August 26 2015. You need to be fit to write—or to do pretty much anything to the best of your innate capabilities. In the U.S., these days, that would make you abnormal. Being sick is the new normal. Nearly 70 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug for a chronic or other medical condition, with antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioids topping the list. This is a (legally) drugged nation. Zombies don’t do democracy well. Neither do Drombies.

I’M INCREASINGLY OF THE VIEW THAT POOR HEALTH IS A

MAJOR FACTOR IN  AMERICA’S ECONOMIC DECLINE.

BLAME IT ON ‘THE DROMBIES!’

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

― Warren Buffett

You would think Americans would pay attention to Buffett—who has more credibility than most—but it is interesting to note that it is still largely considered unacceptable to use the term “Class warfare”—and the media avoid it like the plague—despite abundant evidence that it is happening.

This is like standing in the middle of a Nazi extermination camp, and refusing to accept the evidence of your own eyes—even as the screams of the dying and the odor of death fill the air—and the ash from the chimneys incinerating the executed drifts around you.

What is going on here! What don’t Americans notice what is being done to them?

In truth, I’m not sure that being legally drugged quite makes you a zombie, but it certainly dulls your faculties, and makes you indifferent to events and developments which should concern you greatly—and would, if you were entirely sentient.

Add in propaganda induced distortion, distraction, and delusion. and perhaps the correct term should be ‘drombie’—as in drug induced, zombie-like, behavior (accentuated by over-work, long hours, endless commutes, and minimal, or no, vacation time).

People get very, very tired when they don’t take vacations—and, at least as important—they lose perspective.

Above all, you don’t think, question, or protest. You go with the flow—and when you are not working, you seek escape.

You are well accommodated. In the U.S. it is easy to be entertained to death (over two years sooner on average than if you lived in another developed nation). The system does not want you to think—and death probably ensures that.

I’m not entirely sure about that point. I’ll check it out after the event.

I’m not normally into coining words but I rather like ‘drombie.’ Drombies are real. Zombies are fictional.

Be that as it may, the American public has been extraordinarily supine in the face of a whole series of initiatives by the ultra-rich, their supporters, and the corporations (and other institutions) they control, which have rigged the system to the great disadvantage of most Americans.

How have they rigged the system? This didn’t happen overnight—but it’s a process which has accelerated in recent years. The main thrust started in the early 70s but first became visible under Reagan. Just about everybody—including me—liked Reagan, but he was the front man for a lot of bad things.

Was he, personally, sincere? He probably was. However, I am far from sure he understood the consequences of his actions—or those initiated by others in his name. 

But, I digress.

Let me list some examples just to illustrate my main  point.

• Persuading the Supreme Court to classify corporations as people in legal terms.
• Setting up think-tanks and other institutions to give apparent validity to Right Wing arguments.
• Using the media—which they own—and other propaganda (derived initially from commercial experience) to communicate those arguments to the American people in such an effective way as to persuade them to vote—repeatedly—against their own interests. One of the pioneers of this level of sophisticated manipulation of the public was Edward Bernays, one whose greatest claims to fame was that he made it fashionable for women to smoke.
• Dominating Congress though lobbyists and by funding PACS to the point where the views of most Americans were not even considered.
• Pushing through Free Trade deals which allowed corporations to thrive—because they could manufacture more cheaply abroad—but  which caused American jobs to be exported by the millions, their factories to be closed, whole communities to be wrecked, and the U.S Economy, as a whole, to suffer severely.
• Pushing through endless tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-rich to the point where the corporate contribution to the tax base has been substantially diminished, and the ultra-rich now pay a significantly lower percentage of their income in tax than do most Americans.
• Forcing through the Citizens United judgment which allows the ultra-rich to deploy virtually unlimited money in support of their political objectives.

Well, there is much more to it than that—including practices relating to union-busting which are borderline or illegal—but the above gives a flavor of what has been a remarkably consistent, well-funded, ingenious, and successful campaign to secure capital’s position as the dominant force in the U.S. and weaken labor to the point where trade unions would be largely irrelevant, compensation reduced for most, and most gains accruing to a tiny ultra-rich minority.

In effect, the Constitution has been hijacked—and representative democracy replaced by a plutocracy—de-facto government by a small number of the ultra-rich for their own benefit.

This hasn’t been done in the traditional way—by a coup backed up by obvious force of arms. Instead, the perpetrators have used the system to force its own distortion.

Let me emphasize the word ‘distortion.’ The Constitution has not been destroyed. Instead, its spirit and intent have been perverted.

This has been done openly, but discretely—and has incurred virtually no effective opposition. This is clever stuff. A leading feature has been to use the legal system, which is supposed to work to the advantage of all, to be tilted to favor a few—but which still remains the law (so can be enforced by whatever means are necessary and available).

In the U.S., the heavily militarized police, and other national security and law enforcement agencies, have every type of weapon and other coercive force available—with incarceration to excess backstopping the lot.

Where there has been opposition which looked as if it might reach critical mass and fight back—the Occupy movement, for example—the full resources of the modern surveillance state (from militarized policy to infiltration) are deployed to isolate, fragment, and smear it. In fact, Occupy still exists, and does much excellent work, but has been rendered no longer newsworthy so largely irrelevant. Whether effective or not, its image has ben altered. It is now perceived as being irrelevant—and perception is nearly everything

When you have got the Supreme Court on your side—and you own the media—you can do amazing things with the U.S. Constitution—without changing a word.

Is the U.S. a Great Country—or what?

That is a joke—indeed, a cliché—that has evolved into a serious question.

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From Dr. Mercola of www.mercola.com  The man writes well—and supports his arguments with a great deal of data.

Contrary to the impression you get when listening to the drug advertisements on TV, your body is by nature designed to move toward health, and away from disease.

But to do so you need to provide it with the right lifestyle ingredients it needs to heal and thrive. And drugs are not on that list. The simple truth is, most disease is rooted in poor nutrition and lack of physical activity.

Unfortunately, most physicians are taught very little about the use of food for healing when they're in medical school, and many never take the time to learn even the most basic nutritional principles.

This is why most conventional doctors cannot guide you in nutritional healing, and why many are outright suspicious about claims that food can heal.

Exercise is another critical component of health, and studies have shown exercise to be as effective a treatment as many drugs, including antidepressants and medications for prediabetes and heart disease.

Statistically, Sickness Is More Prevalent Than Wellness

Statistically speaking, you’re far more likely to be some level of sick than you are being healthy. For starters, nearly 70 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug for a chronic or other medical condition, with antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioids topping the list.

Other signs indicating that sickness has become is the prevailing norm include the following statistics:

• Obesity rates are on the rise, and one in five deaths is now linked to obesity.
• We are in the midst of a worldwide diabetes epidemic. In the US, more than 115 million adults age 20 and over have either diabetes or prediabetes.¹

  Of that number, nearly 30 million already have type 2 diabetes — a statistic researchers predicted in 2001 wouldn’t be reached until 2050.²

  Diabetes has increased over 300 percent in just 15 years,³ and all told, nearly ONE-THIRD of the 320 million people living in America today have either prediabetes or some form of diabetes.⁴

• One in eight Americans aged 65 and over currently have Alzheimer's, and that number is expected to rise to one in four within the next 20 years.

  At present, more than half a million Americans die from Alzheimer's disease each year, making it the third leading cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer.

• Cancer rates are projected to rise 57 percent in the next 20 years, with 13 million people dying from cancer each year.
• Over half of the US population has at least one clinically diagnosable allergy, and allergies and diseases of the immune system have possibly quadrupled in the last few decades.

Best you visit his site and read the full thing. This is sobering stuff. Primarily he is arguing no more than if we eat intelligently and exercise we will normally be reasonably healthy—because that, mostly, is the natural order of things.

It has the ring of sense.

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