jews split both ways, although they have often been more associated with the Democrats, though that is starting to change. In recent years, Christian Fundamentalist right-wingers have eagerly embraced Zionism and mixed it in with theories of Armageddon and the Rapture.<\/p>\n The platform of the American Party comprised:<\/p>\n 1) Severe restriction on immigration in general and from Catholic countries in particular.<\/p>\n 2) Political office to be restricted to native-born Americans of British lineage and the Protestant persuasion.<\/p>\n 3) An immigrant could gain citizenship only after 21 years.<\/p>\n 4) Teachers in public schools must be Protestants.<\/p>\n 5) The Bible must be read daily in public schools.<\/p>\n 6) There must be severe restrictions on the sale of liquor.<\/p>\n 7) Only English must be spoken.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t that platform sound remarkably like that of modern-day American Christian Fundamentalists? America is traditionally associated with virulent racism towards blacks, but it has also been ferociously anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. In fact, America has proved itself one of the most hate-filled, intolerant nations on earth, and all of the hatred has emanated from a single source \u2013 WASPs. The WASPs of Britain and America have been one of the most evil forces in human history. Masonic WASPs entered into an unholy alliance with Zionist bankers to create the so-called \u201cAnglo-Saxon\u201d ultra-capitalist economic model, financed by Jewish money. The purpose of this model is to create a global dynastic WASP aristocracy and plutocracy that will always support Zionism and will rule the world in perpetuity. And it has done an astoundingly effective job. Go through a list of all the American billionaires and it\u2019s virtually impossible to find anyone who isn\u2019t a Jew or WASP Mason. Q.E.D.! This is the economic model and ideology that must be trampled into the ground and destroyed forever. It is utter anathema.<\/p>\n When are people going to wise up and realise the identity of the REAL enemy? It\u2019s not Illuminati \u201clizards\u201d; it\u2019s WASP Masons and Zionist bankers. Tragically, because most conspiracy theorists are Protestants, they refuse to acknowledge Protestantism itself as one of the primary sources of the world\u2019s ills. In fact, most Protestant conspiracy theorists are always looking to blame anyone OTHER than Protestants for anything that goes wrong. The \u201cIlluminati\u201d are the perfect fall guys because the version that exists in the minds of most conspiracy theorists doesn\u2019t and has never existed \u2013 so it\u2019s the perfect fantasy on which to project any old nonsense. And, of course, Grand Master Adam Weishaupt was from a Catholic background and had a Jesuit education. Could there be a better candidate upon whom to unload endless absurd theories? The fact that he was a law professor committed to the overthrow of monarchy and Christianity somehow permitted him to be described as a Jew, a socialist, a monarchist, an aristocrat, a banker, an international financier, a papal agent, a Jesuit agent yada yada yada. It\u2019s complete insanity. To the Protestant mind, an intellectual from a Catholic\/Jesuit background is the ultimate monster.<\/p>\n The Ku Klux Klan took much of their agenda from the Know Nothings. A leader of the American Party was depicted in Martin Scorsese\u2019s Gangs of New York in the memorable shape of William \u201cBill the Butcher\u201d Cutting (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), supposedly based on a Know Nothing called William Poole.<\/p>\n Karl Marx said, \u201cHistorical phenomena always happen twice \u2013 the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.\u201d In fact, the same historical phenomena happen not just twice but many times and in many guises. The Protestant Know Nothings and Ku Klux Klan have re-emerged as the Tea Party, Christian Fundamentalists, Republicans and conspiracy theorists. Any conspiracy theory that puts Catholics, Jesuits, the Illuminati, socialists, communists or atheists in the frame is unquestionably produced by Protestants. Any conspiracy theory that looks back to a golden age that has been \u201cruined\u201d by some group or other is the product of the Protestant mind.<\/p>\n The reality is this. Those in power have ALWAYS conspired against those denied power. Power itself is tantamount to conspiracy. Those with power will do anything to keep it and will construct strategies to ensure that outcome i.e. they immediately engage in conduct designed to increase their advantages and decrease threats to them. To put it another way, they automatically conspire.<\/p>\n There is only one type of system where the powerful have no need or scope to conspire: a meritocracy. In a meritocracy, you\u2019re at the top because you\u2019re the best. But when someone else is best, they take over. In a genuinely constituted meritocracy where merit is objectively obvious, the system cannot be rigged. Anyone who subscribes to meritocracy is essentially signing up to recognising the objective merits of others, and if someone has superior merit then they are thereby entitled to greater power. They have earned it. In non-meritocratic power structures, heredity is the main organizing principle. You get power because your parents had it, not because of any merit inherent in you.<\/p>\n The next most common organising principle is cronyism. Power is awarded to you if you are a friend and ally of those in power, or you\u2019re one of their sycophants. Unmeritorious cronies will always be favoured over meritorious outsiders. But that very fact sows the seed of destruction of anti-meritocratic systems. Invariably, they let complete idiots get to the top, who then exercise appalling judgment and bring about catastrophe.<\/p>\n Why did the Credit Crunch happen? Ultimately, it was because our society is led by unmeritorious individuals \u2013 by the beneficiaries of privilege and cronyism. Stupid leaders create stupid systems. If you want to avoid boom and bust, you must turn to meritocrats. The best possible world is the one that gives maximum power to the most talented individuals, to Plato\u2019s Guardians and philosopher kings.<\/p>\n If you WANT a disaster, make sure privilege, heredity and cronyism are allowed to go unchecked. Why do successful corporations fail? It\u2019s usually because a leader of merit retires and makes the mistake of allowing a son or crony to take over. Look at the Murdoch Empire. It\u2019s now collapsing. Why? Because Rupert Murdoch, a ferociously ruthless business mogul, went down the catastrophic road of cronyism and nepotism. He surrounded himself with a gang of immoral individuals who brought his stinking empire into total disrepute. They were the only people an operator like him could trust. He would never have tolerated having someone smarter than him in his organisation. The Communards:<\/p>\n FOR A FEW GLORIOUS WEEKS IN 1871, the working class people of Paris established a left wing Commune, the members of which were known as the Communards. The authorities then destroyed the Commune with horrific violence. The climax of the struggle between the Paris Commune and the French government was called La Semaine Sanglante (\u201cThe Bloody Week\u201d). At least 20,000 Communards died (and some estimates go as high as 50,000), many being executed by mass, indiscriminate firing by the French Army, and artillery bombardment. Summary executions of anyone suspected of being a Communard were rife. 40,000 Communards were temporarily imprisoned, of whom 12,500 were tried and 10,000 found guilty. The ringleaders were executed and 4,000 were deported to a French colony.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t it remarkable that critics of the French Revolution always mention the \u201cTerror\u201d, yet most people have never even heard of the destruction of the Paris Commune, which involved a similar scale of violence by the right wing authorities? Why is it that left-wing violence is always highlighted while violence by right-wing governments is ignored?<\/p>\n The Internationale by Eug\u00e8ne Pottier (one of the Communards of the Paris Commune).<\/p>\n Arise, ye workers from your slumber, La Marseillaise (by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle).<\/p>\n Arise children of the fatherland The Punk Revolution:<\/p>\n Arguably, the greatest band of all time is the Sex Pistols. The name itself is virtually perfect: the ideal combination of the modern preoccupation with sex and violence. The Pistols certainly weren\u2019t the musically most talented, but they were the voice of authentic rebellion, the supreme anti-establishment band, preoccupied with themes of alienation, nihilism, and class war. They loathed the English monarchy and their slogan was NO FUTURE. They were the heroes of hordes of unemployed young people and their anarchist swagger energised the whole left wing of the UK. Those who witnessed the Sex Pistols at the peak of their powers thought their music could change Britain. They could literally musically reprogram the minds of British youth and inspire an uprising against the privileged elite. How many bands these days are associated with the concept of transformation and revolution? All contemporary bands are corporate.<\/p>\n The Sex Pistols were the antidote to tame, anodyne bands with nothing to say but with interminable, self-indulgent guitar solos to inflict on the world. Now we need a new Sex Pistols to save us from the MTV corporate packaging and capitalist commodification of music. Nirvana stepped in briefly and offered something glorious, but there was only one way that story was ever going to end. A few hip hop songs have hit the mark, but mainstream hip hop has largely chosen to define itself with regard to BLING, a monstrous parody of rich, white America. Is there any sadder sight than a black person dripping with gold and diamonds? You might as well get on your knees outside Goldman Sachs and say your prayers to Mammon. If bling were postmodern, a satire of vulgar wealth, it would be fantastic. But it\u2019s not. The bling kings actually love wearing all that shit. They\u2019re so feeble that they need their self-esteem propped up by the ostentatious display of gold. Sad fucks. \u201cStreet\u201d hip hop \u2013 an urban politico-cultural movement \u2013 is much more interesting but much less popular.<\/p>\n No more plastic. We want reality. We want authenticity. Destroy the fake and phoney bands. Destroy the bling kings. Music should be the voice of the soul, not of the dollar. 3\/5<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Catholic versus Protestant Dialectic: \u201cAnti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that \u2018my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.\u2019\u201d –Isaac Asimov CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM encapsulate two radically different attitudes towards \u201cauthority\u201d and expertise. An ordinary Catholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1593],"tags":[2933],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5601,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600\/revisions\/5601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n___________<\/p>\n
\nArise, ye prisoners of want.
\nFor reason in revolt now thunders,
\nand at last ends the age of cant!
\nAway with all your superstitions,
\nServile masses, arise, arise!
\nWe\u2019ll change henceforth the old tradition,
\nAnd spurn the dust to win the prize!
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.
\nNo more deluded by reaction,
\nOn tyrants only we\u2019ll make war!
\nThe soldiers too will take strike action,
\nThey\u2019ll break ranks and fight no more!
\nAnd if those cannibals keep trying,
\nTo sacrifice us to their pride,
\nThey soon shall hear the bullets flying,
\nWe\u2019ll shoot the generals on our own side.
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.
\nNo saviour from on high delivers,
\nNo faith have we in prince or peer.
\nOur own right hand the chains must shiver,
\nChains of hatred, greed and fear.
\nE\u2019er the thieves will out with their booty,
\nAnd to all give a happier lot.
\nEach at his forge must do their duty,
\nAnd we\u2019ll strike the iron while it\u2019s hot.
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.
\nSo comrades, come rally,
\nAnd the last fight let us face.
\nThe Internationale,
\nUnites the human race.<\/p>\n
\nThe day of glory has arrived
\nAgainst us tyranny\u2019s
\nBloody standard is raised
\nListen to the sound in the fields
\nThe howling of these fearsome soldiers
\nThey are coming into our midst
\nTo cut the throats of your sons and consorts
\nTo arms citizens
\nForm your battalions
\nMarch, march
\nLet impure blood
\nWater our furrows
\nWhat do they want this horde of slaves
\nOf traitors and conspiratorial kings?
\nFor whom these vile chains
\nThese long-prepared irons?
\nFrenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
\nWhat methods must be taken?
\nIt is us they dare plan
\nTo return to the old slavery!
\nWhat! These foreign cohorts!
\nThey would make laws in our courts!
\nWhat! These mercenary phalanxes
\nWould cut down our warrior sons
\nGood Lord! By chained hands
\nOur brow would yield under the yoke
\nThe vile despots would have themselves be
\nThe masters of destiny
\nTremble, tyrants and traitors
\nThe shame of all good men
\nTremble! Your parricidal schemes
\nWill receive their just reward
\nAgainst you we are all soldiers
\nIf they fall, our young heroes
\nFrance will bear new ones
\nReady to join the fight against you
\nFrenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
\nBear or hold back your blows
\nSpare these sad victims
\nThat they regret taking up arms against us
\nBut not these bloody despots
\nThese accomplices of Bouill\u00e9
\nAll these tigers who pitilessly
\nRipped out their mothers\u2019 wombs
\nWe shall enter into the pit
\nWhen our elders will no longer be there
\nThere we shall find their ashes
\nAnd the mark of their virtues
\nWe are much less jealous of surviving them
\nThan of sharing their coffins
\nWe shall have the sublime pride
\nOf avenging or joining them
\nDrive on sacred patriotism
\nSupport our avenging arms
\nLiberty, cherished liberty
\nJoin the struggle with your defenders
\nUnder our flags, let victory
\nHurry to your manly tone
\nSo that in death your enemies
\nSee your triumph and our glory!
\n__________<\/p>\n
\n__________<\/p>\n