Six Levels of Political Reality

This video from two years ago looks at the deeper levels of elections, building on Lee Camp’s Four Levels of Reality. I add two more on ethics and ultimate reality, and examine the current election from that lens. I analyze how we got here, expanding on Jeremy Gilbert's ideological critique of education by citing John Taylor Gatto on mass compulsory schooling as mental colonization. It answers, "Is There Any Point to Left-Wing Politics?" by defining left vs. right as need vs. greed, with neither representing a system of reciprocity. I question whether politics even exists, rather than the 'personalitics' of a popularity contest. And I end with billionaires on both sides, stuck in the muddle with you.

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going ulterior

Lee Camp on Scheer Post from Oct 2021:

There are three or four levels of reality we should be discussing when we talk about any United States election. And by “discussing,” I mean “screaming about,” and by “screaming about,” I mean “freaking out about.” So, let’s freak out – shall we? …

So, using this past presidential election as an example: Layer one was — Who’s going to win? [Harris] or Trump? That’s the surface layer. …

Layer two is the slightly deeper understanding that American oligarchs win each election no matter what. … [substitute Zionist for American]

Layer three: Under our current economic system, the most powerful people (the corporatocracy) will eventually own everything. It’s inevitable. …

Level four is the true analysis of our reality. And there are a lot of different topics in level four. Things like, “What really is money?” or “What the fuck are nation states? Why is everything we do somehow connected to national interests? What does it matter if I was born on this side of a line and you were born on that side of a line? Who even drew those dumb lines?” …

We are left at level one because it serves as a beautiful distraction. Never talk about the deeper economic system. Never talk about how nations are used to divide us. Never talk about how corporations own our society. Media only reports surface level reality — Who will win the next presidential election or who will win the race for governor or which billionaire took a trip to space yesterday, etc.

Dig deeper. If you don’t do it for your own curiosity, do it because THEY don’t want you to.

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digging deeper

I generally start my analysis at Level Four and I would add three subheadings:

1. The historical context. How did that concept come about?

2. Connectualize [sic] the other areas it affects, rather than silo knowledge.

3. Are people in other parts of the world doing this differently and what are their results?

But I would continue my analysis into Level Five:

1. What is our purpose as a society?

2. How do we define morality and ethics?

3. What is our true relationship to other people: hierarchical or equal?

And then I’d go to Level Six:

1. What is the ultimate reality?

2. Does meaning exist independent of our understanding of it?

3. Or do we create the only meaning there is?

In reality, so to speak, Level Six is the place to start. If meaning exists and is working towards our ultimate happiness, we’re not in control—thank Dog. It doesn’t matter how this election turns out.

At Level Five, I choose to believe my relationship to all others is morally equal, and it’s circumstance and not our innate goodness that differentiates us. Morality means that whatever would be wrong for others to do to me is wrong for me to do to them. If people in another country voted for someone to send funds and weapons to kill you, would those people be evil? That’s both choices between Trump and Kamala.

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how did we get here?

How can we apply these levels to the topic of education? Level One might be ‘Should education cost so much? Should we be going into debt for it?’ I cite The Student Loan Scam by Alan Michael Collinge:

The Student Loan Scam is an exposé of the predatory nature of the $85-billion student loan industry. In this in-depth exploration, Collinge argues that student loans have become the most profitable, uncompetitive, and oppressive type of debt in American history.

This has occurred in large part due to federal legislation passed since the mid-1990s that removed standard consumer protections from student loans-and allowed for massive penalties and draconian wealth-extraction mechanisms to collect this inflated debt. High school graduates can no longer put themselves through college for a few thousand dollars in loan debt. Today, the average undergraduate borrower leaves school with more than $20,000 in student loans, and for graduate students the average is a whopping $42,000. For the past twenty years, college tuition has increased at more than double the rate of inflation, with the cost largely shifting to student debt.

Collinge covers the history of student loans, the rise of Sallie Mae, and how universities have profited at the expense of students. The book includes candid and compelling stories from people across the country about how both nonprofit and for-profit student loan companies, aided by poor legislation, have shattered their lives-and livelihoods. With nearly 5 million defaulted loans, this crisis is growing to epic proportions.

Level Two might be ‘Should there be a centralized curriculum and credentialing institution that forces us to go into debt to get working papers?’ Someone who’s written about that is Anya Kamanetz on DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs & the Coming Transformation of Higher Education:

The price of college tuition has increased more than any other major good or service for the last twenty years. Nine out of ten American high school seniors aspire to go to college, yet the United States has fallen from world leader to only the tenth most educated nation. Almost half of college students don't graduate; those who do have unprecedented levels of federal and private student loan debt, which constitutes a credit bubble similar to the mortgage crisis.

Level Three might be “What was compulsory schooling designed for? Should schooling be mandatory? What is the purpose of education and how does it affect the self-governance of which people are capable?” The person who’s done the most interesting work on mass schooling and the historical context is John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down.

He’s also written Weapons of Mass Instruction and the most detailed, The Underground History of American Education. It’s out of print, the internet archive version is down, and my copy is now worth $52 used. My friends at Unwelcome Guests read the entirety into their radio show although the links no longer work. They write:

A book which tells the previously untold story of schooling as not an altruistic enterprise of enlightened men to benefit their fellow man, but an effort by rich industrialist and eugenicists to preserve their power and influence by "Dumbing Down" their fellow man to the point at which he would willing accept a life of gloomy servitude in their factories. Gatto spent 9 years writing this book, after discovering primary sources, such as minutes of the industrialists' meetings, often painted a very different picture from that which later propaganda would have people believe.

Considering its huge size, the book is very readable. It is broken into hundreds of small sections, which mix historical record, interpretation and Gatto's personal experience to paint a compelling picture quite different from the traditional romantic image painted by the powers that be. In spite of selling over 500,000 copies based only on word of mouth recommendation (no advertising), its theme is so confronting that it has been largely ignored by the controlled media. Nevertheless, its reception has been very warm online, and it has been called a "superhuman effort of scholarship".

I had the honor of producing the 10th anniversary show on Unwelcome Guests, so you can see my profile pic from 14 yrs ago here.

And this is Episode #520: Education & Its Discontents, which included my pirate radio episode called Whatsamotta U. Ten years of Unwelcome Guests’ weekly 2-hr lectures in alternative topics comes to 1040 hours, which equals an associate degree in the credentialing world.

I recommend these books for anyone wondering why we’re accepting information with so little critical thought these days.

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what are left-wing politics?

As I talk about in Need, Greed & the 3P, we’re caught in a false dichotomy. On the one hand, we have left wing billionaires: Kamala Harris cackling as she says, “I like money” and talks about locking up parents whose kids are truant from school:

Kamala...with a stroke of her pen...

On the other hand, we have a trillionaire forging economic policy for the destitute, as Philip Mollica astutely points out:

Austerity

He writes:

I believe it is more a matter of Trump has been ordained to win.

Ordained by whom? The Elite, the Deep State, the Powerful - the ones who really run things and determine policy that are just parroted by well-meaning dupes, and sold-out media-heads and political players. …

I wasn’t sure about this until I saw Anderson Cooper make Kamala look like an idiot that I knew the fix was in. Anderson said one sentence too much. And I knew that if the fix wasn’t in, he never would have said what he said, and left her gaping like a bass with a hook in its mouth.

So why the switch? Why did they move over to Trump? What do they want over the next four years?

The answer is the title. They want austerity. It’s not about balancing the budget. It’s about nut-crushing austerity. Never mind that they just laundered 200 billion dollars plus between Ukraine and Israel. It’s time for you and me to pay the piper.

How do I know this? Because they are about to put Elon Musk in charge of economics. That’s right, the autistic trillionaire is going to be deciding what we need and how we should live.

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can we get what we want through politics?

I believe our own contradictions keep us stuck. What are they? Voters are looking to flatten the pyramid from the top, so that we no longer serve the rich, but not looking at the global 90% who serve our interests. These days, that 90% is looking out for their own interests. No matter who wins tonight, the winds of change are blowing.

At Level Six, we may not get what we want, but we’ll get what we need.

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There’s been much talk about Biden’s $10K student loan forgiveness but student loans are just one symptom of the dysfunctional education system. This episode examines how to reinvent K-12 through university with self-driven curricula, edu-tourism, edu-travel and no debt. It uses the economic system of anarchy and federalism described in my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. It references The Student Loan Scam by Alan Michael Collinge, a TEDtalk by Sir Ken Robinson, a NY Times article by Nick Burns, and The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto.

Responds to Russell Brand's interview of David Harvey called Marxism on the Rise: Can It Really Defeat Capitalism? I define capitalism as a system that favors the accumulation of capital, which can be good or bad depending on who owns the assets. I propose that Capitalism favors greed and Marxism favors need, but a different paradigm favors community sovereignty. If the community owns the assets (capital) that back the money, people can own the products of their own labor, which then go back into the community. I reference Elizabeth Warren's book, The Two-Income Trap, to show why the problem isn't overconsumption, and I cite Ivan Illich on why institutionalized welfare steals what makes us most human—our generosity, as anthropologist David Graeber confirms.