Article: Continuing a Great Dialogue on an Obama Presidency

I am just thrilled by the quality and volume of discourse here. That's a good thing... a very good thing, and it speaks to the heart of what I wrote in INTERREGNUM. In fact, it proves the point I was trying to make that some of you heard so clearly and that others just missed entirely. Unfortunately, the ones who missed the point are some of the real veterans who have been map-building with me for so long. Let me ask this question: Is it possible that all those who have posted here since the election did so because they now felt "freer" to post? Of course it is. Those who missed my point have come to view themselves and us all as permanent outsiders and lepers -- as literally incapable of making any kind of change. They are defending a self-imposed impotence. Subconsciously they have relegated themselves and us all to the role of observers and armchair critics. In a ham and eggs breakfast the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. Some are choosing to entrench and fortify their chickenhood at a time when a few good pigs are needed.
Is it really necessary to remind all of us veteranos that we started to be worried about being locked up as enemy combatants or something like that starting with the passage of the Patriot Act? Do I honestly need to remind people of the self-imposed censorship many placed upon themselves over the last eight years. "Well, I feel that, but I can't say it because the FBI or someone might surreptitiously examine my computer, ruin my credit, put me on a no-fly list or lose me my job and I just don't want that kind of spotlight." I submit that what really liberated all of these new comments was a belief that they can be posted now without fear of retribution--as a result of Barack Obama's election.

The point is, it's true! The volume of postings is not because of my brilliant, impassioned writing - ;-). It's because you feel that the room to do that safely has been created by this election. The Obama campaign sold us an image. If we do not enforce, protect and claim the ground that has been returned to us we don't deserve it. That's exactly what Jefferson would tell us.

The Patriot Act is never going to be repealed. I told you that years ago and I have never changed that position. Nothing that the Necons took by force and intimidation is going to be surrendered. But don't miss the real question here. The real question is how stridently are those powers going to be enforced under Obama as opposed to Bush? Obviously, you guys are less fearful now. Until you change the way money works, you change nothing (my original line) is just as true as it always has been. Some posters here seem to be saying that until a new president has a cabinet and advisory team that is not part of the old paradigm and up to our standards, it will never happen. BS! That is utter nonsense. The United States government is--to use a simplified analogy--like the cockpit of a 777. There are dials, switches and knobs everywhere. In order to keep the aircraft flying--and to avoid killing everyone on board, there must be a crew capable of flying it. While the Obama crew is flying it, they have postured themselves as more accessible, less threatening, more open and DIFFERENT. But if you go back to Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and especially John Adams, you see articulated a fundamental truth: politicians won't do much of anything the People don't make them do. Already, some of the best minds who suffered through eight years of anguish have given up. They have adopted a position that somehow, until someone puts a perfect cabinet in place, and runs on a "perfect" platform, nothing will change. Sorry guys, but that's just plain lazy. It's also very naive. Some of you have become so used to being "Whiners in the Wilderness" that you have forgotten how to be "Lions in the Wilderness". I ask, which noises will most impact TPTB asleep in their beds in the town? Whimpers of frightened monkeys or roars of hungry lions. These powers-that-be have adorned themselves in the rhetoric of their promised responsiveness to us.

Above all the attitude that there is no reason to support anything less than a "perfect" regime shows very little familiarity with one of the things that I do have some experience with; the actual act and art of governance.

I do not for a second believe that if a true outsider were placed in a position of power that we would have a prayer of success. Why? While many of us can almost-perfectly articulate what needs to happen, we have no idea what switches, buttons, dials and levers to operate to actually MAKE it happen... without causing the aircraft to lose its airworthiness. I just finished a book called "A Presidential Energy Policy". (Five publishers are looking at it right now.) OK, so let's say that I became Secretary of Energy in January. I would fail in a heartbeat. Why? Because I know virtually nothing about how DoE functions inside. I don't know which GS16-18s do what or how. I don't know which of a million bureaucratic regulations prevent a million little cogs and gears from working together so that if I gave an order to do something noble, that some town in Louisiana would cease to function the next day. And in that position I become dependent upon the bureaucracy itself. How many comedy movies have we seen where a dilettante comes into a position of power and just starts barking orders. "OK, everybody, change the way money works!" I don't know --as Max Weber or Mario Savio might say--all the cogs and gears of the machinery. I would not be able to say, OK, let's move or eliminate this department. Let's change this priority without understanding its downstream impacts. A wise person once said, "It's not what I don't know that kills me. It's what I don't know that I don't know that kills me."

The most important fundamental difference between the Obama and Bush camps is this: George W. Bush had a base that never really pretended to include the people and so never really needed to invest or listen there. That arrogance--personified by Richard Cheney--was perhaps the most insulting thing of all. The Obama base is ALL (at least superficially and hopefully more so) about the People (that would be you and me) which it advertises and claims as its base. If a base doesn't act like a base then it will wind up not being a base. What's that old line about the squeaky wheel?

All of those who have been lamenting about Obama's transition team and choices, saying that it's the same old people seem to be arguing that there's no need to have people with knowledge of aircraft design or piloting skills to redesign and rebuild an aircraft while in flight. Excuse me, but I won't let people you govern me--ever. The old paradigm will operate just like the old paradigm because that's what it knows how to do. Still, the old paradigm knows that it's time is passing and I can guarantee that its ears and eyes are open. You see the way money works is going to change with or without us. It is already changing.

All of the people who KNOW how to keep the aircraft of government flying are--by definition--from that old paradigm. So what kind of pundit would demand a whole new philosophically-pure ideology up front when there's no one who knows stick, rudder, flaps, trim tabs, and ailerons from a bucket of bolts. We have a perfect historical example of how that works. It was called the Reign of Terror when the only thing a new government in France knew how to say was, "Off with their heads!" And what emerged from the Reign of Terror?... Napoleon. So we have to accept the Rahms and the Paul Volckers and the Bidens etc. just to keep ourselves in the air. But we do not have to roll over and let or expect them to continue in their old ways. I suspect that many of them do see the writing on the wall (very clearly) about energy, economics and collapse. They have positioned themselves to listen to us and risk being exposed for hypocrites if they do not. Now that all Americans have seen a black man elected President; now that newer and less-sophisticated Americans have a sense of empowerment instead of resigned acceptance; whose fault is it if positive change is not demanded and acquired in stages? Whose fault is it if the cockpit frequency which is being advertised as tuned to us, fails to issue course, altitude and speed changes to the aircrew? Whose fault would it be if the cockpit ignored us and we said nothing?

Does anybody remember that power comes from the People? That's a fact. And I'm a bit saddened to see that so many ready-and-willing commentators and critics are digging themselves deeper into their armchairs instead of emerging as leaders and merely whining more loudly.

I haven't compromised anything I believe in. Nb patton understood and heard me perfectly. He read what I wrote and not what he thought I said.

I can't tell you how many really great writers and researchers have caved in subconsciously and their recent writings show it. Over the years I have watched many give up and say (with reason), my life is in danger, or might be. I have watched them say and heard them share,"Look at what Ruppert went through." I don't fault them for what were probably right and appropriate choices at the time. Even I took a hiatus, to wait, heal and regroup. I do not have to explain how personally difficult the last eight years have been for me. I don't need to tell you that a lot was directed at me very personally. So many of you saw me and helped me through that time. If one likens what we do to fighting a war, then one must recognize that a major tool of generalship in war is picking and choosing the time and place of battle. It is about knowing when to rest, replenish and reorganize. Now, at a time when the battlefield is much more open; at a time when the "armies" we face are posturing themselves as being open and our friends; when they are drawing their mandate from us; at a time when we do have more power, I hear people criticizing me because I say, "We have an opening. Now is the time to 'attack'. It's a better shot than we have had in eight years."

One of my favorite movie scenes is from "Moonstruck" where Cher smartly--I mean with a resounding crack--slaps Nicholas Gage across the face and yells, "Snap Out of It!"

We have a window here that didn't exist before the election. Time is very short and the collapse is occurring faster than even I had anticipated. We do not have decades for some trickle-up blogeology to penetrate elite consciousness while some of us pundits offer detached, intellectual criticism. Until you change the way money works, you change nothing. Almost everything is on the table now and it's going to be more on the table in the months ahead. If we do not speak out then who have we to blame if it doesn't get discussed? The election of Barack Obama gave us that opportunity. There is a seat at the table waiting for us; created by us. We cannot blame him if we don't take it.

MCR