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Pastimes : JFK Jr., Is this an assasination? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (453)	8/23/1999 9:25:00 AM
From: MNI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542

mediocre, excellent, inspired - by whose judgement? I rather like the mediocre to reign and be institutionally responsible to all the other mediocres like me, and additionally to some excellent people that may in some cases manage to stick out, e.g., by effective use of language or public symbolism, or good humor, than that some mediocres (or even worse) claim to be the excellent or inspired ones who take the privilege of ruling the country without feeling responsible to any checks or balances. That was the case during the last appearance of monarchy in Germany. That William II was a less than mediocre intelligent, psychologically deeply disturbed person. Yet a great number of people that should have known better, some of them aristocrats, supported him for exactly the reasons you stated. Although I do not approve of giving Germany the sole responsibility for WWI's start, it is clear that a very big load of this responsibility is laid correctly on Germany, for that single reason. And so in Germany I think no same person should be a monarchist, actually. (And there is a multiplicity of different reasons I could give you why I am not.) Try reading the last link I mentioned in my previous post directed at CK. It seems worth a good laugh. Regards MNI.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (453)	8/24/1999 5:25:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542

Frankly, Charles: how can you be so NAIVE about the so-called 'democratic' society we're living in???? You seem to candidly take for granted that the commons are really in charge! Because every four years or so, American citizens are called to the polls to cast their vote for a new President, you claim that this is mediocracy? C'mon! After all, only +/-50% of eligible voters actually participate in such a democratic masquerade.... Chill out: we're still living in a world ruled by a handful of power elites. Here's an interesting link: wizard.ucr.edu Excerpt: The Power Elite From C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite. New York: Harper, 1957, pp. 269-297. Except for the unsuccessful Civil War, changes in the power system of the United States have not involved important challenges to its basic legitimations. Even when they have been decisive enough to be called 'revolutions,' they have not involved the 'resort to the guns of a cruiser, the dispersal of an elected assembly by bayonets, or the mechanisms of a police state.' Nor have they involved , in any decisive way, any ideological struggle to control masses. Changes in the American structure of power have generally come about by institutional shifts in the relative positions of the political, the economic, and the military orders. From this point of view, and broadly speaking, the American power elite has gone through four epochs, and is now well into a fifth. [...] I. In so far as the structural clue to the power elite today lies in the political order, that clue is the decline of politics as genuine and public debate of alternative decisions--with nationally responsible and policy-coherent parties and with autonomous organizations connecting the lower and middle levels of power with the top levels of decision. American is now in considerable part more a formal political democracy than a democratic social structure, and even the formal political mechanics are weak. The long-time tendency of business and government to become more intricately and deeply involved with each other has, in the fifth epoch, reached a new point of explicitness. The two cannot now be seen clearly as two distinct worlds. It is in terms of the executive agencies of the state that the rapprochement has proceeded most decisively. The growth of the executive branch of the government, with its agencies that patrol the complex economy, does not mean the 'enlargement of government' as some sort of autonomous bureaucracy: it has meant the ascendancy of the corporations' man as a political eminence. During the New Deal the corporate chieftains joined the political directorate; as of World War II they have come to dominate it. Long interlocked with government, now they have moved into quite full direction of the economy of the war effort and of the postwar era. This shift of the corporation executives into the political directorate has accelerated the long-term relegation of the professional politicians in the Congress to the middle levels of power. II. In so far as the structural clue to the power elite today lies in the enlarged and military state, that clue becomes evident in the military ascendancy. The warlords have gained decisive political relevance, and the military structure of America is now in considerable part a political structure. The seemingly permanent military threat places a premium on the military and upon their control of men, materiel, money, and power; virtually all political and economic actions are now judged in terms of military definitions of reality: the higher warlords have ascended to a firm position within the power elite of the fifth epoch. [End of excerpt] As for the aristocracy that ruled Europe up until the XIXth century, we should keep in mind that it rested on a relatively larger social mobility than today's egalitarian fraud. Most barons, viscounts, and other marquis became so by BUYING their titles. Not to speak of the notoriety provision that allowed anybody to claim a title if at least 3 of the village's elders could testify in favor of the supplicant's alleged ancestry. Obviously, money was helpful in bringing the elders to twist their memories..... Hence, it was much easier for opportunist fellows to sweep their way to the top in the Middle Ages than it is today. As one might expect, such a crude opinion is not our brave media's broadcast gospel! But who controls the media, anyway? Big Money. Take my France/Denard/Mossad screenplay for the US embassies' bombing for instance: I said, several months ago, that it'd be a fantastic movie --but who's gonna finance it? A Hollywood major? Not on your life! All in all, we can safely assume that endogamy and nepotism best define the cronyist metabolism of our social fabric. Gus.