Say It Forward

By now you have probably heard that President Obama gave "a good speech" yesterday.

A speech that Dredd Blog will call a "say it forward" speech, which will be explained below.

It was a speech like more and more presidents are doing, since government is a political realm, guided by the machinations of big money, big oil, big media, and big military.

In particular, the President's speech was purposefully tailored after a speech President Teddy Roosevelt gave at the same location about a century ago.

The speech that Roosevelt gave took place during a time of robber barons and banksters, a time when there was no middle class, a time when a plutocracy running a plutonomy threatened to set in and become the norm for American society.

One could wonder, then, if the unspoken message that President Obama was sending was "As a Nation We Have Gone Back To The Future", back a century, back to our nation's dark ages, yes, back to the time of Theodore Roosevelt?

One could also wonder "so now we must 'lean forward' to get back to where we once belonged?"

The novel and later movie "Pay It Forward" was about doing good deeds as a form of investment in the future:

Trevor does a favor for three people, asking each of them to 'pay the favor forward' by doing favors for three other people, and so on, along a branching tree of good deeds.

(Pay It Forward). What is the difference, if there is a difference, between the notion of "pay it forward" and "say it forward", yes, what is the difference between now and then?

Noam Chomsky offers a clue when he says that our government, some few years after Teddy Roosevelt left the White House, became the purveyor of propaganda as a means of controlling the populace:

... this developed in ... the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.

(The Deceit Business, bold added; see also The Ways of Bernays). The U.S. government has evolved to become the offspring of politicians who are the offspring of "say it forward" rhetorical propaganda masters who design promises that are not to be kept.

Whether this is because the promises either can't be kept, or in some cases are intended not to be kept, is irrelevant.

The coin of the election realm, the coin of election promises, is as worthless as money at 100% inflation (there is lots of it but it doesn't buy much).

The American people in general do not believe politicians because of the reality of history, the reality that campaign promises are not kept.

The plunder barons, the banksters, and the warmongers, through their bought and paid for politicians, have destroyed the integrity of public discourse in America.

Therefore, to get back to the time of Teddy Roosevelt, we would have to break the bullshit barrier, yes, we would have to leave Pentagonia, the Capitol of Bullshitistan, and travel to a place and time where honesty is paramount.

Isn't that a road too far?