True Grit

Edited June 1, 2020 - Created March 28, 2020
Preface

This site was started in response to the Snowdon revelations that the NSA is collecting massive amounts of information on the American public. With an extensive background on the use of personal behavior data to manipulate and control human behavior, the disclosure raised immediate concerns about the purpose of such data collection.

Introduction

This site presents information an average person can use to see what is going on around them and use that information to benefit themselves. The stories hopefully provoke curiosity in topics presented and the links in them provide information enabling readers to dig deeper into topics of interest.

For the last 4 years a tsunami of propaganda and nonsense average Americans are bombarded with daily has diverted that course. When you are busy dodging debris in the flood its easy to lose sight of why you went to the shore in the first place. On the other hand, it has provided a tremendous opportunity to see how propaganda and misinformation are being used to damage you.

Free societies (a term used loosely since misinformation, propaganda and lies can be as binding as chains) can only work as long as the average person understands and takes seriously their obligation to guard their freedom by regularly checking that the tasks they entrust and expect others to carry out on their behalf, are being done in accordance to their expectations. When they are not, it is each person's responsibility to take action personally using whatever means possible, to bring the delegated tasks back in line with their expectations. That is the essence of maintaining freedom. Trust is absolutely  not enough.

The people that claim to be leaders are employed in service to the public, every single person in it. Just like a plumber, a baker, a dockworker, no more than you ever.

The freedom and independence inherent in free market capitalism make the rules easy to bend, although no one has to bend them for any reason other than to benefit themselves. All it takes is money and destabilizing the moral foundation of the people responsible for protecting these rules, to permit their corruption without raising protest or alarm. Clear thinking can drift in times of stress and confusion. The times we live in makes that happen. This site will flag what it sees and point it out.

One way is to continually oversell people on what they need to live and persuade them to go deep into debt to get whatever it is. Convincing consumers to reach beyond their grasp and offering them easy credit to extend their reach will do it. People burdened with debt for items with no value are easier to control.  Think about the money you owe and all of the ways it impacts your decisions.
“There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no small-pox more contagious than debt.” - Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage

The other problem is, the levels of expectation for trust and integrity in all of our institutions are perilously low, again for completely sound reasons, and the idea that possessions speak to one's success makes it easy to overlook the lies corruption depends on to survive.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln to Col. William F. Elkins dated November 21, 1864

Why This Site Emphasizes America's Colonists and the Constitution

I grew up in a home in which my father beat our mother up, punching her in the face, sometimes knocking her out, and calling her filthy names, more often or not when he was drunk. It was not constant, but enoughTrue Grit that when it happened it terrified us as children. This situation made me wish for a hero to come and save us. No hero ever came. You have to be the hero.

My first brush with heroes came when our family got a black and white television. Westerns and wrestling were the primary programs, along with the test pattern when the one station went off the air at night. The westerns portrayed the average Americans of the wild west as hard working, honest people who fought for what they believed in and defended their neighbors. The hardworking cowboys portrayed by actors like John Wayne stood up to the bad guys and the townsfolk rallied to defend their towns, ranches and mines from those that would be robbers, exploiters and now today murder good Americans for money. 

The average Americans that built the west were the heroes. There was no "there has been no determination of liability" escape for cattle rustlers who were in possession of a rancher's stolen cattle, any more than there was no "statute of limitations" for those that would rape or abuse their daughters because of their position of power and proximity to governors.  Little that has happened since that time has improved the situation of the average American.

Their forefathers, the colonists, created a constitution that enshrined their right to bear arms to defend themselves and the republic they created against all forms of evil and aggression, foreign and domestic, including corruption of their own government. There are a still a huge number of Americans today who embody that character. While it is true that a number of founders had slaves, over time slavery was abolished. The Constitution is for all Americans, no matter what color, if they choose to claim it as their own.  The constitution is not a whites only document.

One of the reasons Americans are different from everyone else is due to the fact that they, unlike people from other countries, started out living under constant threats of dying from those around them that were hostile to their invasion and in many cases in the nation, hostile weather. They lived under corrupt governance from Britain bent on taking their money and subjecting them to the rule of the king and sniveling merchants whining about their loss of riches. The colonists had to be well armed and familiar with the use of guns and were willing to throw off all yokes that would unfairly bind them after reasoned attempts at compromise. In other countries their people have lived under oppressive and deceitful rule for so long they are virtual peons. The Chinese occupy a unique space in time right now in that they are benefiting from a massive improvement of their living conditions. Its like waking up in a slow moving Christmas where every day there are new and fabulous things happening around them.  Eventually however, when the fear of oppressive rule rises to be greater than the daily Christmas parade, they too will strain the wraps that bind them, with one difference.  The people are not armed and although China has an amazing history of invention and its leaders have proven to be more than adept at building China as a nation, it will have to manage its relationship with its people when the Christmas of wonderful things starts to fade and the obvious corruption of its leaders can no longer be hidden. Propaganda and lies do not feed, clothe, or improve the lives of those that in realty are modern day peons while the wealthy live in gated bubbles of vanity and deceit.

There is an effort today to discredit the original intentions of the founders with regard to arming citizens and mistrusting government, and those that try suggest the constitution needs continual revision.  However anyone who has had to survive in life threatening situations would know being armed is in absolute requirement to survival.  There is no mistaking of that intent during the creation of the nation. If the people of Hong Kong were of the mind and as well armed as Americans it is highly likely the situation would be different for its citizens, and China would have a much harder time of imposing its rule on them.
For every nation whose citizens are not armed, and who are forced to flee or bow to their leaders who can direct the police and military against you to keep you in line, I point to the average American with independence and grit as the enemies of your enemies.  I am not talking about the political class, or the deceitful and lying press, or the military that behaves like an imperial invader, or corporations that try to sell you things you do not need, like traders that fleeced the Indians out of their furs, before the reality of their worthlessness sets in and you realize you have traded the time of your life for basically nothing.
"what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." - Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith Paris Nov. 13. 1787

When you see someone who is willing to give up everything and flee their home, you are looking at a coward, and know the place they fled as a den of vipers poisoned with corruption. That person will do nothing to help America or any nation be what it was and should be. The mere fact that they fled their home tells you all you need to know about them and the county they left. To understand what this means, think about what has to happen to you where you live to make you want to flee to another country, leaving everything behind and risking the lives of you and your children in the journey to do so.

With that in mind, if sufficiently steeped in your right to freedom, and independence, ask yourself whether you would rather flee, or stand your ground. Standing your ground is the essence of freedom, and if you are unarmed in defending your rights and your family, you have all you need to know about those countries and the people that are fleeing them. They should be sent home to fight for what is right, just as your forefathers did for you, which included creating a constitution and the right to take control of and maintain a Republic providing freedom and rights to everyone.  There is no constitutional provision for America riding around the world invading countries to establish democracies, which fails to work most of the time anyhow while enriching arms makers and creates enemies for America. The people of the nation have to do it for themselves, no one else can do it for them. 

Those of the political class willing to drive you from your home, take away your livelihood and offer it up to those who flee their homeland and divide it up among them, the very nation your parents, grandparents and forefathers gave their lives for, are simply liars and thieves. This letter by Patrick Henry to the 1775 Virginia Convention describes the guile of those trying to deceive the colonists and lull them into complacency until they could disarm them and defeat them militarily. If that sounds familiar, that is because it is the same pattern that repeats itself throughout history.  It is necessary to resist all naysayers who would exchange everyone's liberty out of cowardice or comfort.

The thieves can be of both political parties, but I see more of it right now in those that call themselves liberal. They are the ones that call the Constitution a living document, and the second amendment about militias and hunting. Their reasons for doing so are easy to determine. They relate to votes, profit and their fear of real Americans waking up and refusing to put up with their nonsense, lies and deception any longer. None of them can explain why the people that flee their homes are not like the colonists and willing to take their country back.  Is it because they might die?  How many lives were lost creating America? Is that now not worth fighting for?
In spite of a spirit of great independence, many people are afraid of conflict. Having lived in fear during my childhood, I get why people want to avoid it. I even read somewhere that when the colonists voted to throw the British out, many were afraid to do so, fearing it would lead to war. The quote below recognizes that fear and yet raises the hope and understanding that there will always be those willing to step into the breach where others fear to tread. Unfortunately, there are always those in a nation who would exchange liberty for comfort, even to the point of turning against their own in a conflict.

"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." - (Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms.” “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” - Samuel Adams

Why This Site Focuses on Privacy and Spying 

I started a part time job at a marina when I was 12, and several years later had to go door to door calling on people to sell personal development programs. My father owned a business providing training courses by Success Motivation Institute to insurance companies, and my mother ran a self help bookstore to provide books, records and tapes to their customers. The training programs and books I read got me interested in behavior change.

During that time my father also became involved with a group of investors that started a life insurance company selling whole life and term insurance policies to customers. The actuaries they worked with explained how they could use peoples' personal data to design insurance policies that would not be be paid out unexpectedly.  What to the untrained eye looked like gambling was actually mathematical and scientific analysis of personal behavior used to gain understanding of what people's lives would be like in the short term and long term.  Having that information allowed actuaries to design policies that would be profitable to sell.

When I was training life insurance people it was difficult to get agents to quickly develop habits that would make them successful, and I wanted to know how to make habit change faster, easier and permanent. It was obvious the military knew how to change people's behavior quickly and so I asked close relative who knew J. Edgard Hoover if he could get Hoover to send me some materials that explained how it all worked, which he did.

Basically, your personal data is used to control and manipulate you, along with new technologies you never hear about. You will not know that it is happening and it can be used to make you do things that are not good for you, your future, or the future of your children. In free states you are lied to and the liars invent reasons to take your data.  In socialist/communist states, even though they can simply use force and fear to get you to capitulate, your data is to manipulate you into subservience.

The military operates much like a communist state. To get everybody shooting in the same direction they have to create a never ending stream of propaganda to sell the purpose of the mission and create enemies where there are none. If the regulars realize the entire story is a lie, which clearly proved to be a problem in Vietnam, the structure breaks down. Someone giving years of their life to a scheme will be reluctant to admit they were fooled. 

There is no future in entrusting your life and that of your children to anyone without being fully aware of all of the repercussions of doing so and while retaining the right to change your mind at any time. And even then, you must be able at all times to inspect what you expect and demand compliance.

That includes a god, a parent, a teacher, professor, a politician, a religion, or a dictator, a government, a political party or anyone that claims they know better than you how to live your life.

Moreover, accepting the idea that a god is going to show up and take care of things while you do nothing is nonsense and merely a retreat into fantasy that will destroy your life and that of your children. There is no conflict between faith and doing something.  

Free Markets and Capitalism

Free markets and capitalism work.  People who game and corrupt these systems are the real problem in free markets.  To clarify further, acquiring wealth and doing so corruptly are two different things. Most people do not know how to work for themselves and profit in these systems. Governments cannot run businesses and dictate innovation.  The other problem is that there are no ethics.  In a model in which its everyone for themselves, it is a challenge to operate with integrity and fairness.  Especially when the  laws and  the courts protect corruption.

China's experiment with market ideas works because its people can create businesses and profit individually from their labors, with the Chinese government playing a support role in many cases. Every situation offers a lesson, and China's is no different. Trump gave tax breaks to corporations and in so doing confounded expert opinion that the economy was mired in low yields.  Jobs boomed and employment rose. I am not a fan of large business and getting a job with them, and economic policy is something frankly I know nothing about, but allowing corporations to trip over themselves to make a buck shows how they work, and that is a good thing.  It exposes them.

This link on Sweden (56 minutes) talks about how Sweden makes their economy and social safety net work.  However Sweden's model is not without controversy.  What is interesting is that Sweden came to the realization that capital can flee restrictive markets and damage the country, so they created a hybrid acknowledging how to make both work.  The solution would be to bomb every tax haven out of existence, but that is too radical and trying would make the resistance to Trump look like a Sunday school picnic, so you have to figure out other ways to do it.  Having people who have no idea how to work for themselves is not a great starting point though.

One of the founders of this publication is a Jewish lawyer.  He and I spoke at length about the Jewish Kibbutz and cooperatives model. In particular, I was curious about the success of Jewish experiments with these models.  His take on it was interesting.  He said from his experience with them that the Kibbutz and cooperatives were being pushed to adopt in many cases a more individualistic approach to reward participation in them, and that some were forced to expand into business to survive financially.

I bring this up in the interim only to point out that there are opportunities all over the world to learn new ways of doing things, but you have to think for yourself and be willing to try things out.  I am not a fan of having anyone such as a god, a parent, a teacher, professor, a politician, a religion, or a dictator, a government, a political party or anyone claiming any expertise at all that they know better than you how to live your life, and that by trusting them they will take care of all of your problems.

You simply have to learn how to make new versions of the market and some form of capitalism work for you and everyone else.  In fact I think that people trying to maintain the status quo cannot be trusted at all.  So if you get anything from this publication, please feel free to conclude that I am trying to convince you to learn how to think for yourself, respect nothing, and try everything.

Governments can regulate business with a light touch, but regulation should not be an entrepreneurial activity allowing the creation of more overcompensated and self entitled bureaucrats. More to come.

There are some highly intelligent people suggesting that the road to the future should be with more government control and operation of the the means of production and employment.  Socialistic systems as it were.  I have no disagreement with the need to improve the way things operate, but I would point out that few government run entities have ever produced a Steve Jobs (Jobs stuck a Mac inside a tiny slab that became the hand held phone), Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla (1.25 hour video), or the thousands of other innovators that have produced some of the worlds' fantastic inventions. Every country in the world has had their share of noted inventors, but most come from invention in the private sectors. The only experience I have to counter that supposition is in places I was personally involved, one is Xerox PARC and the other was AT&T Bell Labs.  At PARC I saw and used the world's first mouse and WYSIWYG computer interface, long before Steve Jobs acquired a license for them, and TV and video on phones at AT&T Bell Labs. So while many brilliant things are made in labs, essentially an institutional setting, the madness of getting the invention to everyone in the world is driven by zealots. 

Somewhere along the way the desire to crush competitors overrides the need for encouraging your own death to grow the world.  When the understanding that the greatest power comes from benefiting the most people is lost, the power of inspired being is lost along with it and the love of wealth becomes another tyrant. Religions suggest that the devil was simply an angel that had fallen to earth, which is the same basic idea.

Part of the problem globally is people clinging to their mommies for support and protection.  When mommy is gone they cling to their religions, or their corporate and government mommies. Until we learn to grow up and realize we are put on this earth to grow from where we started as individuals while working together with others, we will continue to be abused and manipulated like the children we allow ourselves to be.

For Immigrants Only: Observe How Nations Are Destroyed by Corrupt Leaders And The Corrupt Wealthy

If you are one of the unfortunate people forced out of your home and homeland and have had to make a perilous journey to leave it, start studying the behavior of certain powerful people in government in America and their treatment of plain folks to get some idea of the type of governance the United States, corrupt corporations, the corrupt wealthy and a completely corrupt media are moving America to and you will understand what happened to the country you fled. Many of these people have repeatedly voted to destroy the jobs and future of average people so that their corporate donors can reduce wages to as little as possible make a profit. Those in power are willing to do it to people whose families have been here for generations, so to them you are simply suckers in a play to continually reduce the earnings of average citizens so they are easier to control.  I am sure many of you understand what that is like.

They are also the same people that would take away the American people's right to be armed, which the colonists and the founders of America intended all citizens should have not only to defend themselves from people who would rob them, kill them, and rape and murder their children, like those of you coming from Mexico among other nations with a serious problem with cartels, and the police and governments the cartels have paid off.  The colonists and America's founders also intended that all citizens have the right to remove the government by force if necessary if it becomes so corrupt that it no longer represents the people, which happened with cartel infiltration of the police and courts in your country, and the government in places like Cuba and China and many others.  You may not have been able to take back your own country right now, but you should make sure that anyone you know understands why the original design of America's constitution and the people that defend it are more important than those that would undermine the nation to get elected and tell you how to live while making sure you can do nothing about it if you don't like what they do.  If you can vote you need to make sure people who support America's constitution and will fight corruption in America's top policing agencies as well as American companies who would cheat citizens of their jobs and decent pay to make a profit are elected. You may not like a lot of what goes on around you, but it would be far better to be surrounded by people who will fight for the nation you are in than people who would stand by and do nothing about it.  Best regards.