Invisible and insane

That's just another way of saying "out of sight, out of mind". It's one of those wonderful things about language: synonyms don't really mean the same thing, just almost the same thing.

You have to admit that a whole of things happen in places where nobody can really see them. They are, in a sense, invisible. How about who drafts laws, who finances which campaigns, what all happens under the guise of national security? How about universal surveillance, secret courts, almost all financial transactions, decisions by the WTO, IMF, or any number of other non-elected bodies who represent us? We know nothing about any of that ... well, OK a few people do, but the moment they say something publicly about it, they're branded as cranks, conspirators, or criminals ... and most folks don't want to know. Was ich nicht weiß, macht mich nicht heiß, as the Germans say. Or, for you English-only types: ignorance is bliss. Yes, all of that which allows us to remain ignorant; that is, fat, dumb and happy ... well, why would you want to ruin a perfectly nice summer day?

Well, whether it's a nice summer day or not, most of these invisible things are, just as the saying says, simply insane. Who ever would have thought that insanity would become so respectable?

It never ceases to amaze me how people can find reasons for, if not outright justify, the inhuman, unjust, and rabidly greedy actions of TPTB. This is even true for those who are the clearly evident targets of those actions: women, the poor, children, anyone of color. And it is especially true of the not-so-evident targets, TPTB biggest supporters in the end, the so-called middle class. Enslaved by debt -- the house, the new car, the boat -- and sacrificing so-called disposable income on status and what-others-may-think-of-them -- the golf-club membership, the holiday cruise, the timeshare -- the middle class can't afford to screw up, and so they have become fervent upholders of the status quo. Rock the boat and the bank may come for the house; step out of line and the police state will remind you who's in charge, and so, in the deeply ingrained Stockholm-syndrome tradition, they love their captors and admire their abusers.

As long as there are those "others", those just a little farther down the totem pole than themselves, they will hold fast to the idea that it is they, down there, who are the problem, because that's what TPTB have told them to believe. They march, lock-step to TPTB's drums, and they'll goose-step if told to do so.

Blind obedience, abject fear, deep-seated paranoia, ethnophobia, Stockholm syndrome ... I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty unhealthy to me. And, since all of these play out in our heads, it would seem to me that insanity isn't exactly the most inappropriate word either.