THE NINE STAGES OF CIVILIZATION ~ WE'RE ENTERING THE EIGHTH, DEPENDENCE

The United States is now firmly entering  the eighth stage of all civilizations ~ Dependence with only Bondage ahead of it. Apathy has allowed our constitution to be shredded in stage seven which led to our current state of Dependence on the state ~ but soon an IRS monitored Obamacare program of 'Shared responsibility, or else' will usher in the Orwellian ninth stage of militarized Bondage: Allen L Roland

Last year I wrote that the average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years and that these nations have progressed through a nine stage sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacence to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/19/the-nine-stages-of-civilization-were-in-the-seventh-apathy/

As Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, once correctly said ~ ”We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.” 

In our present Plutocracy, we made the transition last year from complacency to national apathy ~ but with the passage and implementation of Obamacare, along with an increasingly militarized surveillance state, we have now entered stage eight, Dependence on the state ~ which will soon be followed with militarized Bondage by the state.

John Adams once correctly defined the perils of dependence ~ " The nature of the encroachment upon American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society. "

Obamacare or 'shared-responsibility or else'  is the most visible evidence of the plutocracy's leveraged buyout of Democracy as we officially enter stage eight of our rapidly crumbling civilization or empire ~ and no one nails this truth better than Bill Moyers. 5 Minute video ~  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hZ5tj4cN9Jk

Obamacare is a blatant but sad joke played on an apathetic American public who are already becoming conditioned for dependence by the plutocracy. Here's the hypocrisy of Obamacare in a single sentence. 2 minute video ~ http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical-1/the-new-us-health-care-program.html

Part and parcel of this shift to Dependence is a growing surveillance and police state ~ as clearly evidenced in the recent lockdown of Boston. Henry Giroux noted this some point in his provocative recent article in AlterNet ~ Did the Authorities' lockdown of Boston Give us a Taste of The Police State Culture to Come?

Excerpt:  "Militarism thrives on the mass produced culture of fear and the spectacle of violence.  It abhors dissent and flourishes in an ever expanding web of secrecy. Both Bush and Obama have used the cult of secrecy and the threat of punishment to silence whistleblowers, allow those who have committed torture under the government direction to go free, and refused those who have been “interrogated” illegally to take their case to the courts."

Giroux correctly concludes that the American public at large is so immersed in fear and cruelty that they are more than willing to surrender their rights at the first whiff of danger ~ and that, I would add, is the most important step in the process of moving from Dependence to a militarized state of Bondage ~ the exploitation of fear and danger for the benefit of the state or plutocracy.

Are you aware that thousands of US police including the FBI director and NYC Chief of Police have been getting "law enforcement training" from Israel?

What are they learning from the very same thugs who brutalize Palestinians daily? Very simply, that "All civilians are probable criminals and should be treated that way."

Here is an 8 minute RT Video interview with Max Blumenthal in 2011 on the intentional militarization of the police force ~ which has now become painfully obvious in the recent Boston Bombings.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/22707.html

Huxley correctly predicted in Brave New World that the truth would eventually be drowned in a sea of irrelevance ~ which is precisely the case now as we transition from Apathy to Dependence.

Truth talker Chris Hedges describes the symptoms of the rapidly approaching  last stage of Bondage ~ for it will indeed be marked by  The Death of Truth   "The world has been turned upside down. The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms ~ propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite ~ monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage. I fear for Julian Assange. I fear for Bradley Manning. I fear for us all"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34844.htm

As a civilization or empire collapses from within ~ all citizens eventually are seen as potential terrorists and the local police role changes from protecting the public to protecting the plutocracy.

Seen through clearer eyes ~ as Pepe Escobar explains ~ the recent Boston bombings police reaction was a prelude to Martial Law ~ 

 " What the day-long delay in Dzhokhar's arrest indeed made possible was to turn Watertown into a monster dry run for urban martial law - euphemized as ''lockdown'' - in a very near future. As total militarization of civilian life goes - featuring, for instance, Homeland Security running amok with hundreds of armored vehicles - this was a major success. Meanwhile, on the ''legal'' front, the White House and the Justice Department are firmly on track to finally suppress the Miranda warning; that went into effect already two years ago, when an Obama secret executive order ruled the Miranda warning would not apply to suspected terrorists." See article ~ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-230413.html

The day is fast approaching when speaking the truth will be seen as an act of terrorism, and we will finally realize that we have become totally dependent on the state, that our cherished individual freedoms were trashed in that process and that it was all done in the glorious name of national security.

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men" : Voltaire.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-nine-stages-of-civilization-were.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

AMERIKA'S LAST INDEPENDENCE DAY

2012 could well mark the last celebration of our once brave and free Republic whose firm moral bearings have slowly been eroded by a cancerous military industrial complex and the sinister emergence of a fascist corpocracy: Allen L Roland

Enjoy this fourth of July; watch the patriotic parades and fireworks, wave your flags and stuff yourself with hamburgers and hotdogs ~ but beware, this could well be Amerika’s last independence day. The moral pillars of our Republic have almost disintegrated and beneath the ruins lay a rapidly blooming fascist corpocracy.

Mark Twain once wrote that true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time and loyalty to the Government ONLY when it deserves it. Our present corporate welfare state government does not deserve our loyalty for it has not only hijacked democracy but we have become a fascist corpocracy in the process. A fascist state seeks to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.

The Obama administration not only represents corporate welfare you can believe in but, in the process, we have moved from a democracy toward a fascist corpocracy ~ which millions of Americans patriotically annually celebrate while still being manipulated by false threats, false promises and manufactured nightmares. President Obama's once formidable Main Street base has now been totally replaced by Wall Street's financial elite and an arrogant and greedy corpocracy.

No where is this greed as obvious as the great middle class swindle ~ Obamacare.

As Mike Adams writes in Natural News ~ “ Obama got the middle class to support his legislation by promising it was NOT a tax, and by promising it would LOWER health insurance costs. In reality, however, it RAISES health insurance costs, it IS a tax, and the majority of that tax burden falls squarely on the very same middle-class voters who put Obama into office under false pretenses. That's a swindle, by any definition.”

By the year 2016, the Obamacare "penalty" tax will reach roughly $2,000 per year for a two-person household. According to Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, 75% of the financial burden of Obamacare's new taxes will fall onto Americans making less than $120,000 a year
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036361_Obamacare_tax_swindle.html#ixzz1zRc1Ok8B

Manufactured fear, corporate welfare and false patriotism are also among the 14 key characteristics of a fascist state. Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each ~ and America has virtually all of them;

1.    Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

2.    Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need."

3.    Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe.

4.    Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5.    Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.

6.    Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and corporate executives.

7.    Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8.    Religion and Government are intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion.

9.    Corporate Power is protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media.

Are our present active duty military fighting illegal occupations for our nation, a democracy, or an increasingly fascist government corpocracy?

As the Rev Michael Piazza writes in Liberating Word ~ “When war is profitable, it becomes too tempting to resist. We cloak our attitudes in terms of patriotism and supporting our troops, but the truth is, if war wasn't so profitable our troops might not be so endangered. Is it pure coincidence that the South, which is most economically dependent on military expenditures, is also the region where support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the greatest? Will we ever make truly ethical choices between war and peace if war is so profitable?”

How can Amerika be the home of the brave when our cowardly and illegal drone attacks are killing thousands of innocent civilians every day - many falsely counted as "combatants", "militants" or "terrorists" ~  while at the same time more of our troops commit suicide every year than get killed in action? 

In Pakistan (an American "ally") alone, through mid-August last year as many

as 2,956 people were killed and another 1,158 injured by U.S. drone attacks.

Many were labeled "militants", but the death toll includes at least 175

children and as many as 781 verified civilians.  Despite all this collateral

damage, no more than 150 "named militants" were killed.  And again, these statistics are for Pakistan alone. President Obama has embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in.  It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials ~ unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

In perhaps the most unconstitutional power grab by the Obama administration to date the constitutional rights of Freedom of Press and Freedom of speech have now been suspended under the false premise that the "human rights violations" in Syria and Iran constitute a "national emergency".

President Obama issued an executive order declaring Syria a national emergency and outlaws reporting on terrorist rebel activities ~ once again validating the wise words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin; "All wars are follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones."

4 minute Video: The case Against Moving Forward With War

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/11211.html

And what are the moral effects of our unjust occupations and military killing machine?

It is impossible, given the paucity of current data, to determine

the suicide rate among veterans with any accuracy.  However, the VA

estimates that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes.  Moreover,

although only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, former

service members represent 20 percent of suicides in the United States."

For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves

(468) than died in combat (462). 'If you... know the one thing that causes

people to commit suicide, please let us know,' General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, 'because we don't know.'  Suicide is a tragic but

predictable human reaction to being asked to kill as well as watch your friends

be killed - particularly when it's for a war or occupation based on lies." See article ~  http://tinyurl.com/6zdf6cy

There's lots of talk about government debt, but very little talk about how much of that debt comes into being as well as the ongoing diabolical partnership we have between crooked banks and corrupt politicians ~ both here and abroad. John Perkins pulls back the curtain on how countries get in over their heads... 2 minute Video: http://www.realecontv.com/page/6314.html

This Independence day we must face the fact that we are neither the land of the free nor the home of the brave ~ but instead have given away our precious birthright to the military/industrial complex and a fascist corpocracy. 

Former US President and Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter rightly says that “ the United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights “

In that regard, I am reminded of Milton Mayer’s classic “They Thought They Were Free”  (The Germans 1933 – 1945).

For German exceptionalism in the 1930’s was really not too different, in many ways, than American exceptionalism in the last decade and very likely headed for the same disastrous fate.

Mayer’s book describes the slow but sure seduction of the people as their liberties, freedoms and moral values were gradually stripped away by Hitler’s fascist government while waving the flag of national security and patriotism;

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE – Pg. 166 / 167

“ But Then It Was Too Late ~ What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it … this separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”
Apathy sets in with each step, as it most certainly has in America, and Mayer knowingly describes the consequences for Germany in the early 1930’s~

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE – Pg 171

“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D ~ and one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you.
The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in ~ your nation, your people ~ are not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way… You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined … Suddenly it all comes down, all at once.

You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing) You remember the occasions in which maybe if you had stood others would have stood too. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair." 

And that is Mayer’s main point ~ it is the spirit that dramatically changes when we accept if not condone the disintegration of our national moral values through illegal wars and occupations as well as crimes against humanity such as torture, secret renditions as well as intrusive full body scans and pat downs, which will soon be extended to trains, boats, schools and court houses.

On this Independence day 2012 , let us remember the clouds of glory in our infancy and the words of Thomas Paine;

“Never had a country so many openings to happiness as this.

Her setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was unclouded and promising.

Her cause was good.

Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm.

Her conduct regulated by the nicest steps, and

Everything about her wore the mark of honor.

It is not every country that can boast so fair an origin.”

And then let us truly reflect on what we have indeed become as the world’s largest supplier of arms, the supporter of inhumane dictatorships throughout the world with the blood of millions of innocent people on our hands as the result of our imperialistic war machine ~ and reflect on the words of our famous poet Carl Sandburg;

“ For we know when a country goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found, they forgot where they came from ~ they lost sight of what brought them along”

I finish my Independence Day requiem with this four minute Bill Moyers reflection on Independence Day where Moyers reminds us that “Thomas Jefferson got it right when he wrote about "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as the core of our human aspirations. But he lived it wrong, denying to others the rights he claimed for himself. And that's how Jefferson came to embody the oldest and longest war of all ~ the war between the self and the truth, between what we know and how we live.”

4 minute video: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/12203-focus-remember-thomas-jeffersons-betrayal

And that quite simply is America’s on going current war ~ between what we choose to believe and the truth and what we know in our hearts and how we live.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/amerikas-last-independence-day.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com ) 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net