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_“I THOUGHT IT MADE HIM A BUFFOON, AND I THOUGHT THAT’S WHAT WOULD DISQUALIFY HIM. WHAT IT DID IS MADE HIM THE PERFECT VESSEL. YOU HAVE TO BE SHAMELESS TO DO SHAMEFUL THINGS.” (JON STEWART)_

“_Anthropologists distinguish between shame and guilt. Guilt is about how what we do fails to measure up to community expectations. Shame is about how we ourselves fail to measure up: ‘You

are a disgrace.’ Guilt is easier to shrug off because you can apologise for what you’ve done; it’s harder to apologise for who you are. Shame gnaws at self-esteem until it leaves only traces

of flesh on the bone.”__ (History Today)_ The Texas abortion law is showing the depth of the shame culture by reviving a major feature of it, vigilante action against the neighbors. Public

shaming began with the public “policing” for violations of some act deemed shameful by the a court of old Catholic men in the Middle Ages, similar to our current Supreme Court. “SHAMING IS

UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED TO BE A WORSE PUNISHMENT THAN DEATH.” (BENJAMIN RUSH, AMERICAN FOUNDING FATHER, 1787) _“Historians used to say that, by comparison with the corporal and capital

punishments used by contemporary criminal authorities, these consistorial punishments were light and essentially toothless. This is a monumental misunderstanding. The shame of confessing

one’s sins before the gathered church was so deeply dishonouring that it was considered worse than a whipping.” (History Today)_ _“Guilty, baby I’m guilty, And I’ll be guilty for the rest of

my life How come I never do what I’m supposed to do How come nothin’ that I try to do ever turns out right? You know you know how it is with me baby You know, I just can’t stand myself And

it takes a whole lot of medicine For me to pretend that I’m somebody else.” (Randy Newman)_ Guilt can be gotten rid of or transferred to somebody else’s account, because everything comes

down to economics, doesn’t it? If you can transfer it into somebody else’s account, you move up a notch in status and they move down. People with lower social status can’t really refuse the

projection, nor do those of high status recognize that they are in a symbiotic relationship with shame. They might project it onto other people, but it’s still there, cloaked by pride. FOLLY

IS THE CLOAK OF KNAVERY. SHAME IS PRIDE’S CLOAK. You are under no obligation to declare yourself, to define yourself in opposition to people who are domestic terrorists, cultists,

conspiracy theorists, etc. Don’t even bother getting them more excited than they already are. It won’t do any good because it does not address the cause, and thus it cannot cure the illness.

THE CAUSE IS THE WEALTH DISPARITY BETWEEN THE BOTTOM AND THE TOP. This caused social disintegration in Europe that led to WWII, and Eisenhower saw that. We see it too. But our

representatives are bought and paid for, and not only Republicans, look at Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. They were low hanging fruit for Republican billionaires. There’s always some low

hanging fruit when the price is right. Without fixing the money problem, anything else is as worthless as statins for arterial plaque, Aduhelm for Alzheimer’s, or mercury for syphilis. (The

mercury caused the afflicted to salivate, which was thought to expel the disease. Side effects were loose teeth and mouth ulcers.) We were without Republican leadership for twenty years

before Ike came into office in 1953. But instead of trying to reverse all the gains made by Democrats, he continued with them. He saw first hand the horrors wealth inequality had wrought in

Europe and he was not going to let that happen here. _“Eisenhower would continue to give top-bracket tax cuts the cold shoulder throughout his eight years as commander in chief. The federal

tax rate on income over $400,000 remained at 91 percent throughout Ike’s two terms in office.”_ (For roughly the equivalent amount today just multiply by ten, so $4 million would hit the top

bracket had the graduated tax remained in place.) What this does is forces the circulation of money by making it pointless to not invest it when you get beyond what you need to live at the

top of the society. The maldistribution of wealth was made worse by doing away with the inheritance tax, by rebranding it a death tax and making people imagine it applied to them. This is

how the oligarchs manipulate people into acting against their interests. They pay professionals to do the manipulation of words and ideas and develop feedback loops to manage the process of

increasing their wealth and power. It’s just a matter of finding what moves the needle. Any cuts in the tax rates on high incomes, Eisenhower believed, would be fiscally irresponsible.

_“Over those years, American life had changed dramatically. Average Americans had made history. Their Depression-era struggles for justice has created the first nation on Earth where the

majority of people did not live in poverty, a society where average people could buy their groceries, keep a roof over their heads, and still have income — appreciable income — left over.

That had never happened before. Anyplace.”_ We have enough sense to see what causes society to split apart, and for conspiracies to seed and bloom among the disaffected population. Violence,

war, anger, hatred, the society tears itself apart when wealth disparity gets so extreme the society is no longer unified by a large and governing middle class. If you can make enough

people believe the government is their enemy, you don’t have to take their power from them. They’ll give it willingly. Being the victim is the most powerful position one can take, after all.

You need not concede a goddamned thing. You are the one who’s been wronged and you are owed. All one needs to be a victim is an oppressor, and the government is easy to cast as the

oppressor, because it has authority to use force if necessary. Integrating the schools in Little Rock, for example. Each Republican administration increases the wealth gap and proliferation

of dark money, while diverting attention from their primary purpose by chumming the water with emotionally galvanizing issues derived from focus groups, where they see what “moves the

needle.” They play shamelessly to sentimental and one-sided emotion. The one-sided quality is defining of negative emotion, which _always_ depletes energy. To complete the transition from

democracy to autocracy, taxes are cut while expenditure on security is increased, with huge amounts moving from the public treasury to private accounts through contracts for goods and

services. Corporations are allowed to do whatever they want, as for example gun manufacturers expanding profit to shareholders by opening a civilian market in the U.S. for combat weapons.

This is not in the public interest but that is a secondary consideration to the money being made. It is so corrupt now that the Supreme Court will adjust the Constitution to agree with the

needs of the munitions companies. _“… ONT PÛ TROMPER QUELQUES HOMMES, OU LES TROMPER TOUS DANS CERTAINS LIEUX & EN CERTAINS TEMS, MAIS NON PAS TOUS LES HOMMES, DANS TOUS LES LIEUX &

DANS TOUS LES SIÉCLES.” (JACQUES ABBADIE: TRAITÉ DE LAS VÉRITÉ DE LAS RELIGION CHRÉTIENNE, 1684)_ _(“ONE CAN FOOL SOME MEN, OR FOOL ALL MEN IN SOME PLACES AND TIMES, BUT ONE CANNOT FOOL ALL

MEN IN ALL PLACES AND AGES.”)_ _“The vague sentiments of Reaganism translated into brutal policies that required putting certain groups back in their place. Blacks recognized this right

away, and most women did soon enough. Ordinary white male working stiffs took a bit longer to see that they were targets, too. Reaganism’s attack on big government sounded reasonable, even

desirable, in the abstract, but its practical application had dreadful consequences: it revived class warfare in American politics. Rich versus poor. Business versus labor and consumers.

Powerful interests versus the weak and unprotected. Old arguments about equity and intolerance, which many thought history had settled, were suddenly before us again.” (__Rolling Stone __,

December 23, 1982)_ WHAT EISENHOWER SAW IN EUROPE WAS WHAT HAS HAPPENED HERE, NOW, AND THE SYMPTOMS ARE THE SAME. Conspiracy theories and cults proliferate as the society polarizes. The

center is the middle class, and what Eisenhower did, and said he was doing, was move people into the middle class from both below and above the center, with progressive taxation, to expand

the middle class. He saw the roots of WWII in wealth disparity and he saw how terrible were the consequences when the center cannot hold. Trying to fix this problem with any other method

than leveling the income so that the middle class is broad and prosperous harks back to Henry Ford, who said he wanted to pay his people enough so they could buy a Ford. He even cut the

price when automation began to make them cheaper. The Dodge brothers sued him for not making the return to shareholders bigger instead of prices lower. They won the suit and enshrined in law

that there is no public good requirement for an American corporation. The purpose of these immortals is to extract as much energy from the population as is possible, and feed it up to the

shareholders. Even today, if you look at the wording of the Wikipedia entry on this, you will see the actions of professional public relations people, changing the meaning to fit their

interests:_ “ … a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner

for the benefit of his employees or customers.” _Another way to put it is that the purpose of a corporation is to provide maximum return to shareholders, and public interest be damned._

“Charitable manner”_ is intended to get an emotional response which distracts the reader from what is being said there, which is that a corporation cannot by law act primarily in the

interests of its customers and employees. It is required to funnel profits to the top, and it has no obligation to the stability of society. Until the money is removed from politics, money

owns politics. Jimmy Carter and numerous others observed that we are not a democracy anymore. We are an oligarchy. How could we not be? All blessings flow upward by law. One thing oligarchs

always have is plenty of money with which to buy government officials, and replace those not for sale with those who are for sale. Any fool can win in a gerrymandered district, and a fool

typically does. You can depend on even a fool to know that this is the best job they can hope to get, ever, again. Nothing is required but an amoral obedience to authority. Those who are

falling apart and following insane conspiracy theories are from the religious and traditional people who have been taught to be ashamed of their bodies and of sexuality, but underneath it

all they have been taught to be ashamed of pleasures of the body. Anger is the substitute emotion for sexual desire, because it is the only one strong enough in intensity, and so

inappropriate attraction is expressed as anger toward the object of forbidden desire. Anger is also considered a more acceptable emotion than fear, especially for men, because they think it

makes them appear stronger. Actually, anger suggests emotional weakness and susceptibility — a kind of “characterological impotence.” One rises above it all on the wings of an imagined

superman or superwoman, who punishes those of weak character or weak morals by turning them in to “the authorities.” The goal is forced conformity, the opposite of personal liberty. But of

course false pride (ego inflation) is a cloak for shame, and behind it the most shameless acts imaginable are happening and have historically happened, such as the extermination of

“undesirables” in Germany in concert with the narcissistic inflation of the leader, and of those in thrall to this narcissism. You don’t even have to look to know that these are not separate

things, but one field which is polarized. Most of the German people, to this day, run the other way from “charisma,” and find a good administrator instead. Charismatic leaders were not a

good experience in Europe, beyond the initial thrall. Polarization is the enemy of sanity. The origin of the word, sanity, is health. Health is being in balance. At present the United States

is seriously ill and the prognosis is not good if the underlying problem of wealth distribution is not addressed, and soon. And the only way to fix it is the same way Ike fixed it, with a

top tax rate which creates a large and healthy middle class. If Biden taxes just the rich, and not the wealthy, it won’t help with anything but symptoms of the disease. It won’t cure

anything. Shadowgnosis remarkable piece from Susannah MacKinnie: DON’T TELL YOUR PARENTS I CAN SEE INTO YOUR HEARTS medium.com A favorite recent poem from Adelia Ritchie DANCIN’ AT THE

WHISKEY A-GO-GO SHE KNEW HOW TO PUT ON A SHOW medium.com Something new from Steve Williams A ROUND OF APPLAUSE A RUMINATION ON THE RAMIFICATIONS OF MEDIUM CLAPPING

steve-on-corio-bay.medium.com