participation.
7
Ahh, “good feelings of participation”—God knows life is filled with those,
right? Merely “participate” at work and you get fired. How’s that for good
feelings? Oh, and the “urge to win” or “out compete” someone who doesn’t give
a shit? Surely that has no use in real life, eh? I wish I was making this up.
Similarly, a Rhode Island middle school pushed the mediocrity mandate by
trying to cancel their traditional honors night because rewarding students who
do well is “exclusive.”
After an uproar from some parents, they backtracked. One of those parents
rhetorically asked a local reporter, “How else are they supposed to learn coping
skills, not just based on success but relative failure?” His daughter affirmed the
same when she indicated she worked harder during the semester in an effort to
not miss this year’s event.
8
Perhaps next year, the Rhode Island school can honor
the students who thought their homework sucked and played
Call of Duty
for
four months straight. You see, there was a time when working hard earned a
trophy on stage; now you get them for showing up with your hands in your
pockets.
Educational institutions and their
SCRIPTED
tentacles are now
manufacturing entire generations of brain-dead adults who never failed in their
entire life and have a wall of participation trophies to show for it. Their greatest
accomplishments are caricatures in the virtual versus the real world. They’re
brainwashed to believe that life is fair and it will protect your feelings. Hard
work, optional. Competing, optional. Going above the call, optional. Many fear
phone and face-to-face communication, opting for more impersonal methods,
such as texting, Snapchatting, and Instagramming. Others hyperventilate and get
“triggered” at the slightest criticism or divergent opinions that intrude on their
preselected and prescreened world.
For example, in May 2014, Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State
and a member of the Stanford University faculty, was scheduled to deliver the
commencement speech at Rutgers University. Students protested, apparently not
liking her political orientation and Iraq War involvement. After backlashes, she
rescinded.
9
Similarly, in 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos, a British journalist and writer
at Breitbart news, attempted to bring his controversial (and often offensive)
opinions to California Berkeley. Students didn’t protest, they rioted; burning
property, smashing windows, and overall, acting like a bunch of petulant
children who didn’t get their promised juice box. Yes, the university that birthed
the free speech movement is now trying to kill it.
The truth is, these snowflakes shit their Pampers when anything threatens
their coddled lexicon—a contrary viewpoint, an opposition idea, or anything
divergent to their sequestered safe spaces. Yes, when free speech doesn’t agree
with my zero years of real life experience, it’s time to hurl some bricks through
windows.
Sad, but college campuses have degenerated into expensive brainwashing
clinics for
SCRIPTED
groupthink, a petri dish incubating mollycoddled adults
ill-equipped to question their puppetmasters who thread their strings.
Bottom line, not only is the
SCRIPT
teaching our kids to think inside the box
of conforming mediocrity, but it’s imbuing them with the false expectation that
they can plow through life doing the minimums: show up, text, post selfies…. Do
so and you can win all that life has to offer. The awakening is, indeed, rude.
#3) CORPORATE SEEDERS: BE ALL YOU CAN BE
Whereas the education seeder teaches us to be good little employees, the
corporate seeder tells us why:
so you can afford all the goodies we make and be
happy
.
Corporate advertising makes it clear: happiness, success, or fulfillment is just
one credit card swipe away.
Want the best a man can get? Buy Gillette.
A breakfast of champions? Eat Wheaties.
Be all you can be? Join the Army.
Relentlessly pursuing perfection? Buy a Lexus.
The good folks over at Harley-Davidson say, “American by Birth, Rebel by
Choice”—yes, the rebellious life is yours for sixty easy payments and mostly
driven on the weekend, LOL. Never mind your 610 credit score, the $114 in your
retirement account, or your crappy sales job at the cell phone store—you’re such
the rebel!
Unfortunately, by the time we hit grade school, the
SCRIPT
’s corporate
seeder has us believing happiness and social hierarchy are determined by brand
consumption. Fun and excitement are found in a bowl of Apple Jacks or a
McDonald’s Happy Meal. You can’t just watch the new
Star Wars
movie; you
have to own all the action figures.
By high school, you learn that if Johnny’s parents drive a BMW, well then,
Johnny’s rich. If Brooke Adams, the most popular girl in school, sees you
wearing off-brand shoes from Payless, it’s social suicide. Unless you’re one of the
cool kids wearing Abercrombie, don’t bother asking her out. Even in my own
experience with teenage gift buying, it’s Beats headphones or nothing at all.
Yeah, I’d rather not enjoy music than be seen wearing something else. You see,
the
SCRIPT
teaches our children that their popularity and “coolness” are driven
by consumption: what they wear and what they drive.
This sad reality was witnessed in 2014, when college student Elliot Rodger
went on a killing spree in Santa Barbara, California, and cut six innocent lives
short. In his public ramblings, he made it clear that
SCRIPTED
dogma was to
blame: Expensive consumer goods—Ray-Ban shades, Armani clothing, and a
BMW—should have provided him with happiness and female companionship as
advertised. When it didn’t, anger and betrayal boiled. And a sickening rampage
followed. Of course, the
SCRIPT
doesn’t create sociopathic killers, but in this
case, it contributed.
Aimed straight at our kids, the
SCRIPTED
message is clear: Adult success is
correlated to buying shit. Flash your credit card, finance your rock star life, and
show up styling. Do so and happily-ever-after is your reward.
#4) THE FINANCIAL SEEDER: TRUST THOSE WHO CANNOT BE TRUSTED
I was told recently that a friend of a friend wrote a book on how to get rich.
According to my buddy, the book details the usual financial orthodoxy involving
Wall Street, frugality, and three-quarters of your life. The problem is, my friend
knows this guy well. Very well. And guess what? He’s not rich. Not even close.
And yet here he is, the proverbial blind leading the blind. If you want to become
a champion swimmer, shouldn’t your coach know how to swim?
Every nine-seconds, a new personal finance book is published. OK, I made
that stat up, but I’m guessing there are a bazillion books on retirement, personal
finance, and investing. And no matter who the author, these books always dance
the same dingbat dance: “Work hard and long, save and invest for decades, and
one day you’ll be rich.”
You see,
this explains why most people over sixty-five are multimillionaires.
#MicDrops
NOT.
According to US Census data, the median average income for near-retirees is
only $2,146 a month. Additionally, according to the 2014 Retirement Confidence
Survey, a whopping 60 percent have saved less than $25,000.
10
I guess theory doesn’t work out in practice.
Behind the avalanche of money books lurks the
SCRIPT
and its financial
seeder, the multitrillion-dollar financial industry consisting of banks,
government, financial funds, and investment houses, including the mediums
bolstering them.
Their job?
To entice your fiscal future into the grip of hope-and-pray—three
uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the job market, the stock market, and
the housing market. That’s right, anchor your retirement to Wall Street, a bunch
of untouchable bankers, and a Ponzified Social Security scheme propped up by a
perpetual printing press called a government.
Meanwhile, your bank pays you .01 percent interest on your savings, and the
financial seeders of the
SCRIPTED
fantasy get fabulously wealthy managing your
money while charging hefty fees for the privilege. The goal is your undying belief
that your life savings are in good hands. When you find out it isn’t, it’s too late.
You’re too old, or worse, dead.
#5) GOVERNMENT: THE SANTA CLAUS FOR ADULTS WHO LIVE LIKE CHILDREN
There will never be a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Washington
DC, your government, is the insatiable mother ship of
SCRIPTED
doctrine. In
the old days, we had a representative government where citizens took temporary
leave from their profession to serve political office. Back then, government was
“by the people, for the people”; today, it’s “by the few, for the few.” And crawling
within the legislative halls are over 10,000 lobbyists, who spend an average of $3
billion annually, each greasing a special-interest agenda.
11
Meanwhile, millions of
M.O.D.E.L. Citizens
are unknowingly trapped in a
servitude system designed to enrich government and power. The battlefront for
this high-stakes game plays out in a political duopoly that feigns citizen
representation. One party promises freebies; the other promises freedom—but
neither can be trusted. The joke’s on you. No matter the promises, your vote is
merely symbolic in determining where power shifts and consolidates among
special interests and oligarchs.
Listen to politicians and they’ll campaign
SCRIPTED
platitudes that make
you seethe with envy, anger, or both: Those evil business owners, surely rich
through nefarious means, aren’t paying their fair share and need to be penalized
for their obscene profits. Oh, and you’re poor because someone else is rich.
Never mind that the last time you opened a book, brick phones were
technological marvels. But don’t worry, the government is here to institute moral
and just order!
In 2011, amidst thunderous applause, Barack Obama stood straight-faced at
a campaign podium and said, “If you own a business—you didn’t build that.”
Conservatives jumped on the gaffe like flies to dung while progressives dismissed
the statement as selective paraphrasing. On whatever side of the political
spectrum you sit, the
SCRIPTED
message is clear: you owe the government
gratitude for their benevolence; whether it’s in-context (roads, bridges or fire
departments) or out-of-context (businesses built from your sweat and tears),
good ole Uncle Sam loves you (and your money) and their help is paramount to
your success.
And then there’s my favorite
SCRIPTED
scam propped up by…who would
guess? The Federal Reserve. They have a knack for conducting studies. Yes, the
money-printing wart of the government wants you to know that “a college
degree is worth X dollars over your lifetime!” In 2014,
The Economist
reported
that student-loan debt exceeded $1.2 trillion dollars. This debt cannot be
bankrupted away. It must be repaid with tax-producing work. And work
produces economic growth, which produces more consumption and more taxes.
Is it any coincidence that the manufacturing process for
M.O.D.E.L. Citizens
cements in college? For the uninformed, college is a leather-lined conveyor belt
straight into the
SCRIPTED
slaughterhouse.
You see, when you participate in a
SCRIPTED
economy—paying a fortune
for a college degree, financing a thirty-year mortgage, buying a bunch of crap
you don’t need—you bankroll government. After 9/11, in response to the new
terrorist threat, President George W. Bush infamously suggested that Americans
“go shopping” because, by all means, if you want to defeat religious radicals, a
new Ford Mustang could be the silver bullet we’ve been looking for. The
government knows consumption powers the
SCRIPTED
machine—whether it’s
war, votes, $47,000 TSA iPad apps, or a huge industrial contract priced at 300
percent over market. Make no mistake, we are being collateralized.
#6) MEDIA: WE’RE OBJECTIVE IN OUR SUBJECTIVITY
Noam Chomsky once said, “The smart way to keep people passive and
obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very
lively debate within that spectrum.” No words better describe the
SCRIPT
’s
mouthpiece, the media. From the local news to the national press agencies, to
Internet newspapers to talk radio, the illusion of this tainted water is, you pick
the flavor.
Decades ago, the media once objectively reported the news and let you judge.
Yes, journalism was real. Since then, Bernstein and Woodward have regressed
into Olbermann and O’Reilly. Now journalists are
SCRIPTED
propagandists in
the business of public relations—censoring, distorting, and crafting whatever
“news” befits their agenda. News channels no longer objectively report but have
become unconfessed spokespersons for the political duopoly, firewalling truth
and stoking the fires of our biases.
With a fully co-opted media, we now live in an ineptocracy controlled by an
oligarchy. The least able to produce elect the least able to lead who then
confiscate the production from a diminished pool of producers. In return, laws,
which aren’t read, debated, or understood, are passed benefiting the power
structure. Mistruths and misdirections are spouted from both sides of the aisle as
a matter of public policy—and the media doesn’t give a shit. Politicians, from
world leaders to the city councilman, lie and hem-haw daily—and again, the
media doesn’t give a shit. Collective heads are buried in asses while the
ineptocracy demands news over the First Lady’s dress or some pissing royal baby
born across the pond. While Rome burns and the arsonists roam free, the
headline of the day has degenerated into candid paparazzi pics of Kim
Kardashian’s ass or who was, or who wasn’t, invited to the latest celebrity
wedding. Meanwhile, genocide to the likes of Hitler 2.0 is occurring in the
Middle East, but gosh golly, who can pay attention when
Two Broke Girls
is
having their season finale?
Puhleeze, move along folks, nothing to see here.
The media mouthpiece seeds for other seeders, a nonstop torrent of
propaganda that makes Joseph Goebbels grin in hell. Hit your favorite financial
website and you’ll read it: They’ll tell you that the secret to wealth and a cushy
retirement is hope-and-pray—fifty years invested into stocks, bonds, or whatever
asset class is bubbling du jour. Other websites regurgitate Buffettisms
ad
nauseam
, as if Warren Buffett’s empire isn’t about entrepreneurship, but about
logging onto eTrade and buying one hundred shares of General Electric. And the
worst of the rabble, the “thrifty millionaire” stories that make me want to rip my
head off and throw it in a Cuisinart.
Unlike family, the media’s complicity in the grand scheme is prejudicial.
There’s no money in hard truths, but fantasy buys eyeballs; it buys votes; it buys
stuff emulating the fantasy; and most importantly, it funnels money into the
Wall Street casinos. The
SCRIPTED
narrative is profitable to everyone in the
chain, from stakeholders to the corporate advertisers to the governments that tax
the activity and its outcome.
As in the movie’s
Matrix
, your
SCRIPTED
life is integral to the machine’s
survival. By chasing the next greatest gadget and the next greatest weekend high,
you intravenously tap yourself into the belly of the beast. Yes, the rat race needs
rats. The slaughterhouse needs lambs. Question is, are you willing to sell your
soul for a weekend and television?
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