The Emperors New Clothes

You remember the story,

...."the little Kingdom had an emperor who lived in his castle and was incredibly vain and insecure. Along came the con men and started selling him invisible cloth. And he bought it! They make him the most "beautiful gown" that "only a fool can't see how fine it is" and knowing deep in his heart that he's probably not all he's cracked up to be he goes along with their Con. And sure enough on the fateful day he's parading down the street wearing not even underwear, while the Cons are skipping town with his money."

Well that little Con game is part of our current political discourse. We have genuinely wise people who can have legitimate arguments over how to spend money, whether we are printing too much or too little of it, and how to make this country a better place. And then we have the Con Artists who sell us abusive myths, invisible cloth, instead of myths that can be made reality. Myths aren't necessarily bad things. Before the Empire State building was built, it's image was a myth. It took engineering, projects, plans, requisitions, materials and labor to put that building there. The building may not be the tallest building in the world anymore, but it still is a place where one can see the world that is the metropolis of New York. An ideal is a myth, reality is what we make of it. But con artists sell us things that don't actually exist, or can't possibly actually exist.

And of course it was dangerous for the little boy who noticed "Ooh, the Emperor is Naked!"

As long as it's only one kid in the crowd who is aware of the scam. It can continue. It's when everyone realizes they've been sold invisible cloth that we get back some sanity.

Fighting the Con artists starts with the realizations that:

a: Both our and their goals are myths until built.

b: Their myths are part of a bullying narrative that suits the bullies not anyone else.

And if we build their narrative we'll get dysfunction and misery in return.

We'll be parading down the street naked while the Con artists skip town.

c: Our myths a lot of effort to define and build to be any better.

Most Con artists are "grifters." A Grifter is someone who runs a con and then leaves town before they are caught. We only have cons in charge because we never seem to notice we are shivering and cold as we walk around in the cold. We work to build our goals and the result will be nice. It might not be paradise but it will be better than what we had before.

Genesis and Climate Change

My issue with Fundamentalists is that many of them don't bother to read for content and don't understand the fundamentals of their own religions. For example, Genesis, to me, is clearly a story about Climate Change. Reading Genesis in the context of archeology and climate history leads me to believe it's also about human influence on climate change's impact on humans. Whether humans cause climate change or "G-d" does is immaterial because the record shows that climate change, even as depicted in the Bible flows from human misbehavior.

Abraham, Isaac and Joseph in Egypt

For example the narratives in Genesis are driven by climate change. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all travel to Egypt periodically in the Narrative.

Abraham:

"{12:10} And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there" [I'm using KJ version but other versions same]

Isaac:

"{26:1} And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar."

The story of Genesis depicts people driven to seek a livelihood by climate change. Indeed one can make a case that Abraham left his homeland, probably for the same reasons that he later traveled to Egypt, because of climate change.

Now the archeological record shows that there had been some pretty impressive civilizations in Europe and the Middle East that actually collapsed around the time depicted in Genesis. One can blame a literal flood, or floods of human caused failures. Entire cities were built and abandoned from Britain to India. Cities and empires collapsed. There are some indications that climate change played a role there. Humans built complex irrigation systems that drew the salt out from the soil and gradually destroyed it's arability. Civilizations once existed and humans farmed lands where goats could barely graze and that turned into desert. The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh depicts a massive effort to deforest huge swaths of the middle east. We now know that removing forests dries out the "micro-climate" where the forest once stood. Humans did this over vast areas. This created a vicious cycle of climate degradation. Humans cut down forests in what is now Israel and Syria. They then farmed the land, but because it became drier eventually they had to abandon the farming. One reason for the cyclic beliefs of Hindus and others is that this became a cycle of growth and collapse. Archeologists find layered evidence of this as a cycle.

Storing Surplus

Of course the natural and human inputs into climate change feed on each other. Some human behavior can generate positive feedback and actually improve local climate. Some creates vicious circles. And some human changes get caught up in changes that have other causes; like the eruption of volcanoes, variegation in Solar Output, or the product of long cycles in ocean circulation. But to deny human input into climate change is silly. It's even in the bible. As is a narrative about what to do about it and the risks of doing so:

Joseph Enslaved the Hebrews

We store surplus to mitigate and deal with climate events that would otherwise be disasters. The story of Joseph in Genesis shows what happens when value is not stored. He interprets Pharaoh's Dream in Genesis 41:

"The dream of Pharaoh [is] one: God hath shewed Pharaoh what he [is] about to do. {41:26} The seven good kine [are] seven years; and the seven good ears [are] seven years: the dream [is] one. {41:27} And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them [are] seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine. {41:28} This [is] the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh: What God [is] about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh. {41:29} Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: {41:30} And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land; {41:31} And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it [shall be] very grievous. {41:32}" [KJ version]

Joseph then gets all his power under Pharoah by convincing Pharoah to store food and water against drought and crop failure. When the droughts occured people sold themselves into slavery to eat when the crops failed and the grass withered, including his own brothers. Indeed he narrative bears out that it was Joseph who Enslaved the Israelites, not Pharoah.

The whole of the bible can be interpreted as a tale of climate change and of human response to disease, drought and sudden changes. As well as a tale of humans acting like locusts or wolves. Those who deny climate change and claim their denial is based on the bible evidently haven't read it.

Notes:

The above is how we can use the power of the PaRDeS to interpret myth and fight the "Dueling Myths" Wars. Those advancing myths about climate change that it: "couldn't possibly be caused by man's behavior" are pushing a "dueling myth" aimed at science itself. Our intellectuals are so caught up in taking religious truth literally that they can't duel back because they don't believe enough in our national myths to embrace them and use them wisely. Dueling myths are narratives. And in the past our leaders understood this. Liars can use myths. And truth tellers need no reject the truths within myths to use them themselves.

When it all Falls apart

It is true that correlation does not equal causation. But usually correlation helps prove causation when people are looking for the cause of something. Thus ancients would see a major tragedy after an eclipse and assume that the eclipse caused the tragedy. The term for that is when an event is a "harbinger" and our brains are wired to detect such correlations, even when they aren't there.

Thus we're programmed to see causation where there is none. It's for that reason that policies that actually mess over the economy are looked back at as successes, while the mess those policies caused is blamed on the policies actually intended to rectify it.

That is why when we have hierarchy in society and "heroes" we often look at them nostalgically after they die. This is why Leaders like Nicolae_Ceaușescu or Josip Broz Tito, Mussolini, Franco, and others, who in fact repressed their countries are often adored and seen more as heros years after they die than while they are alive. While alive the trains seemed to run on time, there was stability and everything seemed fine for the insiders and those in the middle or the top of the Pecking Order.

It's after they die that the fun starts

When it all breaks up, all the buried hatreds flare up. The Lieutenants who behaved themselves out of fear of the fearless leader, all want to eat for dinner the former leader. Reforms are tried, and come up against resource shortages due to looting or misuse. Money is gone. The country is saddled with debt, inflation (or deflation) bureaucracy, corruption, and all sorts of buried troubles that suddenly re-appear.

Hence the chart shows the feathers flying and lots of chicken dinners.

This post is meant to focus on one point from: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-myths-are-bad.html

Why the Myths are Bad

Two articles about Honduras were in my news feed. One was about the horrific consequences of Neo-Liberalism (see neoliberalism-versus-economic-policy]. The other was about the wonderful prospects of privatizing Honduran Cities -- which is a neo-liberal myth! The two articles illustrate the evil that is done by authoritarian privateers using neo-colonialist methods, neoliberalism myths and corrupt power to advance private separate wealth and power over the general welfare of their own countries.

The Article also illustrate why it is so hard to the avatars of neoliberalism. Neo-liberalism (called Conservatism in the USA) is hard to fight because the myths around it are "social dominance" enhancing myths, they make it easier for the ambitious "social climbers" to create and climb hierarchies of wealth and power -- and to seize niches in those hierarchies. I'm going to use Honduras as the example for today. But the exact same narrative occurs when talking to authoritarian followers from Russia, other Eastern-European countries and where-ever there is a constant churn between anarchism, oligarchy and dictatorship. It also is occurring under the auspices of International Banking and the IMF with pirates who don't wear Eye Patches but tend to prefer Armani Power Suits instead.

Police as Occupying, Standing Army

In my re-reading of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution what stands out is the legitimate fear that many people in this country had of standing armies. One of the reasons for that fear is that the British sent troops to the United States, not just to police our border with the Indians or defend forts, but to police our cities. It was the military that put down demonstrations, arrested thieves, arrested dissidents and policed the Streets. When the Founders talked about the dangers of "standing armies" they were only partly worried about wars conducted abroad but far more worried about troops acting as standing armies of police, occupying and carrying out oppressive laws in the name of the crown.

The Declaration of Independence has these passages:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices,

and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

It sounds like King George was sending in swarms of Police to patrol our streets. And in the case of Boston, that is exactly what he was doing.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

So what is a police force but a "standing army?" I'm not saying that police force are bad. Neither are standing armies necessarily bad.

In the Federalist Papers Hamilton goes into discussion at length on how the Constitution was aiming at preventing the creation of Standing Armies around the country in the States by forcing States and the Federal Government to work together. Indeed he believed that the constitution prohibited the states from keeping standing armies. The Constitution was aimed at preventing not only the federal Government from behaving tyrannically, but also state Governments. And key to that was prohibiting Standing Armies and limiting the separate power of states to keep them:

As Hamilton notes in Federalist 25:

“The framers of the existing Confederation, fully aware of the danger to the Union from the separate possession of military forces by the States, have, in express terms, prohibited them from having either ships or troops, unless with the consent of Congress. The truth is, that the existence of a federal government and military establishments under State authority are not less at variance with each other than a due supply of the federal treasury and the system of quotas and requisitions." [Federalist 25]”

The Framers didn't want States or the Federal Government to have large standing armies for the reasons listed in the Declaration of Independence.

"Independent and Superior to Civil Power"

The Declaration of Independence continues:

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws;

giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

By Civil power the founders meant the power of courts and legislature. Military power is the power of administrative law and combines judicial and executive powers in the same person. Military power is bureaucratic and by extension bureaucracies also provide a jurisdiction for judging that is "independent and superior" to civil power.... unless the check of appeal to ordinary courts is available and realistic. A recent decision by the Supreme Court made a distinction between interpreting the law and rewriting the law in a decision against the EPA [UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP v. EPA ]. Without Judicial and legislative oversight over bureaucracy "pretended legislation" tends to substitute for actual regulation. And that is what was happening to the American Colonies in the 1760's and 70's.

And the authors of the Declaration also objected to arbitrary power and impunity for the officers and soldiers of the British military who were quartered in our cities.

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

Declaration of Independence [http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html]

By "Mock trials" as my friend explained, the Declaration was referring to the substitute of "Administrative Law" for "ordinary courts" and jury trials. In Administrative courts, such as the Military has, where trials were conducted by persons who often were the same persons as the prosecution and defense. Hence the expression "mock trial"s.

This quartering was without compensation, mandatory, and essentially was a tax or requisition against the citizens forced to take soldiers into their quarters. It was thus very onerous to citizens. And again, because there was no effective legislative or judicial oversight over the military, they could engage in theft and minor crimes with impunity -- and did.

Authors being Hypocritical

Sadly our own founders were hypocrites on some of this

The Declaration of Independence represents a people resisting slavery and oppression. US politicians were loudest about slavery, partly because they were intimately familiar with it. They understood liberty as an inalienable right largely because they were experts at alienating it and infringing the liberties of minorities and slaves in their home districts and States. Part of the origins of our modern police force were:

"The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property." [http://www.plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing]

Relationship of Police to Standing Armies

Thus police as standing armies is not a new phenomena. Privatized policing isn't new either. It was abandoned for good reasons. This article notes that policing in America has always had two tracks:

"The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979)." [History of Policing Part 1]

The article then notes:

"The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger. Boston created a night watch in 1636, New York in 1658 and Philadelphia in 1700. The night watch was not a particularly effective crime control device. Watchmen often slept or drank on duty. While the watch was theoretically voluntary, many "volunteers" were simply attempting to evade military service, were conscript forced into service by their town, or were performing watch duties as a form of punishment. Philadelphia created the first day watch in 1833 and New York instituted a day watch in 1844 as a supplement to its new municipal police force (Gaines, Kappeler, and Vaughn 1999)." [History of Policing Part 1]

The Watch members were essentially militia, drafted to local service. But not particularly well trained.

"Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures. In many cities constables were given the responsibility of supervising the activities of the night watch." [History of Policing Part 1]

The constables were essentially their officers. Also not particularly well trained. To remedy that, professional police were substituted for militia over a period of time:

"These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics:

(1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form;

(2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers;

(3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous;

(4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980)."

[History of Policing Part 1]

In the South Modern Policing grew out of the before mentioned Slave Patrols as these were reshaped to reflect "modern" notions of policing but kept their core function of oppressing blacks (before and after slavery ended) and enforcing the power of land-owners. [ibid] But North or South the development of policing:

"More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs." [History of Policing Part 1]

Essentially these bureaucratic police departments were modeled on the British model of standing armies. The Constitution was created in part to regulate standing armies. And the tension between our chaotic local policing system and the Federal Design is driving much of our current climate. "Keeping Order" may be important, but if citizens are treated as if they were in occupied territory, then that is tyranny as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

Doctor Gary Potters in his 6 part series (quoted from part 1) describes how policing has tended to be oppressive, corrupt and with only the pretense of rule of law. He describes the evolution of policing from it's Slavery Enforcement and border repression roots to it's use in prohibition, to crush worker rights up the current time.

Further Reading & Sources:

Declaration of Independence

History of Policing [http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1]

History of Policing and Slavery: [http://www.plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing]

More history of Policing (worth reading):

Maintaining Illusion of Rule of Law

Police as Strike Breakers/Army

Advent of Prohibition

Wikersham, Reform and Taylorization anti-reform

Cosmetic Reforms and Militarization

It takes a process

My subconscious, the divine lecturer (whoever or whatever that is, God?) was talking to me this morning as I woke up. It was reminding me of an important imposed reality that is common to all functional systems:

It Takes Good Processes to make a functional system.

In the dictionary you get this definition of system:

System:

1. a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular.

2. a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method. [From Google]

In order to have a functional human system both definitions of a system have to be present. It takes good processes and procedures based on related principles for a human system to work properly. J.D. Rockefeller made his millions by creating Refineries that systematically separated and processed crude oil into "standard" kerosene and other products [oil, gas, road bitumen, plastics, explosives]. The United States has managed to survive because it has functional (more or less) processes like it's justice system, military system, bureaucracies. Processes are necessary and inevitable to good function of any living system; economy, physiology, computing, politics. When those processes go awry it reflects a failure to analyze them and compensate for the idiosyncratic properties of the elements of of their combinations.

A well constituted system will have both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Refineries use both centrifuges and compressors. Compressors usually operate on centripetal principles -- pushing gases towards a center. While Centrifuges spin and separate things. Without designing a process the result is a mess, but with good processes one can separate something into it's composite parts and then recombine them intelligently. Eat crude oil and die. But from crude oil we get fertilizers and energy that helps us eat. Transport crude oil across the landscape and dump it in an aquifer and people die, but oil itself is just a resource. It's how those processes deal with the oil that makes it a poison or turns it into pretty wax candles we can burn while taking a hot bath.

A well designed system processes in stages. It may dry something, then recombine it. It may turn something to gas then cool it. It may use catalysts to break down something from a complex stew into easier to deal with components. It may add heat or extract heat. A refinery is a display of profound chemical knowledge at work creating something useful from ugly, poisonous tar. The issue with our oil business is not with the engineering, but with the focus of the engineers.

Using Systematic processes

Anyway, engineers and people with an engineering, creative spirit, use a variety of systematic processes (definition 2) to devise systems for ensuring that we have living systems instead of messed up ones. This is called "systems engineering" and it has transformed the planet in good ways. A system can be optimized for the few, or optimized for the sake of a functional system. A system that is optimized only for some of it's elements tends to be dysfunctional. Bad process is also tyranny, injustice, maldistribution, oppression and depression. A dysfunctional system dumps junk in the wrong places. Instead of refining things into something useful. So to separate the junk into it's useful components (to a creative mind, everything, including junk and merde, is useful), folks trained in system engineering analyze related things into their component parts and then figure out how to process them into something that accomplishes something good.

Requirements and Laws, inputs and outputs

The requirements of a system are the laws and design goals of that system. Some requirements are built in constraints. No matter how much we'd like to turn lead into Gold there is no chemical process that can do so. Requirements flow from constraints and possibilities. How a set of input materials is processed determines the outcome of that system. And the steps in that process are determined by what the final product is desired to look like. If I want to bake a pie. What ingredients I start with and add to the filler, dough to make the crust, etc... determines the texture, taste and other properties of that pie. A good cook follows a process and understands the requirements for a pie that will taste the way he wants it to taste. A good architect will come up with a repeatable formula for producing a tasty pie everytime.

It takes Process diagrams and Input Output diagram.

Finally, the reason this "lecture dream" woke me is that we need to constitute our government as a systematic structure if we want to solve our governing processes and not rely on trite slogans and self-centered/interested ideologies that ignore systems theory or are dysfunctionally optimizing. Governing processes need to be designed to process information and decision making in a manner similar to processes cooking ingredients or crude oil into useful products. Our politics can either be crude or refined based on how we constitute it. That is why Hamilton put so much care into his part of designing the constitution. That's also why the constitution, while it could be worse, reflected the mess of committee and self interested decision making. We need to apply systems theory to designing our legal processes. But to do that we need to apply what we've learned in psychology and psychiatry and to also remember the principle of engineering;

Just as the same building blocks can build a pyramid or a prison, a swimming pool or a cesspool. So the same elements of legal systems and political process can build a functional republic with democratic attributes or an authoritarian police state. The same blockheads who can destroy our country, can be used to build a really nice system that has the attributes of a functional one.

More work to be done.

Notes and Details

System Examples from Google definition [taken 1/30/2015]:

PHYSIOLOGY

a set of organs in the body with a common structure or function.

"the digestive system"

the human or animal body as a whole.

"you need to get the cholesterol out of your system"

COMPUTING

a group of related hardware units or programs or both, especially when dedicated to a single application.

GEOLOGY

(in chronostratigraphy) a major range of strata that corresponds to a period in time, subdivided into series.

ASTRONOMY

a group of celestial objects connected by their mutual attractive forces, especially moving in orbits about a center.

"the system of bright stars known as the Gould Belt"

Mea Culpa

When my adopted people, Jews, start the new year. They do a prayer known a the Vidui. Usually it's sung as part of a ceremony.

This year this was back in September. But for me every day is a new year so I'm thinking "new year" all year and prefer not to wait til the end of the year to think about what I need to change. And the subject weighs on my mind as much due to Christian, new age and Buddhist influences as Jewish ones. The Vidui is important.

And since most people in all religions sleep through sermons and translations, they do it in English as well as hebrew, so it's a collective thing. Where Catholics get in a booth and confess privately to a confessor, Jews do it in public and at least twice a year. It's a list of things we all do. Some of us maybe only once in a life time. Some of us repeatedly. It's a long confessional [Text of Al-Chet] that is rendered differently in different communities. But

We abuse, we betray, we are cruel.

We destroy, we embitter, we falsify.

We gossip, we hate, we insult

We jeer, we kill, we lie.

We mock, we neglect, we oppress.

We pervert, we quarrel, we rebel

We steal, we transgress, we are unkind.

We are violent, we are wicked, we are xenophobic.

We yield to evil, we are zealots for bad causes.

 

Have to Stop it. Not just confess it.

And of course we have to stop it. Not just confess it every year and hope we are forgiven somehow.

Zealots for Bad Causes

But the one that always sticks to my thoughts is the "zealots for bad causes." Bad causes has to meanings. One is we are zealots for causes that are bad, ill conceived, wrong. And of course the other one is that we are zealots for bad causes that bring us bad effects. What goes around comes around. Reincarnation or just and endless cycle of causation and it's effects, we have to do something about this.

Three Fingered Thing or Why I'm thinking about this

Both left and right spend a lot of time criticizing the President. But to me much of that criticism is as much self criticism as it is legitimate criticism. When Carter practiced some conservative Liberalism he was expressing ideas that resonated with me. When the politicians and pundits first started to talk about privatization it seemed reasonable that the government should contract out some of it's work. I've been unable to get a Government job because I've spent most of my life working as one of these contractors. It had it's pluses and minuses and seemed like a reasonable thing until the privateers got their hands on it. Had I been more successful (and more mercenary) at the business of consulting I might have remained a true believer in the idea. Some of what is right wing ideology a lot of us "moderates" thought was true too.

We really did think that public private alliances could be made (and they can) and that the result would be leaner, better government and healthy businesses. We really did buy into trickle down lite theories that we could "reform welfare", use technology to make government and business better, and that somehow it would benefit everybody.

We were wrong. We were zealots for bad causes.

Too many businessmen (and women) are social dominators, grown up bullies. People are numbers for them. An employee is a cost who has no business having any say in the business he works for. Combining, fighting, bullying to make huge numbers in the money and status game are the real business of business and selling a good product, producing a valuable service or goods, or even providing a pension for employees are secondary to winning that game of status and power that is modern business. We bought into the idea that we could take our eyes off of businessmen because we bought their professions that business has to be win/win or it is lose/lose. The idea that executives could play zero sum or even negative sum games where they were willing to cut payrolls by 100's of thousands of people to pay themselves a bonus, even at the actual cost of profitability of their company -- just never seemed rational to us. But we thought their BS.

It wasn't just Milton Friedman who was surprised by the behavior of many of our business class. I remember I was surprised when I first started getting intelligence about the Tech Boom frauds back in the late 90's. When Start up Shysters started boasting about how they could sell startups to dumb investors and that the more they lost on the business model the more they could make with the IPO, I knew that the tech revolution was turning into a bubble swindle. Even so it was profoundly disheartening. The 2008 disaster didn't catch me by surprise only because I'd had my shock response and gone through all the period of mourning 10 years earlier. We helped the Cons build a system which they happily picked our pockets with and then proceeded to dump us to the side of their ambition. It may be an enthusiasm for bad causes that will destroy the country, but they got away with it because too many of my generation went along with them. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and a host of "new Democrats" bought into a pack of lies about "triangulation", balanced budgets and reform. Folks who are coming of age now probably see right through it. But you have to be patient with the rest of us. A lot of us won't admit it, but we were suckered too.

More:

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Yom_Kippur/In_the_Community/Prayer_Services/Confession.shtml