Paul Craig Roberts sez “We Are All Prisoners Now”

Today I read Paul Craig Robert’s new essay on the state of the U.S. I couldn’t have said it better, though I already figured out that 9/11 was an inside job and Roberts is having a hard time going there. Roberts points out with succinct clarity that:

Freedom and democracy in America have been reduced to no-fly lists, spying without warrants, arrests without warrants or evidence, permanent detention despite the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, torture despite the prohibition against self-incrimination–the list goes on and on.
[…]

Present and former high government officials, with top secret security clearances, cannot fly with a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of water despite the absence of any evidence that extreme measures imposed by “airport security” makes flying safer.
Elderly American citizens with walkers and young mothers with children are meticulously searched because US Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between an American citizen and a terrorist.
All Americans should note the ominous implications of the inability of Homeland Security to distinguish an American citizen from a terrorist.
When Airport Security cannot differentiate a US Marine General recipient of the Medal of Honor from a terrorist, Americans have all the information they need to know.

He then points out that:

This predicament, which can now befall any American, is our reward for our stupidity, our indifference, our gullibility, and our lack of compassion for anyone but ourselves.

It’s actually more than that: it’s our lack of KNOWLEDGE. And I mean the specific knowledge we need about human psychology that reveals the presence of pathological individuals in our society who are, always and ever, the source of the evils that befall us – even including inducing stupidity, indifference, gullibility and lack of compassion. Anyone who has read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” can figure out what has been done over the last 50 years with brainwashing techniques studied in secret government laboratories.

But Roberts doesn’t go there either. In fact, he was sent a copy of Andrzej Lobaczewski’s “Political Ponerology” and his comment, after reading it, was:

I think it is a subject for specialists and not one the general public or editors can follow.

So, what is up with that? Why does Roberts complain, on the one hand, about the American Predicament being the result of our “stupidity, our indifference, our gullibility, and our lack of compassion for anyone but ourselves”, and, on the other hand, deny to the American people the very knowledge that absolutely essential in order to help them understand what they are up against, and what measures they must take; the Truth that would set them free?

In fact, it is the knowledge that would set Roberts himself free from his illusions – those he still clings to like a drowning man. Doesn’t he get it that the ideology that he followed was just a cover story and the people behind the party he gave the best years of his life to were just as corrupt then as they are being revealed to be now? Roberts seems to suffer from a particular problem described quite adequately by Lobaczewski:

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes certain propaganda motives. Even a small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideology and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others.

If such an ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of course provoke “moral outrage”, and not only among the members of the union; even normal people, who condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, would feel hurt, deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality. Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary motifs. The job of effecting such a “strip-tease” may thus turn out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected.

Indeed, Roberts himself shows us how difficult it is to strip away the veil that conceals the beast behind the Mask of Sanity. The question is: why? Is it that Roberts would feel “hurt and deprived of his own romantic ideals” and he would have to face the coldest, and hardest reality he has ever had to face? Is it that Roberts cannot face his conscience, that he was once a party to the evil he now deplores?

I don’t know the answer. I only hope that the scales drop from his eyes soon – and from the eyes of a lot of other people – because it is going to take everything that those who can finally see can do to get us out of this mess if it is even possible to do so at this late date. Just to emphasize how close he is to really understanding things just before he makes that diversion to the left or right to avoid facing the truth, read the following:

Only six members of the House voted against tyrannical legislation that would destroy freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that would mandate 18 months of congressional hearings to discover Americans with “extreme” views who could be preemptively arrested.

Isn’t that enough to alert him to the fact that we are dealing with an extreme phenomenon here? Then he writes:

What better indication that the US Constitution has lost its authority when elected representatives closest to the people pass a bill that permits the Bill of Rights to be overturned by the subjective opinion of members of an “Extremist Belief Commission” and Homeland Security bureaucrats?

Geeze, Paul, don’t you get it? It’s not that it is an indication that the Constitution has lost its authority, it’s an indication that the country has been completely taken over by pathological criminals who set things up a long time ago to do just that, step by step. They’ve been operating in the shadows for years, creating their ramified networks of evil collusion, setting up the dominoes to fall, and now it’s a done deal! It is what it is: a Pathocracy! Paul, if you are reading this, please note the following, note the accuracy of the description of the current state of affairs:

Pathocracy at the summit of governmental organization also does not constitute the entire picture of the “mature phenomenon”. Such a system of government has nowhere to go but down. Any leadership position, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special-services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals whose feeling of linkage to such a regime is conditioned by corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. …Such people become more valuable [to the Pathocracy] because they constitute a very small percentage of the population. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people representing superior abilities [who are also pathological and will do the dirty deeds] are even harder to find. After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way.

Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally, whether in economics, culture, science, technology, administration, etc. Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything. […]

Those people who initially found the original ideology attractive eventually come to the realization that they are in fact dealing with something else. The disillusionment experienced by such former ideological adherents is bitter in the extreme. […]

The phenomenon of pathocracy matures during this period: an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle or Trojan horse for the process of pathologizing the thought of individuals and society. The goal is never openly admitted: forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule. […]

The following questions thus suggest themselves: what happens if the network of … psychopaths achieves power in leadership positions with international exposure? This can happen, especially during the later phases of the phenomenon. Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest…. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

The actions of this phenomenon affect an entire society, starting with the leaders and infiltrating every village, small town, factory, or collective farm. The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country, creating a “new class” within that nation. This privileged class feels permanently threatened by the “others”, i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.

A normal person deprived of privilege or high positions goes about performing some work which would earn him a living; but pathocrats never possessed any solid practical talent, and the time frame of their rule has eliminated any residual possibilities of adapting to the demands of normal work. If the law of normal man were to be reinstalled, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral idea. Such a threat must be battled by means of psychological and political cunning and a lack of scruples with regard to those other “inferior-quality” people. […]

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well as by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of “to be or not to be”.

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions? What would happen if such a state of affairs ensured internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation?

The overwhelming majority of the country’s population would then make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications in order to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities; thanks to their higher birth rate, their power will increase. This majority will be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the corresponding genes. The pathocracy’s dominance will weaken imperceptibly but steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people reaches for power. This is a nightmare vision.

The biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority is thus a “biological” necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.

Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external.

As Roberts writes:

Americans face no greater threat than the government in Washington.

I only wish he would wake up completely and start working on the solution: educating the masses as to what it is they face in terms they can actually understand: pathological deviants have taken over the asylum. We don’t have to be prisoners if we understand the nature of the jail and jailers.

Originally Published 2007_12_27