Positive psychology is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis
-Chris Hedges
In a manner typical to highly paid liars the state-corporate media is today trumpeting the joyous news that U.S. private sector hiring rose in November at the “fastest clip in a year” according to payroll firm ADP. There hasn’t been this much job growth since… oh…. the last holiday shopping season. The hoopla and cheerleading is just more of the same reheated heavy petting of cooked to a fine fricasse economic figures to put a big smile on the face of Americans in time to go out and buy more foreign made crap to celebrate the birth of Jesus. However today’s euphoria will be January’s malaise as retailers and restaurants will begin cutting the McJobs once the last possible Christmas spending nickle has been extracted by the maxed out and largely screwed over and on the way to out American sheeple. This type of chicanery always brings to mind that nifty little trick years ago when the corrupt government was trying to get hamburger flipper gigs reclassified as manufacturing jobs to falsely portray economic figures.
The one great thing that the pocket media always can be relied on (other than lying about wars, NSA spying, exploiting dead children and shilling for a long rotten system) is selling hope and there is nothing like hope for the Christmas holidays. The old showman P.T. Barnum had it pegged that there was a sucker born every minute and the greedy bastards who run this place never fail to capitalize on the whimsical, childish and asinine thinking that large chunks of the public gobble up like precious biscuits of bullshit. The truth is that the economy is a disaster (unless you happen to own a hedge fund) that has never recovered from the 2007-2008 collapase and subsequent depression that was in typical cynical manner played down with the cute little focus group tested “Great Recession” tag. The entire “recovery” was a sham led by the thoroughly dishonest dishonest Obama administration, Wall Street inside man Timothy Geithner and millions of dollars of propaganda and public relations. I recall back in early 2009 when the homes of greedy AIG executives were being swarmed and hostile sentiment against the big banksters who wrecked the economy was threatening to lead to serious reform. HBO liberal comedian Bill Maher actually called for two random bankers to be hung from the big board on the NYSE with their balls in their mouth to send a message and then a magical wave of hope washed across the land like a blessed kiss from God himself that all would be well.
The schmucks were played again as none other than Helicopter Ben Bernanke showed up on 60 Minutes to speak glowingly of the “green shoots” of hope as the now obviously faked recovery were sprouting. Americans for the most park set down their pitchforks and torches and accepted their impoverishment at the hands of the same slimy bastards who were now pacifying them with that golden nostrum of good old American ‘can-do’ and that if they all just worked a bit harder that they too could one day become members of the exalted one percent. Then they went back to sleep allowing Bernanke’s Federal Reserve to carry out the greatest wealth transfer and heist in history, creating money from nothing and providing it as an endless supply of gambling chips to the Wall Street casinos all the while pumping tens of billions of dollars a month into the grand-daddy of all stock bubbles.
I have long believed that one could indirectly trace every rotten thing that has gone so horribly awry in America to the denial and delusion associated with the entire ‘think positively’ confidence game. It only encourages apathy, dreaming and submissiveness and it was the naïve belief in the absolute legitimacy in grand scale fraud that is mutated crony capitalism and has destroyed the economy so that the fattest of the pigs can continue to gorge themselves. The national dogma that what is good for Wall Street is good for America, that the bill would never come due on those evil little pieces of plastic credit cards that were maxed out to be just like the images on the television which in the end are alas nothing more than the images flickering off of the walls of Platos’ cave to pacify the slaves.
The fraudsters who run the banking system were all too happy to inflate the housing bubble that the devastated this country's economy with neutron bomb style efficiency, leading to financial death while leaving the actual structures intact for the banksters to sweep up for pennies on the dollar. The never-ending ATM that was phony home equity fueled the mass illusions as long as the flim flam men could scheme to turn that imaginary mortgage equity into derivatives and bad paper that was ultimately worth as much as low grade toilet paper of the 100 grit quality. And it only continued because the jackasses in this country believed the charlatans like Alan Greenspan, Bernanke and Mad Money Cramer. They bought into it, did not question it as they should have and in the end were impoverished by it. Oh, and they allowed themselves to be conned again into bailing out the same banks, the modern day Pharaohs who reside in the temples of avarice that are Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Damned fools, sheep and morons and we all have made to suffer because of the the pollyannas who skipped down the primrose path to perdition who fell for it all hook, line and sinker.
I am reminded of my days as an outside vendor representative who would make regular visits to a certain high profile national chain of convenience stores. The managers of these stores suffered from some sort of shellshock, they were walking wounded, broken people hounded by micromanaging corporate types, tyrannical district managers who always popped in at unexpected times and harangued by customers. They were psychically damaged material doing a thankless job for a pack of corporate pricks. What I remember in particular was one frumpy manager (looked like a dumpster in pantsuit) who had been transformed as some are by taking Jesus into their hearts. 'Sally' had found her own winning lottery ticket in life because she had just been recruited into the notorious Amway Inc upon which the DeVos family (which includes Xe/Blackwater’s Erik Prince) built it’s massive fortune. Sally backed me into a corner and explained that she would soon be wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, out from under the corporate slave masters who she baked bricks for and that her entire mindset was changed after attending some Amway (brainwashing) sessions. I recall that she invoked a popular science fiction series while trying to explain the difference as though there were two parallel universes and that she had been able to transcend them…..it was like stepping through The Stargate she told me - everything was right on the other side, it was filled with wonderful positive and successful people and she too was going to leave the drudgery behind and join them. You can sell anything in America but nothing sells like hope, it’s like vails of ‘holy’ water sold in a leper colony, there is a reason that that a snake oil salespeople like Dr. Phil and Obama Medal of Freedom honoree Oprah are so revered in this country.
A few years after my conversation with Sally over the Stargate, after I had moved on to other things I happened to stop by that very convenience store to buy a six pack of beer and lo and behold there she was, toiling away behind the counter looking as sad, beaten and frumpy as ever. She had a look on her face like she had a big stinky turd in the inner front pocket of her green smock. The Stargate ultimately led to yet another boulevard of broken dreams as it always does in the blessed domain of the sheeple.
But for today and the coming weeks it’s all good. The McJobs report is a signal of economic rejuvenation and traditional seasonal hope, the stockings may be full of holes but they will be hung from the chimney with care as they always are by a hope-filled exceptional people. It won’t be Saint Nick stopping by though, only the Goldman Sachs Grinches.
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