The Seattle Seahawks win the Superbowl one year, the Kansas City Chiefs the next.
What's to stop the Kansas City Chiefs from simply declaring an end to future seasons of ‘football’, declaring themselves the champions for all time, now and forever?
Well, in the case of sportsball it's money. The season after season of games and built up suspense (and gambling winnings) generated by those eliminations, plus the big championship game at the end of the season. Stadium seat tickets, alcohol, tv ads, and other ancillary sales all generate hundreds of billions of dollars (on par with the DSA’s military budget, more than 40 times NASA's budget).
In politics, however, in the realm of laws that affect businesses, public recourse against injustice, and the handling of collected tax money for the public good, it's the opposite.
There’s no guarantee of another season.
Reality is not sportsball (and vice versa). There's no underlying system that will ensure your side another chance at the trophy. There is no ‘next season’ unless the winner allows it. The winner can change the rules. That’s why you must ensure that the winners are people who will allow it.
Here in reality, there's no system of profiteering from competition. The idea of the ‘free market’ inherently protecting the public is a fairy tale for children. Leaders of industry employ collectivism in the form of syndicate behavior, and anything goes as long as it pays better than it costs. This is a matter of record, i.e. history.
There's nothing the wealthy want more than one side winning and staying in power, especially when one side is already willing to direct tax money to their buddies in exchange for kickbacks from those buddies, and to change laws in their favor, ending your recourse against injustice. That's a mafia state, where nationwide money and power is controlled by a small organization of cutthroat oligarchs, mafiosos. It's a very efficient system for driving money and power to those who already have it, and preventing the opposite. The very few lord over the rest of us. Feudalism.
Beware efficiency.
For a hundred thousand years, humanity has seen cycles of struggle between the HAVES, who want unchecked power and wealth, and the HAVE NOTS. For a hundred thousand years, the HAVES have been finding ways to trick the HAVE NOTS into freely handing it over to them (it costs less that way).
Religion has always been a great way to keep the HAVE NOTS on the side of the HAVES. The HAVES learn to say the right religious things, and the HAVE NOTS raise their fists in the air in support. See: all of history.
Today, another way is to make them think they're guaranteed another season of competition. Then they’ll stop fighting and wait. But nope. Sorry.
Reality is not sportsball.
They employ social engineering in many other ways. Another extremely effective method is to keep telling people that everything they think is the product of their careful consideration, and that everything they do is an act of free will. If they believe that, they'll be ripe for social engineering.
Here in reality, unless a person has learned how to be immune to social engineering, you can replace someone's thoughts simply by repetition along with repeatedly saying that everyone else is thinking the same thing. Their actions will follow their (socially engineered) thinking.
Simple example: all commercial ads show multiple people swallowing the Kool Aid of the product, woven into beloved traditions. A family taking a drive in their cool new vehicle. A party full of gyrating beauties all drinking that alcohol product, unquestioningly. No product information is required, let alone comparison (which would remind the ad viewer that alternatives exist). Repeat the ad and the viewer can't help but remember the product in a positive light. The viewer is much more likely to buy a product they remember everyone else liking. Those not yet immune to social engineering will not compare stats and research details, they buy on autopilot. [This is why marketing/advertising is one of the sleaziest of careers. It’s 100% social engineering, tricking people, and normalizing that to the point where people have “brand loyalty” and wear Coca-Cola T-shirts.]
To become immune to social engineering tricks like these requires some exposure to history and human nature, plus time to think about such things and to break habits.
Therefore, the HAVES do everything they can to prevent the HAVE NOTS from being interested in let alone obtaining knowledge of history and human nature. And they throw chaos and fear around to keep the HAVE NOTS from having the thinking time required to digest such lessons and develop new habits.
Everything must be desperate and urgent at all times.
A murderer kills someone wealthy-powerful, an easy-to-hate kinda guy, and it's all over the net. (yes, I’m talking about that #UHCEO)
Kids are killed on the same day, but no one seems to care.
Seems.
But it's not true. It only seems that way because of the repeat exposure. The human mind evolved to believe repetition, to bandwagon. It's easier, faster, and safer (when living in the wilderness) than learning, free thinking, and consensus building. Both approaches are helpful, but after the discovery and development of social engineering, the latter is absolutely critical.
Learning, free thinking, and consensus building
Repeat exposure can be engineered until it becomes self-sustaining by that bandwagoning human nature.
After such exposure, the reactive comments, armchair analyses, memes, killer costume parties, etc., are encouraged, both by natural and engineered means in search of ad clicks and influence. What influence, you ask?
It NORMALIZES murder.
It NORMALIZES murder of "easy-to-hate" people.
It NORMALIZES defining people as justifiably killable based on HOW YOU FEEL about them, without regard to ethics/morals let alone facts or legal processes.
Not everyone agrees on who is easy to hate, but if you already have a host of unquestioning followers inculcated with hatred toward what they see as "the elite", you're in fat city. It's not accidental that those targets will be people who oppose a mafia state.
What comes next? History and human nature have shown that what comes next are similar murders of "elites" -- I won't be surprised to see murders of women's health doctors, civil liberties lawyers, evolution professors, NASA administrators who might be seen as opposing the subsidizing with taxpayer dollars of certain commercial space interests, true journalists, epidemiologists, LGBT celebrities and supporters, non-Christian religious leaders, feminist leaders, substack metathinkers, …
Engineered normalization of murders and online repeat exposure will beget local hater-driven lynchings. People obtain validation by taking part in customary behaviors, i.e. what’s been repeatedly normalized. That’s all customs and traditions are — that which has been repeatedly normalized.
Lynchings will beget protests and perhaps violence. Violence begets more violence. Desperation and urgency everywhere. No time to think and change.
Then expect to start seeing such normalization murders of NON-EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN leaders, dissenting party members, judges who don't toe the line, and eventually members of Congress and state officials.
The civilized and manipulation-immune will be too busy trying to organize to reacquire rule-of-law in a justice system with benches full of party appointments and a high court that's willing to summarily pardon those who engineer these things. None of this is any easier when members of police forces are among the inculcated, or at least prioritize police tribalism over the laws they swore to protect. It’s not easy, just ask Frank Serpico.
Seeing rule-of-law fail, those who wish to end government of/by/for The People and permanently retain power, the way Putin and his former KGB cronies did after the fall of the USSR, will weave in assassinations, no-holds-barred smear campaigns and framings, and mercenary violence against other HAVES who don't play ball. Just like all those Russian and Czech oligarch defenestrations.
Only the most cutthroat and corrupt remain in the mafia state power heirarchy
Thereby, laws will continue to change in favor of their most rabid followers and against everyone else. Companies, corporations, and entire church organizations (with their own tithe-based income streams) will be legally handed over to mafia oligarchs. Public education as we know it will throttle down and water down to a negligible condition, ensuring that no children will ever know history, human nature, or anything those in power don't want them to know (i.e. things that can make them immune to social engineering).
Eventually there are no laws, only cronies and whims.
This is what they've said they'll do, and many who voted for them love it, thinking it puts them in charge and validates them.
But after the new order is established, that's when all the supporters discover that it's a PYRAMID SCHEME, with VERY FEW AT THE TOP gaining and everyone else at the powerless, debt-based bottom.
How can that work as a human system? Isn’t bureaucracy and law required to make things happen? Not so much. The Roman Empire had bureaucracy and law, but it also had a highly stratified society, and a whole lot of slave labor.
Look, it’s simple. 4% to 15% of the human population are sociopaths. At least. It may be more than that, because in a civilized world some sociopaths (probably the smartest ones) get good at faking morals and hiding in polite society. But even if we assume 4%, that means in a country of 300 million adults there are 12 million sociopaths (the population of Ohio!) to choose from, to place in positions of authority, to buy their immoral brutality, willingness to lie and cheat, and iron-fisted rule.
You select sociopaths of lower intelligence to occupy positions lower down the chain so they aren’t smart enough to kill you and steal your power. That’s easy enough, since the average human IQ is 100, and 100 isn’t all that smart. The smartest sociopaths rise to the top, and the dumbest work the bottom with the heartless brutality you’re accustomed to seeing in Tarantino films. Add slavery in one form or another (at least the wage-debt slavery many in the DSA understand) and the things we get done with bureaucracy and wages instead get done by mafia cronyism and powerless laborers.
If it’s more like 15%, then you have 45 million sociopaths to choose from. 45 million! That’s more than the entire population of the state of California! And in a mafia state, they’ll be scrambling to get in. That’s their preferred system, one in which they thrive!
Some regime supporters will get vocal and abrasive about their treatment, at which point suddenly they're labeled a "lefty dissident traitor" and disappeared to make an example.
Anyone's face can get eaten when face-eaters get unchecked power.
Such a cascade has happened many times throughout history among populations susceptible to inculcation through repetition and other social engineering methods. This is what will not be taught in schools, and really hasn't been taught in Murrica for decades.
More importantly, this historically repeated cascade demonstrates the direct connection between an individual's thinking/spending/voting habits and the movements of whole societies toward oppressive authoritarian mafia states. This is what's meant by "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance". What did you think it meant? Some government agency (or kaffeeklatsch?) deploys vigilance for your protection?
Always ask, what would be the global effect if everyone did what I’m doing?
Simple example: if everyone started living like cavemen, burning wood for cooking and heating, the 6 billion people on the planet would burn down all the forests in a week. Technology allows us to use higher-density energy sources, supporting many more people. If everyone “doesn’t care about politics”, the sociopathic mafiosos win by default and we ALL become serfs.
When those who seek unchecked power understand this cascade while the masses do not, the social engineering takes hold. They social engineer their own unchecked power, and the masses allow and enable it.
"I'm not interested in politics" is you letting a streetcorner pickpocket direct your attention elsewhere as they remove your watch and wallet. It's you being inculcated by the power seekers to put your blinders on while they grab unchecked power. This reality does not go away if you ignore it.
Governments of, by, and for The People are our unions, and taxes are our union dues. Inefficiency is far better, far safer, and more likely equitable than unchecked oligarchy. In Russia, Iran, Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Turmenistan, Central African Republic, Laos, Myanmar, etc. someone trying to convey things like this may get thrown in prison and smeared, or disappeared. How long until I'm among them?
What does daily life in a mafia state look like? They’ll take all your property. Bribery is the norm just to make ends meet (women have it the worst). No recourse to law. Cross or fail to satisfy a crony in the chain of command, get tortured and disappeared after watching them commit horrors upon your loved ones. Or at least get denied your food tickets or driver's license or business license, or lose your apartment. A mafia state is based on crony power and whim, not rule of law.
There never has been any guarantee of another season of competition. This is not sportsball. We have always been teetering on the edge of the slippery slope that leads down the hole into mafia state, or worse, a religion-controlled state. We have always been a few bad years away from becoming another Iran.
Teach yourself and your children to be aware of these realities and immune to social engineering. It's the first and primary duty of every human being.
https://irregularmedic.substack.com/p/this-is-getting-pretty-syrias