The Wonder Springs Chronicle

The faux pas presumption paradigm

4 March 2009

Volume 11, Issue 9

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The Noise on the Western Front increased considerably in the past week. The essential reason for that increase is that we all continue to believe in a faux pas presumption paradigm. That belief assumes we have within ourselves, within our individual and collective intellect, the potential to make the world a better place and to save ourselves from future destruction.

That is what the Bible calls basically the “unforgivable sin.” Of course we really don’t believe in sin, especially within ourselves, so when it all falls apart, we are completely without the discernment to understand what is and has happened. If that is not a classic faux pas, I do not know what is.

So when President Obama spoke a week ago Tuesday, the speech was so filled with platitudes and generalities that really there was nothing of substance which one might disagree. Furthermore there was a complete disconnect from the outlined shining city on a hill, contrasted with the reality quagmire in the valley of current remorse.

On Thursday in outlining his budget for the next fiscal year, the President kicked up his liberal agenda more than a notch or two, essentially turning his vision of New Deal programs into prescriptions for financial disaster to those who believe in any concept of free market enterprise. From that budget outline it is clear that his Administration wants to turn this crisis-catastrophe into an opportunity to completely make free market enterprise subservient to centralized government planning and control.

On Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, talk show personality Rush Limbaugh, by adding an hour to a programmed twenty-minute speech turned a hoped thoughtful rebuttal to the Obama vision for America, into the opportunity for about an hour nap. When I woke up near the end he was still carrying on about his “first speech to the nation and the world.” Hence I assume I missed very little in the restful interlude.

On Monday the stock market responded to all this Noise, by the Dow dropping 300 points and settling well below 7000 for the first time in more than a decade. My only stock market prediction in this light was the 7500 barrier, which I forecast for Inauguration Day. That had to wait a couple of weeks until the President unveiled his stimulus plan to change the world and to save everything from everybody. But what is a couple of weeks when we all are having so much fun guessing what governmental faux pas will occur next.

With all that good news, around the world the dollar had somewhat of a rally against other currencies showing, I guess, that America remains the economic safe haven in a rapidly deteriorating world. The good thing about the American media is that they are so megalomaniac we really don’t know how bad things are on the rest of the Western Front.

So I guess the question on everyone’s mind, not only in the USA but also around the world is, “How low will it go?”

The answer is nobody knows. However instead of talking about money in the trillions, beyond our control or ability to comprehend, we can look at wealth decreasing somewhat in line with the relative stock market decrease. Hence we are now wealth wise in the mid 1990s with a recession comparable to 1982.

Just for amusement it was 1971 when the great Republican statesman president, Tricky Dick Nixon closed the gold window and basically destroyed the Bretton Woods monetary system that came about after the end of WWII. Thereby beginning a new modus of American manipulation of world currencies. In this wealth reduction line of thinking that selected date would reduce the accumulated retirement wealth of we Baby Boomers to about the level of the following generations we have so burdened with our narcissistic debt.

For all of his charismatic speech, President Obama, his Administration, and the Fed have pretty much played all their financial cards, and this hopeful rhetoric has turned out to be words, just words. Those words seem more and more detached from the reality on the ground and disconnected from the hopeful, or wishful thinking, of the small majority that elected him.

For Rush Limbaugh and his minions, their vision of free enterprise seems so directly tied to maintaining their high income status, that when they speak of individual worth and opportunity, those resources will not reach the general masses without flowing directly through their hands, or only through their approved agencies. That was after all the basis for the Reagan Revolution, and the last financial messiah of the American Dream.

Today when we speak of money we throw around trillion dollar deficits like we used to throw around million dollar salaries for professional athletes. The problem seems to stem from the fact in some strange way well paid athletes earn their money. Making that case for politicians and many of the others in the media and financial sectors seems to stems somewhat because we want to maintain the faux pas presumption paradigm.

Put another way, there are a lot of people making a lot of money promoting themselves and their worldview at the expense of the American people. If you don’t believe that go to my website: ImACoolDude.com. (Which looks like it is still available for an enterprising pundit.) Of course in order to do that you have to promote your niche, which means, just like a good Don Quixote you must battle the windmills with your romantic vision and naïve, unworldly idealism.

So when you hear someone claiming that all Obama wants to do is tax the rich to build his socialist regime, they are talking about their own personal taxes being significantly higher than they now pay, even if they do now pay the vast majority of the tax total. So where lies the truth and what is their faux pas presumption paradigm? On the other side of the coin when Obama says he “is” giving a tax break to 95% of the American public he is using spin just like Bill Clinton, “It all depends on what your definition of is, is.”

Now don’t get me wrong I agree with what a lot of these rich people have to say, and I disagree with a lot also. I’m pretty much right down the center of the American political spectrum which means I’m a moderate Conservative and Independent in my voting habits. The major problem is that I never really have anyone I can vote for, hence I almost always vote for the lesser of two evils. Well, evils is not the proper term, perhaps I choose the most ready for prime time of the choice of the two essentially unqualified. We have the Democrat and Republican parties to thank for this strong desire to say “none of the above.”

Only in America, compared to the rest of the democratic world, does the normal distribution of typical people have no one person to vote for who represents their traditional values. Candidates must get the blessings from the party, politically far left or right, to get any money to run, and then after they are nominated they move to the center to try to build a small majority to get them elected. Once so empowered they march off to do their thing, and in Congress put earmarks and pork in budgetary and other legislation. For those who are interested there is an official definition of an earmark from the Office of Management and Budget.

From that definition we see that there are no earmarks or pork in the current budget bills because in the strict legal definition, Obama’s administration has said that these current items do not “circumvent Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.”

With no Executive Branch standard for earmarks and pork, by definition, there is no pork even if it stinks and squeals like a pig. Because we are in the midst of this crisis, which we do not want to let go to waste, instead of the Executive Branch exercising any budgetary funds allocation processes, we will just utilize Chicago confrontational community organizing tactics. Hence we will demonize American capitalism as the establishment, make Rush Limbaugh a pompous establishment blowhard and get our legislation enacted by allowing our incompetent party leadership in Congress to think they are doing something worthwhile. A pretty simple and effective plan and so far it is working wonderfully.

The problem with this scenario however “is” Washington DC is not Chicago, and as of Thursday, February 26, 2009, when he sent his first budget to Congress, the Executive Administration of Barack Obama the 44^th President of the United States of America “is” the Establishment of the nation and of the world. That means simply, if you are unwilling to lead effectively, both nationally and internationally, you will quickly find your radical agenda impossible to implement.

In his speech on Saturday, Rush Limbaugh elaborated on his thoughts that he wanted President Obama to fail, because he wanted the American people to succeed. Of course the Obama spin leaves out the total context of the remark, just like all good radicals do. However it misses a much bigger reality that will come as a shock to both the Obama administration and Rush ditto heads. In the big picture of real reality and leadership, the future of the Western Front really isn’t changed one way or the other by the thoughts of either of the anointed, Barack or Rush.

In all of this, Barack or Rush, we find similar religious enthusiasms much like a revival camp meeting. Both from the left and the right we hear long sermons about saving the world, but no one; especially the revival preacher wants to associate with those sinners. In this camp meeting however, the sinners are not drunks and prostitutes, the sinners are the bourgeois and the proletariat, despicable people that they are, who actually work for a living doing something other than bloviating and pontificating. In fact maybe these camp meetings are being led by the - - -.

So the noise is getting louder and more disorganized. The faux pas presumption paradigm is becoming increasingly tactless and embarrassing. When you pause and reflect, on where we are an where we are headed, fear is pretty much overcome with depression. A world in which all the citizens of the Western Front live wealthy lives of continuing material prosperity is over. Over except in eyes of those who control the world’s money. Sadly this could be remedied by returning a sound monetary basis to wealth. However we are left with central banks debasing both money and wealth in vain aggressive chaotic attempts to shore up faux pas bankrupt systems.

At Wonder Springs we believe that all these human actions are based upon man’s desire to be God, if not of the universe, at least of the planet. If we turn out to be universal or planetary failures, at least we can be the God of the nation, the state, the province, the city, the street, our own lives. Someplace along the sloughing to destruction continuum, people will begin to understand that we have to live within the means of Natural Law and we are just too stupid and vain to understand, little alone control, the complexities of these self regulating energetic principles.

We hear from both the political left and right about hope and change. President Obama used in his campaign the slogan, “Change We Can Believe In.” As we are finding, out of all principles, change is not a constant that has a definable object. As we have pointed out many times beginning with Business Ecology over two decades ago, “Change is the only constant” unto itself. In that respect change is a verb always pointing to a relative noun change value in the past, the present, or the future.

The United States of America, unique in all nations of this earth, was founded specifically on the transcendent human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, endowed upon all humanity by nature and Nature’s God. The founding father’s understood that reality.

As a people, even as a remnant of a religious people, those absolute concepts are not understood, hence not taught and believed. Each week we post a Lord’s Day teaching from the Heidelberg Catechism because Christians don’t understand the gift of God’s grace they have received in Jesus Christ.

Just as in the church and its relationship with the world at large, Americans and citizens of the world no longer understand what the United States was and “is” and will be all about. Just as with the church there is a remnant that understands and appreciates those gifts. What is required, as within the church is an increase emphasis on catechesis of the American Creed and to teach our citizens the basic tenants of the American Republic. The United States of America was not designed as a true democracy for good reason, something our modern faux pas presumptive paradigm will not accept; because that would make our lofty presumptions grossly degenerate.

Now there are those who do not believe in God, or America’s heritage. They believe that we can only come together by quenching individual human achievements by bureaucratically managing results rather than encouraging equality of opportunity. That system is completely incompatible with traditional human and American values. Where America has failed, especially recently, is those who don’t want to share, or put even more bluntly, realize they can’t compete, use their positions to promote only their own inferiority. In this respect Rush is right, meaning correct.

That however goes beyond just individual rights but also into the enterprise sector, in which the essentially global companies, with access to global capital realize that in energetic reality they are soon to be extinct dinosaurs. During the Great Depression a game known as Monopoly became popular. Now it is played on a international scale playing with electronic money that has no basis in reality, just as in the game. Actually the game money is more real and valuable than what now passes for money.

Can you imagine how difficult (impossible) it would be if printed or some form of tangible money was required for enterprise. However if we don’t get money under control, instead of taking a wheelbarrow of money to the store, we may be bartering chickens for potatoes. That is how the underground economy of Sweden gets around much of the socialism and their government’s restrictions on human enterprise.

One thing about American’s to this point, for the most part they pay their taxes. While there is an underground economy, most Americans believe in the system. That could change dramatically in a very short time. After all we now have a number of Administration officials to lead the way. Trying to get blood from a beet won’t change it into a turnip. Ignoring the faux pas presumption paradigm will make bleeding a turnip look easy.

We don’t need to hope for President Obama to fail in his political agenda, it has never worked and never will. These changing time frames and the consequences are the only unknowns.