As of late, I have noticed increased usage of the very dangerous and duplicitous meme “time to look forward.” This is typically used as a rebuttal to someone questioning past crimes committed by the criminal elite and their henchmen. The statement seems to work well on the sheeple, as in their minds this sounds reasonable. That is always how the elite target the sheeple mind. Say something that sounds good and assume they won’t think too much. Unfortunately, it usually works. I mean, why dwell on past mistakes when we have so much work to do to make for a better future! Of course, this is completely ridiculous. For one thing, the biggest threat to our future is a lack of confidence and the reason for the lack of confidence is the increasing realization that a criminal oligarchy runs America and is never held accountable for their crimes. They have total immunity. So who wants to invest in and participate in such a society? No one, of course.
However, the meme is even more dangerous on a philosophical level. By definition the moment after a crime is committed it is immediately “in the past.” So not dwelling on the past and “looking toward the future” means that you can essentially excuse any crime you want forever. Not only past crimes but also future crimes since as soon as a crime is committed it will be moved into the category of “the past.” See how these guys operate. They love semantics to make people think their own servitude “seems reasonable.” So my advice to everyone is that the minute you hear anyone in a position of power or influence utter this meme you know they are not to be trusted.
In any event, the reason I started thinking about this today is an article I read from Glenn Greenwald on the fact that Holder’s Department of Injustice has decided to give final immunity to all Bush era CIA torturers. Although even back to June 30, 2011 Holder’s department had decided that in “more than 100 cases the justice department had reviewed, there would be no charges brought in any of them – except two.”
Well they have just decided not to bring charges on those two either, despite the fact that both detainees died in custody. Here are some key points from the article:
This is so despite the findings of General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the torture regime and said that “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes” and “the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” And it is done even in the face of General Barry McCaffrey’s extraordinary observation that:
“We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.”
The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer yesterday said:
“That the justice department will hold no one accountable for the killing of prisoners in CIA custody is nothing short of a scandal … the decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”
Beyond the disgust that these events, on their own, should invoke in any decent person, there are two points worth making about all of this which really highlight just how odious all of it is.
First, Obama has shielded Bush torture crimes not only from criminal prosecution, but any and all forms of accountability. Obama himself vigorously opposed and succeeded in killing even a congressional investigation into the torture regime at a time when his party controlled both houses of Congress.
Moreover, notice how Obama’s stance changed as soon as he was elected:
During his 2008 campaign for president, Obama repeatedly vowed that, while he opposed “partisan witch-hunts”, he would instruct his attorney general to “immediately review” the evidence of criminality in these torture programs because “nobody is above the law.” Yet, almost immediately after winning the 2008 election, Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.
This is the same line many apologists use to excuse the bankster bailouts. I bet this defense wouldn’t work for you or me in a court would it?
So what is the main reason Obama isn’t going after anyone for this? Well it’s simple really. He doesn’t want to ever be called out for his own criminality. As Charlie Savage noted in the NY Times:
Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure.
This is America folks. Time to wake up.
Read the full Greenwald article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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Better than the observations about the Holder JD–how much more obvious does corruption get than when chief law enforcement of the land sits on his hands, whistling “99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall,” while the wheels come off the national wagon?–are the introductory paragraphs showing how to defuse a meme.
Having been a sheeple once myself, naturally I object to the term. It seems to direct derision toward the victim which I believe to be the wrong perspective to take, as a human being, however frustrated I might become. It is simply never the case that the historically extraordinary effort put into making the Amerikan population somnambulant in our era is the fault of the sleep walkers. They’re asleep. The quantity of time, treasure and talent expended to make them and then keep them that way is mind-bending. Me, I put my wakefulness down to luck.
But more to the point, they’re asleep because they lack the ability to do what you demonstrated in those first grafs, think critically. To break down the speech of another to truly understand what is being said, and where that goes and why, and what is not being said, why it’s not, why it sounds like it is, and where that goes. The ability to do that is the signal characteristic of the Awakened State.
But many utilize the descriptive phrase “lack the ability to think critically” without thinking about it critically. I’m not going to waste anyone’s time parsing it. If you’re reading this site odds are you’ve got the tools, in spades. But I will point out that human beings do not lack the ability. I will point out they were targets of a century-long, insanely expensive campaign to grind the habit of rational thought out of mankind, matched by a complementary effort to drown it in distraction.
In feudal times, everything worth knowing was kept secret; and without the printing press to contend with, that was possible. In our era everything we need to know is hidden in plain sight but the population lacks the eyes to see. Their minds were intentionally disarmed, from kindergarten, so as not to attack and repel propaganda or defend against memes. Alex Jones is wrong: it’s not the info that’s important, it’s constellating it in a rigorous way so that the meaning pops out so starkly that it can never not be seen again.
In closing, I’ll submit that’s why some are rediscovering and promoting the Trivium anew. It’s a campaign to exhort the public to exercise their intellectual second amendment right to bear an armed mind.
Peace out.
Great comment Hank! Understanding the ‘historically extraordinary effort’ is a key piece to the puzzle of how we got to where we are.
When Obama said this, I knew all I needed to know about him.