Proximity Is Destiny In America's Pay-To-Play Democracy

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Privilege is unearned proximity to power in all its manifestations.

My friend G.F.B. recently coined an insightful maxim: Proximity Is Destiny. The power of this concept lies in its unification of physical proximity and abstract proximity.

We all understand physical proximity can be consequential. As the Titanic settled lower in the ice-cold Atlantic, those close enough to the lifeboats to secure a seat (mostly the first and second class passengers) lived and those who were not died.

College graduates seek internships at the most successful companies because they know the connections they make by working within the headquarters might lead to a job offer: physical proximity to movers and shakers (and those with the power to hire) is destiny.

But proximity to abstract manifestations of power is even more consequential in an economy/society in which wealth and power are predominantly abstract. For example, getting an internship in the Federal Reserve doesn"t mean you can obtain proximity to the Fed"s money/credit spigot as a result of your physical proximity to the building or staff: the really powerful proximity--being close to the Fed"s money/credit spigot--is entirely abstract.

Abstract proximity is structural, and often invisible. We can"t discern an individual"s proximity to money/ credit/ privileged-information spigots by their physical locale or appearance, though we may infer their income/wealth from various status signifiers.

But signifiers don"t tell us much about abstract proximity. Two individuals may own the same status signifiers, but one earned them the hard way, and the other had the advantage of proximity to insider information.

Privilege is much in the news recently, and I wrote a short book exploring the nature of privilege: Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege. The point of the book is this: privilege requires a centralized power hierarchy, as only a centralized power hierarchy can impose or nurture privilege, often through informal power structures.

Privilege is unearned proximity to power in all its manifestations: in our world of abstract structures of power, privilege often appears informal, masking its structural nature.

This informality enables a useful (to the privileged) confusion of privilege and merit. Two individuals may appear to enjoy similar status--both own homes in upscale neighborhoods, drive luxury vehicles, vacation in exotic locales, own second homes, belong to churches, temples, clubs, charitable organizations, etc. well-stocked with wealthy, influential people, etc., but the sources of their status are very different.

One was handed all this by family connections and inherited wealth, while the other worked his/her way up from humble beginnings. The individual who managed to work his/her way up the social-mobility ladder needed proximity to opportunity, and might have been helped by mentors and plain old luck, but privilege played a relatively modest role in the journey, as millions of other people with similar social status had roughly similar proximity to opportunity.

This inherent difficulty in differentiating privilege from merit allows the privileged Elites to claim their advantageous position is all due to merit: I worked harder than the other guy, etc., when in fact it was proximity to abstract privilege and power that lofted them to the top of the pyramid.

The Power Elites always have need for hard-working, smart, honest strivers to serve their enterprises and institutions, and so they recruit non-privileged strivers to their inner circles: prep schools, elite universities, prestigious organizations, the "right" church, temple, etc., internships in higher management, scholarships, foreign postings that serve to quickly advance careers, and so on.

This proximity is very close to what they offer their own offspring. But there"s a difference, of course; their offspring can be dull-witted and lazy, and they will still get access to all these advantages.

And there is another unstated difference: the merely merit-based striver will not be invited to private gatherings, nor encouraged to find a mate in the Elite class.

Proximity is destiny, and it"s proximity to abstract but very real structures of privilege, power and capital that count.

As I detailed yesterday, proximity to the flow of cheap credit creates fortunes, fortunes that aren"t earned via merit, innovation, genius or the creation of new goods and services; proximity to cheap credit is the core dynamic of rentier skims based on the acquisition of income-producing assets.

With sufficient income and capital, you also gain proximity to the machinery of governance--our pay-to-play "democracy" in which influence can be bought to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Proximity is destiny. To understand this, we must first illuminate the abstract structures that enable proximity to the abstract but oh-so-real levers of privilege, power, wealth and influence.

Elites Are Orchestrating A Global Catastrophe: "There Are Many Things The President Does Not Know"

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

Following the money is always the key and crucial element to determining the “probable cause/modus operandi” regarding to globalist actions.  Although there are many who believe that President Trump is the panacea to all our problems, even they may perhaps admit that there are forces other than the President that drive our country, as well as the world.  The shadowy cabal of globalists, Bilderbergers, bankers, and other secretive organizations bent on a “union” of totalitarian control are almost too numerous to count.

There are many things the President does not know.  This is intentional on the part of the moneyed interests that control the very fabric of our society.  The interests are corporate, political, and religious: a three-level tier of control over all the facets of human society.  Just as one individual person cannot “dominate” one of these sectors, the sectors themselves cannot dominate.  They are forced into a symbiotic relationship rooted in commensalism, where each of these “parasites” benefits the other two.

The problem lies in the fact that these interests are elitists who believe in the forced imposition of their philosophies upon the masses.  They also believe in “culling the herd,” and maintaining a servile population at minimum levels to carry out all menial labor and industrial production (the Deltas and Epsilons of Huxley’s Brave New World) as they direct.  Patiently these elitists have been awaiting the day when their “1984” society is a reality, crafting and shaping it all along throughout the decades.

The numbers of humanity pose a problem, because they cannot effectively eradicate all necessary without a large-scale plague or a war, and after such an event, the planet itself might be unsustainable.

The key question for them: how to kill off about 6 to 6 ½ billion people without destroying the world?

The most efficient way would be with a limited nuclear war that destroyed enough key targets to minimize postwar effectiveness of the major powers, in a manner that does not irradiate most of the warring nations.  The key to the entire equation is to take down the United States.  The EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) is the weapon of choice.  This would paralyze all the infrastructure, leading to (as so eloquently outlined in the book “One Second After”) mass die-offs and the reduction of populations to pre-industrial societies.

The shielded and stocked communities of the elite could just sit back and allow the populations to destroy themselves and whittle down the numbers.  After a time (most likely already estimated and predetermined), mercenary forces of the elitists could emerge to mop up the remnant, enslaving and subjugating them completely.

The question isn’t whether this is in the works: it is.  The elite have been following such plans as revealed in the Iron Mountain Report, and the moneyed interests have been crafting their plans long before House wrote Philip Dru, Administrator, as he and Wilson created the Federal Reserve and laid the roots for the cancer that is pervasive and underlying the thin veneer of our phony, Hallmark-Card society.

The numerous articles about the millionaires and billionaires forming “intentional communities” and compounds/complexes for the purpose of surviving an apocalyptic event/societal collapse are not inaccurate.  The widespread reports of tunnel complexes, nonstop truck deliveries, and the diversion of taxpayer-funded government resources to secret locations throughout the United States are not inaccurate.  Jesse Ventura was investigating many of these matters before the moneyed interests put a stop to his actions and he retired from the field without fanfare.  Everyone who has exposed or threatened to expose them has either been marginalized or destroyed.  Just as people search for the “one” hero, they are also easily manipulated to focus upon “one” villain, such as a Kim Jong-Un, or a Bashar al-Assad.  Substitute the name “Emmanuel Goldstein” for either of them before the Two-Minutes Hate is conducted.

Fast forward to now.  The bottom line is that when different factors come together “coincidentally” the probability for action by the elites and the point of no return is increased exponentially.

They haven’t ushered in their era yet; they will not until they’re certain they can pull it off, but they will eventually make a play for it.

These power-brokers will not commit themselves in the gamble unless they’re sure of a win.  For this reason, it is important to monitor the hot spots for those convergent points to know when something is likely to occur: when the possibility exists, and the probability increases.  One of those points of convergence is this week.

The North Koreans are supposed to test another nuclear device on or about the 25^th of this month.  “Coincidentally,” that EMP “drill” named Operation Gotham Shield is supposed to run through April 25th, and possibly a little longer.  Coincidentally, there was a power outage in three different U.S. cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City on Thursday.  Coincidentally, Russian bomber and intelligence-gathering aircraft have been flying test runs along the coast of Alaska, for four days straight with the U.S. and even Canada scrambling fighters to intercept.  Coincidentally, the Russians claim to have electronic devices with an EMP-type effect, already used against the USS Donald Cook, a guided missile destroyer with Tomahawk missiles back in November of 2014.  Coincidentally, the U.S. naval armada is set to arrive in the waters off the Korean coast on April 26th… right in line with the EMP drill “Operation Gotham Shield.”

All these factors point toward a false flag.  If the opportunity to pull such a false flag off arises, they will seize upon it.  Trolls without number try to disparage this concept… the “nothing has happened yet, therefore nothing will happen” crowd.  The ones who are so certain that all of this is just “fear porn” or a “sham” of some kind…don’t pay their nonproductive and perhaps remunerated redundancies any mind.  The whole point is to be aware of what is going on and try to survive it.

Be that “10^th man” as outlined in the film World War Z, and consider what the herd has been conditioned not to consider, and it might improve your chances to survive what is coming: what the elites have planned and will trigger with a False Flag.

“No matter how improbable it may seem, the tenth man has to start thinking with the assumption that the other nine are wrong.”

Against The Tyranny Of The So-Called Experts

Submitted by Kurt Schlichter via Townhall.com,

America’s elite – that collection of puffed up mediocrities who until recently held the undisputed command of the heights of our politics and culture – is in crisis. Its unbroken track record of failure has finally stirred the rest of America from its coma. The normals are now hella woke, and the elitists are being hella rejected. Unused to accountability, the elite is in a tizzy over the way people are not only blaming it for its myriad failures but are taking concrete steps to restrict its power. It’s not just electing Donald Trump. It’s ignoring the media, ignoring Hollywood stars, and ignoring the cabal of “experts” who presume to tell us how to live.

And it’s about time.

The best thing about being a member of the elite is that you really don’t have to do anything to become one. You can be born one – no matter how dumb or drug-addled you are, if you’re a Kennedy you’re elite regardless of how many times you blow the bar exam. Or you can become one by getting into the right school – remember, a Harvard degree does not mean you did well at Harvard. Everyone at Harvard does well – an “A” is a participation trophy. It’s getting in that matters, and getting in depends, in significant part, on who you are. Elite mom and dad, welcome to the Ivy League.

The elites, having been called out for their failure, are now trying to rebrand themselves as “experts.” It’s important to distinguish “elites” from “experts.” Elites want to be seen as experts because an expert is assumed to actually know something and to have some sort of technical skill. To be elite, you just have to be accepted as elite. That’s why elitists fudge the terms; they want the credibility of being experts without actually having to do what a real expert does.

Take, for example, the notorious New Yorker cartoon of the passenger on the plane electing himself pilot. The point, which the elitists think is brilliant, is that the running of government should be left to the experts without the participation of you people. Of course, pilots are trained in detailed technical skills and, critically, are accountable for their performance. If they fail, they get fired – or worse. [Insert Kennedy pilot joke here] If an elitist fails at an important job, she gets nominated for president. See the difference?

The point they want to make is that we should submit to their “expert” (really, elite) guidance, since we are unfit to determine our own destiny. Yet, when piloting this country over the last couple decades, these elites have flown the plane straight into the ground. Real experts are held accountable, but elites never are. Their landing is always soft – it’s never the elites who suffer while the normal prosper, only the other way around. The elitists always win – that’s why they are called “elite.”

Remember, whenever anyone tells you to blindly give up your input and rely on an “expert,” you stand a good chance of being scammed. Take a doctor. Doctors have a hard skill. They go through a lot of training. And medical malpractice kills about 98,000 people per year. Doctors are experts, but they are not perfect. No expert is. Nor are they perfectly disinterested technicians. A lot of doctors are terrible people – the worst divorces lawyers deal with are doctor divorces. Don’t confuse expertise with morality.

Like all humans, experts are self-interested. That’s why some doctors complain when their patients read up on their symptoms in Google. “Gosh, these peons are presuming to gain access to my secret knowledge – how dare they!” Yes – thanks to technology, much of what doctors do (which is maintain and use knowledge – many never touch a scalpel) can be done by normals on line. You have a symptom and you go to Web MD and often it answers your question – “Eww, that weird lump is a sebaceous cyst, not melanoma.”

The same with lawyers – go to LegalZoom to create your routine limited liability company and you’ll do it for a third of the price of the lawyer who merely changes the names on the last routine limited liability company formation documents he prepared. Trying a case is different – you probably want a technical expert who has done it before. But a lot of legal knowledge is not only accessible but employable by regular citizens; the laws restricting the practice of law to those with a license may protect some people from harm, but it also ensures we lawyers can restrict supply and thus justify our outrageous fees. Remember, a lot of “expertise” is not skill derived from experience but merely access to information. And when everyone has that access, well, the guilds get really protective of their turf.

The expert technocracy model of governance also depends on the underlying assumption of a disinterested, objective technician class that will protect others’ interests before its own. But the notion that a particular expert is disinterested and somehow only concerned with objective facts is simply silly. As a trial lawyer, I absolutely know the other side is always going to hire some “expert” to say exactly what needs to be said to help its case. We litigators regularly refer to experts as “whores” – it’s just assumed. Now, smart lawyers try to get honest experts – I’d much prefer to hear early that my client’s case has problems. But there are surprisingly few smart lawyers – again, simply because you are in an expert caste does not mean you are not a half-wit.

The simple fact is that when people push for government by expert, the experts they want running things will always – every single time – happen to have exactly the same policy preferences as the people pushing them. “Leave climate science to the experts!” Yeah, and in a shocking turn of events, the experts we are supposed to defer to feel the solution to climate change is to give more money and power to the people demanding “Leave climate science to the experts!”

And then there’s the problem of incompetent experts. This is especially true in the media, where the internet has made the journalistic gatekeeper model obsolete. These hacks are panicking, and trying to claw back their authority by labeling dissent “fake news” – that is, when they aren’t themselves publishing outright lies and propaganda they imagine we’ll buy into. Talk about, as Peggy Noonan aptly put it, being patronized by our inferiors.

You would think that if you presumed to tell the rest of us what to think that you might first ensure that you actually know stuff. But then, being elite means never having to actually accomplish anything, like knowing stuff. For example, Judd Legum, a senior apparatchik at ThinkProgress.org – the popular leftist political site best known for stuffing two questionable assertions into one web address – went on with Hugh Hewitt, who asked him a series of pretty basic questions about government and foreign policy. Well, it was pretty ugly. What he didn’t know was … extensive. I’d liken the segment to the Bataan Death March but Judd would probably not get the reference. He’ll have to check Wikipedia, just like everyone else. But then, if everyone else can do what Judd does, why do we need him and his ilk?

Experts aren’t what they used to be – that is, experts. “Experts” tell us that by an act of sheer desire, Dave can transform into Diane. That’s crazy. We try to outsource our moral judgment to “ethics experts” and end up with nutballs telling us infanticide is cool. The experts told us how there was an ice age coming. Then acid rain. Then ozone depletion. Then global warming. Then, when it didn’t actually get warmer, global climate change. Yet, somehow we are expected not to notice this litany of wrong and to just submit to the guidance of people who are literally never right.

Sure, if I had a brain tumor, I’d want a skilled neurosurgeon to take it out – though note how Dr. Ben Carson’s demonstrated track record of competence at that hard skill has earned him zero respect from the left, demonstrating that their alleged regard for expertise is simply another scam. But while I would rely on my doc for the technical work of cutting and slicing, his expertise does not apply to the other key issues involved – like whether I want to accept the consequences of the surgery on my quality of life. Questions that relate to our preferences and morals are not the province of experts. Nor should decisions regarding the principles and policies of our government be delegated to the technical experts charged with carrying them out.

We are American citizens. We can decide for ourselves what kind of nation we want to live in. That’s our decision. Experts? Well, you can provide advice, and then you can carry out our instructions. But don’t presume to do any more than that. You work for us, not vice versa.