Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Vanities - The Decline of the American Republic

 

“It’s no accident that the size of the financial sector today as a percentage of GDP is at levels equaled only on the eve of the Great Depression.  Like the decade leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, the Roaring Twenties were marked by not only financial boom and technological wonder, but also massive income inequality.  Worker wages stagnated and those of the upper classes grew, bolstered in large part by stock prices.  Another similarity was a rise in debt, both public and private, which was used to mask the declining spending power of the lower and middle classes and its dampening effect on GDP growth."

Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers, 17 May 2016


"Financial collapses that are not due to natural disasters or war are always founded in fraud. And if you dig a bit, you will find that there are individuals behind it.   It is not some random madness, but a weakness of character, a perennial gullibility, a feeling that 'everyone is doing it,' that seems to be exploited periodically by heartless individuals.  In certain periods of history they become more socially acceptable.  When things seem to come mysteriously rushed out of nowhere with little factual basis behind them, and don't make sense, then they probably don't. This holds true for the Iraq war, and the bank bailouts, MF Global, and the financial and commodity market scandals that are yet to be revealed."

Jesse, The Myth of Alan Greenspan, 10 May 2012


“Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan pulled off one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against the American people in the history of this great nation, and the underlying scam is still alive and well, more than a quarter century later.  It represents the very foundation upon which the economic malpractice that led the nation to the great economic collapse of 2008 was built.   They came up with the perfect strategy for the redistribution of income and wealth from the working class to the rich."

Allen Smith, The Greatest Fraud Ever, 14 April 2010


"Hillary's record on this subject [financial reform], and her service to Big Money, and the role that she and Bill played in gutting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party while making themselves rich on their speeches to the Big Money crowd, speaks for itself.  To expect anything different from her if she gets in office will be like the hope and change from Obama which didn't make it past his third week in office, when he brought back Clinton's financial policy team."

Jesse, Wall Street Reform and Fiscal Policy, 6 February 2016

"There is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector.  The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry.   As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system, including both political parties, government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation.  The rise of predatory finance is both a cause and a symptom of an even broader, and even more disturbing, change in America’s economy and political system.   The financial sector is the core of a new oligarchy that has risen to power over the past thirty years, and that has profoundly changed American life."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"The Clintons, along with a large group of Republican Congressmen and compliant Democrats, put a 'for sale' sign not only on the Lincoln bedroom, but on the rest of the White House and the Capitol.  They certainly did not do it alone, as it was a bipartisan effort to overturn the protections established in the darker days of the Great Depression.  And it became the thing to do in Washington and New York, to partner up with big money to take the public for a wild ride.   The Clintons turned the Democrats into the Republicans, while the Republicans were turning into a mob."

Jesse, Role the Clintons Played in Enabling the 2008 Financial Crisis, 13 February 2016


"Less than two months after stepping down from the Fed, Yellen was raking in huge fees from the mega banks on Wall Street, the very banks that are supervised by the Fed.  When Yellen was nominated by President Joe Biden for the post of Treasury Secretary, she had to file a new financial disclosure form.  That form revealed that she had received more than $7 million in speaking fees, the bulk of which came from Wall Street mega banks and trading houses, after stepping down from the Fed."

Pam and Russ Martens, The Fed's Trading Scandal Broadens,, 24 October 2022


"And so these reformers, throwing their constituency under the bus, have become the facilitators of the deep capture of our regulatory and political system in a bipartisan effort to get rich.  Most are just people, being carried along by an unsustainable tide of cynicism and personal greed that has imprinted itself on the minds of our privileged elites.

They choose to commit criminal acts through a wonderful power of rationalization, in a downward spiral of moral decline.  This perverse mindset, which used to be a denizen of rural enclaves and big city bosses is becoming pervasive in Washington and New York."

Jesse, Wall Street's Double Agent, 9 July 2015

"It's not just America.  The whole world has sort of turned muddy.  By and large, the world is increasingly run by ignoramuses, wackos and psychotics.   This was long before Donald Trump.  But we've got more crazy people running the world now than ever.

I think it's the one reason a guy like Donald Trump ran. They understood where he was coming from. That Trump is just a blowhard. They laughed at him. They knew Trump doesn't know what he's talking about. But Trump wasn't the same old big smile and a lot of good words. 

The Democrats have been going around saying, 'We're for the people, we're for the little guy.' And all they do is run to Wall Street for money.  And the one guy that didn't, Sanders, was sabotaged by the Democratic National Committee.  If I were the Democrats I would stop worrying about Donald Trump and start talking to the American people about jobs and health care. "

Seymour Hersh, 23 July 2019


"We are coming apart as a society, and inequality is right at the core of that.  When the 90 percent are getting worse off and they’re trying to figure out what happened, they’re not people like me who get to spend four or five hours a day studying these things and then writing about them — they’re people who have to make a living and get through life.  And they’re going to be swayed by demagogues and filled with fear about the other, rather than bringing us together."

David Cay Johnston, Inequality's Looming Disaster, May 2014


“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

 

Stocks managed to pull themselves together and extend their rally higher, up to the key overhead resistance levels they are visited before.

Gold and silver fell a bit.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX remain essentially unchanged. 

What time is the next wash and rinse?

Risk levels remain elevated, and the underlying fundamentals of the equity markets are shaky.

Stagflation, that most improbable of natural outcomes, spawned by a twisted monetary and fiscal policy has come to pass.  

How was it forecast here some years ago, when most were arguing for the inevitability of deflation, or the abandonment of any rational perspective on monetary policy?

You have hardened your hearts, and surrendered yourself to lies.

How can you hope to understand anything?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As the Blood Flows - Madness for Your Minds and Hearts

Atë, Goddess of Delusion and Ruin, daughter of Strife and Zeus

"The mood among Germans is really bad.  There is a lot of frustration and verrohung. The common people work and can hardly make ends meet. Envy and resentment are widely spread in Germany.  When both the global financial crisis and the euro disaster come back with a vengeance, things will get pretty nasty.  You don't have to be a prophet to make that prediction. 

You just have to extrapolate the current mood in this relatively crisis-free period. Aside from the old and the dying, most Germans today have never experienced any real crisis."

Lars Schall, To Marshall Auerback on His Essay on German Voters


"Administration and Main Stream Media (MSM) say 'booming', much faster GDP and jobs growth than previous decade, but the reality is an occasional 1 or 2 quarter surge but baseline 2% growth rate trends remain unchanged.

Only growth in the stock market, other Fed inflated assets, and debt. Maybe we should ask MSM what is 'booming'. Official jobs numbers obscure 1/3 of labor force without jobs and not job seeking; job holders are a mix of full and part time; average hourly wages are rising because 'supervisors' (managers) wages are rising but flat for 90%.

Flawed startup jobs guesses (Birth Death Model) added to lift feeble  jobs created.  Payroll tax receipts are falling—  could the tax receipts decline be explained by tax cuts?

Tax cuts have primarily assisted corporations. They have had a negligible effect on payrolls taxes. Weak withholding receipts reflects continuing rise in part time workers and low wage substituting for full time workers.

And keep in mind the little growth that did take place was debt driven. Despite all the 'booming economy' cheerleading, the data shows a flat trajectory for growth at around 2% for the last decade, despite mountains of 'stimulus'.

A chart of the Dow looks rather different, suggesting all the stimulus went into the stock market instead.

The US economy is not booming. It has begun gradual slowdown. Housing and autos slump is just the most visible indicator of broad based downturn-"

Harold Malmgren

And into the pockets of the one percent.  QED

Trump was on the TV after the close, emphasizing that there is indeed a crisis on our border, even though the imminent threat of the caravan is laughable, and easily shown to be made up spin for the election.  They want to scare you into obedience for their own benefit.

He led off his speech this afternoon with the notion that unworthy immigrants are flooding into our country, and straining our resources, greedily and ungratefully taking things that should be used by honest hard-working and law-abiding people.   They are obviously parasites, bringing disease and crime and drugs.

This is the same argument, and similar imagery, that was widely used to prepare the German people for the detention and eventual holocaust of the disabled, and the different, and political opponents, and the Jews.   They were literally depicted as rats, overrunning the productive economy, and draining and poisoning it for those who are worthy.

Most will write this off as nonsense from unscrupulous politicians and their enablers ahead of the mid-term elections.   And that may very well be the case.  Trump is as changeable as the wind in his lying.  And a liar he is, from the beginning.

But like my German friend whom I quote above, there is concern that this penchant for unreasoned anger and accommodating retreat into the lies will lead to much worse things, and likely, blood in the streets, when the next crisis comes.

Glenn Greenwald just delivered a warning about this 'fire in men's minds' from Brazil.

Those who have been looting and rigging the economy for years are backing a campaign to create distractions and set up scapegoats.  Ask yourselves, who benefits from all this?  Who is ending up with most of the money and assets, and dishing out the lies and the pain and division for everyone else?

We in America are insular, and are accustomed to looking down our noses at the problems in the rest of the world, and thanking God for our exceptionalism and national virtue.

Let us be reminded that here, already, because of this filthy hate and these endless lies, we have just witnessed the worst incident of antisemitic murder in the history of this nation. 

And that it was perpetrated by a man who allowed his mind to be poisoned by this filthy rubbish from the alt-media, nurtured in a bed of lies, and stoked to a white hot fire of hate in online commentary.

Let that sink in.   The murders have begun.  Sociopaths may welcome this.   You will not.

This is not who we are.

Pray for the faith and the strength to shun the lies, and remain standing until the end.  And don't spend your time worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye and their shortcomings;  tend to yourself, and you will have more than enough to do.

If you think you have already reached perfection, pray to God to show you your sins, so that you may repent of them here and now.  And that will keep you busy for the rest of your life.

And in this lies your hope, and a light worth following. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

How the Clinton-Obama Complex Gave Us Trump, And a New Thomas Frank Book Rendezvous With Oblivion

"Over the last month I have tried to describe conservative power in Washington, but with a small change of emphasis I could just as well have been describing the failure of liberalism: the center-left’s inability to comprehend the current political situation or to draw upon what is most vital in its own history.

What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years...

When you view the world from the satisfied environs of Washington — a place where lawyers outnumber machinists 27 to 1 and where five suburban counties rank among the seven wealthiest in the nation — the fantasies of postindustrial liberalism make perfect sense. The reign of the 'knowledge workers' seems noble.

Seen from almost anywhere else, however, these are lousy times. The latest data confirms that as the productivity of workers has increased, the ones reaping the benefits are stockholders. Census data tells us that the only reason family income is keeping up with inflation is that more family members are working.

Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. But they won’t on their own. So pressure must come from traditional liberal constituencies and the grass roots, like the much-vilified bloggers...

The more comfortable option for Democrats is to maintain their present course, gaming out each election with political science and a little triangulation magic, their relevance slowly ebbing as memories of the middle-class republic fade."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, NYT 2006

This guest opinion piece from Thomas Frank in 2006 seems particularly prescient in retrospect today.  It provided the name for a newly published collection of his essays.

This first video interview below is also reprise, but it is so insightful, so spot on, that I thought it would be useful to bring it back now ahead of the fall elections.  It is from that great series of interviews on Reality Asserts Itself.

How soon we forget, with all the distractions and dog and pony shows served up.

Not that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party will listen to reason. The pay is too good, and they will fight to retain their privileges until the bitter end.

They may begin to fake listening to their own broad base, not just the millionaires, more aggressively.  They are good at faking concern and feeling your pain while doing very little.

Change will come only as the Progressives turn the party over on its head from the bottom up, at the primary ballot box and the elections.

Obama was a well polished and timid sell-out, from his first 100 days.  But Bill and Hillary were  venal carnies from the first.    I never voted for either of them.  But I have family in Arkansas, and their nature was well established back then.

And may have been proto-fascists too, if you remember the two highest profile law enforcement actions of the Clinton administration: Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Obama was not much better if one recalls the brutal way in which dissent was suppressed under him, with the historic use of Espionage Act, and the coordinated crushing of Occupy movement and just about anyone else who stood against him.   Like so many verbally acute figures he was given over to paranoid overreach when words failed.

So whenever a hard core Democrat tells me how awful the Trump voters are, and there are some pretty ugly actors in that crowd, and how tragic it is that they failed the country at the polls, I want them to remember this video.

Make no mistake, Trump is embarrassing, and anyone with a view to history can see the damage he is doing with his dilettante, con man's approach to policy.   I forecast that in their anger and frustration people would grab the wrong solution from the shelf, and here it is.

But all things considered, we can thank the arrogant willfulness of Hillary and her corporate stooges for it.   The rise of a demagogue almost always owes something to the long term failure of the governing elite to stand up to the predations and depredations of the rich and the heartless.   And alas, the GOP sold their souls to the moneyed interests long ago, and are beyond redemption.

Thomas Frank has published a new collection of previously published essays titled Rendezvous With Oblivion.  The title comes from a column he wrote for the New York Times in 2006.

A video interview of this new book is included below in the second video.  The interview is an update on the state of US politics, and the Democratic Party in particular. The book is a thematic collection of previously published columns.

I think he could have done a bit more with the material in terms of updating and showing how what he has previously said, and foretold, is unfolding.

The Democratic establishment and highly placed party functionaries do not want to change—   they are dedicated to their own personal power and control, and all about getting paid off first and foremost. 

And their greed is killing us.





Thomas Frank discusses his new book, Rendezvous With Oblivion.




And for good measure, here is a specific discussion of the details of the election blunders and fatal complacency fueled by arrogance and disdain for the common people.

Raids On the Unspeakable

The Unspeakable. What is this? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good intentions, the unexampled and universal aspirations for the best of all possible worlds. It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience, the void which drawls in the zany violence of Flannery O'Connor's Southerners, or hypnotizes the tempted conscience in Julien Green.

It is the emptiness of "the end." Not necessarily the end of the world, but a theological point of no return, a climax of absolute finality in refusal, in equivocation, in disorder, in absurdity, which can be broken open again to truth only by miracle, by the coming of God. Yet nowhere do you despair of this miracle. You seem to say that, for you, this is precisely what it means to be a Christian; for Christian hope begins where every other hope stands frozen stiff before the face of The Unspeakable. I am glad you say this, but you will not find too many agreeing with you, even among Christians.

….The goodness of the world, stricken or not, is incontestable and definitive. If it is stricken, it is also healed in Christ. But nevertheless one of the awful facts of our age is the evidence that it is stricken indeed, stricken to the very core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable.

Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see….

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God. You agree? Good. Then go with my blessing. But I warn you, do not expect to make many friends. As for the Unspeakable—his implacable presence will not be disturbed by a little fellow like you!

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable

Reprise: Who Was 'the Frenchman Who Wept' For HIs Country?

Here is an iconic photograph that I have seen in any number of documentaries, generally identified as a Frenchman who weeps for his city as the Nazis march into Paris.

I have always been curious about this photo. I wondered where it came from and who this person was.  It has a certain tragic dignity about it.

Here is what I have been able to discover.

This photo first appeared in print in Life Magazine in their 3 March 1941 issue on page 29.   This is the photo which I show above and not the more tightly cropped versions that are often used in documentaries.

The caption on the photo identifies it as "a Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief as the flags of his country's last regiments are exiled to Africa."

So obviously this is not a photo taken in 1940 in Paris, as the French regimental flags had been moved into the south of France in order to preserve them from the surrender.  The flags themselves were not taken to Africa until 1941.

Here is a more commonly available photograph of the same scene.  It is a moment frozen in time.

Marseille sous l'occupation by Lucien Gaillard says that this is a photo of Monsieur Jerôme Barzetti, taken in Marseilles on February 20, 1941.  This is quite some time after the Nazi entrance into Paris in June, 1940.

I have not been able to find out anything else about him and do not have a hard copy of this book.  He does look old enough to have fought in The Great War.  Is he even French, or an Italian émigré who had fled the tyranny of Mussolini?  Perhaps he was part of the Barzetti industrial family from Italy, and related to Federico who later founded Barzetti Pastries?  I cannot say.

I wonder how he fared, and if he was able to see the restoration of France and the end of the war.

The still photo itself is actually taken from newsreel footage that was much later used in a US war film directed by Frank Capra as Chapter III - Divide and Conquer of his series, "Why We Fight." This film was produced in 1943 and begins after the conquest of Poland, and includes the fall of Benelux and France.

Here is the relevant clip from this US War Department film.  Monsieur Barzetti makes his appearance at 54:50 in the film.  It is a war film after all so you might excuse the somewhat florid rhetoric at the end.

Some have speculated that Capra may have staged portions of his series and I would certainly allow for that.  But since the photo of our 'Frenchman who cried' appeared in 1941 in Life magazine,  it is almost certain that had been taken from the newsreel footage of the day, which was sold to various outlets and used to create informative 'short subjects' to be shown at movie theatres.

Capra must have used that same footage in the creation of his own war film two years later.

So now we know something about 'The Frenchman Who Wept."

 

And well may we weep for the loss of our own freedom and tradition someday. 

But who will care?   Does anyone matter?  Why should anyone care for us, and why should we care about this weeping Frenchman, his risings and fallings, his perplexity and concerns, his fears and his sorrows?

Because when the ocean's dry up, and the earth grows cold and dies, as the stars flicker and grow dim in the sky, and creation turns back into dust, Monsieur Barzetti's soul will continue on, vibrantly alive, and his tears will have long been wiped away, by kindly hands.

"De loin en loin, elle vient jeter dans l'âme du profond artiste un peu de sa paix, de sa grandeur mystérieuse, puis elle retourne à sa solitude immense, au milieu des rues pleines de peuple.

Il n’y a qu’une tristesse, lui a-t-elle dit, la dernière fois, c’est de n’être pas de saints."

Léon Bloy, La Femme Pauvre

 

The only sadness, she said to him, in the end, is not to be a saint.

 

 

SP 500 Futures - A Closer Look - Miseria Ex Machina

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus

This is a classic "wash and rinse cycle" within a greater uptrend. Whether it may continue to be so could be determined by the new earnings cycle that begins this week, the dilemma that is Europe, or the ongoing political process of financialisation.

Far from being a capital forming mechanism, the US equity market has been allowed to degenerate, once again, into a vehicle largely dominated by frauds and schemes of wealth transferral.

A person might as well brag of making a fortune in the stock market by short term speculation in the same manner that a first rate pickpocket might boast of making a rich harvest in the town square during some public event, distracting by spreading rumours, alarms, and other misdirection.

Having made their wealth in a generational fraud, the oligarchs mean to keep it by any and all means, including beggaring the world if only to make their own fortunes shine brighter.

This is capitalism in decline, as justice fails, or more precisely, is bought into silent partnership. And the killing of conscience in financial things opens a Pandora's box of maladies of the spirit and the madness of hardened hearts.

And there is no finer symbol of this decline than the current electoral contest, which appears but a Hobson's choice between the corruptly lax magistrate and the pre-eminently audacious highwayman.

Nanex: Investors Need to Realize that the Machines Have Taken Over

Morris Berman On the Decline of Empire: 'Why America Failed'

To say that Morris Berman has a 'dark vision' to share is an understatement.

I think his view is legitimate, but only if you look at one somewhat narrow aspect of the American character, and ignore all the rest. It seems to be singularly focused to the point of distortion by a depressive fatalism.

I have traveled all over the world. To my own view, people are on the whole much the same everywhere. The primary difference is that some cultures tend to incent and reward certain characteristics and behaviours more others, and at different times. This creates a certain 'flavor' to that region or country.

The best example I have observed is the profound difference in the assumptions between the Japanese and American cultural views. But one can still find those sorts of differences in regions of a large country like America, despite the homogenizing effect of mass consumerism and entertainment. But alas, they are becoming less vibrant and distinctive.

My own view is quite a bit more in line with Thomas Hartmann. I do think that America 'went off the tracks' in the 1980s, and bought this 'greed is good' meme, which has been repeatedly reinforced by a well funded PR campaign.

And there was a kind of financial coup d'etat that is distorting American policy and character in profound ways even now. It is very apparent if you can somewhat remove yourself from it and then look at it from a 'distance.'

The public and the governmental and financial elite are diverging, becoming almost two different things, as the elites swing further to the extreme, carrying a vocal minority of camp followers with them.

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

Garrison Kellor

Such minorities have taken over whole nations before, particularly when the people have become intellectually and emotionally exhausted, but only for a time, and only by the use of systemic violence and repression with which to maintain control and spread the contagion of their madness.

This period now seems very similar to other cyclical changes in the past in American history, that were followed by awakenings and changes in attitudes. One need only to compare the gilded Age with what came after it, for example. And if I compare America today it seems more like modern China than the America of the 1960's.

But whatever you might think this discussion is thought provoking.  Again, I am sorry to go to this source for such discussions, because I know it upsets some people, but the topic and speakers such as this are not often presented on the mainstream media.

Morris Berman has a blog, appropriately named Dark Ages America.

That Most Dangerous Time in the History of a Great Nation

Someone reminded me of this passage from an old history book today. It was a memory of days gone by for me, when I studied Roman history for a whimsical second major in Classics as a bright eyed undergraduate.

People have been comparing the US to the Roman Empire in decline since at least the 1950's. It was a favorite meme of my mother, child as she was of the Great Depression and the Second World War.  And yet we sometimes look back now to that early postwar period as 'the good old days.'

Unstable times bring great risks. A.H. Beesley wrote this history shortly after the First World War, when the flower of Europe had been lost in the trenches and the British Empire was staggered.  Most people are not aware of the foundation of the Roman Republic with the overthrow of the monarchy around 500 BC, and the four hundred year period of the popular consuls, with their own decline, the third servile revolt of Spartacus, and the rise of the princeps, clever politicians and powerful generals, epitomized finally by the dictator, Julius Caesar.

Beesley asks the rhetorical question in 1921 that a Roman citizen might have asked in 70 BC, 'The hour for reform was surely come. Who was to be the man?'

And so, seemingly, here we are again.

Universal degeneracy of the Government, and decay of the nation

Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the
civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected
in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the
small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers
are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to
pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, but ideas
of true beauty in very few men's souls; when the business-sharper is
the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts;
when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice
according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into
great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief
gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is
increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing
impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation;
when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out
the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon
which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely
light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply
replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any
number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in
robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or
burglar'--when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before
which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.

A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed
class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other,
and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of
Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea;
more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood
over revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of
cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the
population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a
speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to
organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, whole sale
luxury, and monstrous vice.

The hour for reform was surely come. Who was to be the man?

A.H. Beesley, The Gracchi Marius and Sulla, 1921

Blaming the Victim and Other Biases and Their Use by the Predator Class To Subvert the Unwary

It is an occasional human fault to get pulled into the habit of 'blaming the victim.'

Most people do not do it regularly, except in the case of some uninformed prejudice or in response to misinformation.

But some people seem to do it more often and sometimes habitually. Why is that?

As we might imagine, nothing can make a certain type of person feel better about themselves than attributing the misfortune of another to foolishness or stupidity. Since a similar misfortune has not happened to them, they must therefore be a superior type of person, and not the ordinary person that they fear they might be who just happened to get lucky.

In my experience this 'distancing' of oneself from the rest of humanity is at the root of much of the bad behaviour that can become institutionalized into the corruption of an organizational structure that eats at the fabric of society.

Sometimes people do engage in serial risky behaviour that leads them into trouble.  It seems as though everyone knows at least one person who gets themselves into a bad situation by acting foolishly and recklessly. Sometimes it is caused by mental illness, alcoholism or some other negative influence. Everyone can think of someone who 'brought it on themselves.' And our imaginations can extend that instance quite easily and broadly.

We can use these few anecdotal examples to blame the victims unjustly on a more general and uninformed level. And we often fall into this bias on the prompting of con men and sociopaths of the predator class who use it to justify their own criminal actions and personal injustice. They are not burdened with empathy for their victims, and even delight in their misfortune. But they must find ways to make their actions more acceptable to society as a whole that normally does have such concerns for equity and justice.

Personal exceptionalism is rooted in pride, and is the antithesis of the old saying, 'There but for the grace of God go I.'

Those MF global customers? They had it coming because they should have known better. Those people who lost money in the stock market? Well, no one MADE them buy those fraudulent paper assets that professionals recommended to them. That family who lost their home to foreclosure because the father was severely injured by sickness or accident? They should have planned better and taken more precautions.

In its extreme example, the subornation of human caring becomes a form of madness, the 'demonization of the other.' That whole group/class/race/nation of people who are being mistreated, brutalized, cheated, starved, and even murdered? It is unfortunate of course, but they are lazy/cheap/stupid/dirty/sneaky/different/subhuman and so they had it coming. But we are not like that so we are doing well and even prospering.

But these are just thoughts from my own direct experience.  Here is a systematic and more thorough analysis that I found to be interesting.

Blaming the victim – why do we do it? For example, are rape victims responsible for what happens to them? Are victims of car crashes or other accidents responsible for what happened to them? These are the kinds of questions we examine as we look at the strange human tendency to blame the victim.

Here is the concept map for the biases discussed in this show:

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Source: Blaming the Victim and Other Biases

Attribution Map Quiz

1: Fundamental Attribution Error
•“people do what they do because of the kind of people that they are, not because of the situation they are in”
•“people tend to underestimate external influences when explaining other people’s behavior”

2: Actor/Observer (bias) Difference
•“Whereas we are very likely to find internal causes for other people’s behavior, we tend to look …to the situation to explain our own behavior”
•Example: in a murder trial, the prosecution will call the person a murderer, defense will focus on the difficulty of the person’s life at the time or their childhood, characteristics of the person murdered. “That person drove my client to do what he/she did”

3. Self-serving Attribution (bias): while we tend to take credit for our successes (attribute success to internal causes), we blame our failures on external causes
•I earned an A, my professor gave me a C
•Why? Because it threatens our self esteem to think that failures were caused by something about ourselves
•Example: sports – when a team wins, they attribute it to talent or skill, when they lose, they attribute it to bad luck, poor playing conditions, bad calls from the umpires rather than “I didn’t train hard/study hard enough”, “Our team wasn’t as good”
•It feels bad to attribute our failures to ourselves

4. Optimism bias: “good things are more likely to happen to oneself than to others and bad things are less likely to happen to oneself”
•A kind of “defensive attribution”
•Why do we tend to hold this belief? Because the world is a scary, unpredictable place and that makes us feel anxious. The only way to feel a little better is to believe that it couldn’t happen to me. “I would have acted differently”, “That wouldn’t happen to me because…”I would make different decisions”

5. Belief in a Just World: bad things happen to bad people, “or at least to people who make mistakes, poor choices, etc.” thus, bad things won’t happen to me because I wouldn’t make those mistakes.
•“the belief in a just world keeps anxiety-provoking thoughts about one’s own safety at bay” Aronson, et. al.
•when the world seems chaotic or dangerous, this is anxiety provoking. so we attempt to reassure ourselves by blaming the victim