Something Wicked This Way Comes

For those of you who missed this interesting piece of news while partying on St. Paddy’s day yesterday, President Obama signed into law, an executive order allowing for control of all US resources, namely:

The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security.

The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations.

Interesting timing … signing such a law (an extension of a previous executive order) over the weekend when few people are paying attention.  Equally interesting is that in the last couple of years there have been a number of significant laws passed during holidays when people are busy with other “stuff”.

Many people are familiar with the President’s efforts to create a law that provides him with a unilateral Internet kill switch, the ability for the President to “turn off” the Internet should he feel that the existence of the Internet enables a threat to be carried out against the US.

Unfortunately the definition of “threat” is somewhat fuzzy.

Fewer people are aware of Executive Directive 51, an executive directive which the President can invoke without permission of Congress or the Senate that actually dissolves (or allows the bypassing of) the Congress and Senate, allows for the waiving of elections and offers a whole pile of other goodies if the President feels that we face …

…. disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions

Unfortunately the word “disruption” is also fuzzy and somewhat open to interpretation.

If as President, I felt that an upcoming Presidential election could result in my loss and that the policies of the other party could sink the country in one of these areas, I might feel that such a disruption needed to be prevented and I could there invoke Executive Directive 51.

But I’m not a conspiracy guy, so why would I even think of such a scenario?

The interesting thing about this law is that the rights of US citizens are redefined in this directive but they are classified beyond top secret.

I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me that my rights will change but I am not allowed to know what they will be, it doesn’t sound very good.

Even lawmakers such as Congressman Peter DeFazio attempted to find out what is in this bill and was denied, under the guise of “national security concerns”.

Our own lawmakers are not permitted to know the laws of the land and the impact on the constituents whom they serve.

In a number of meetings I have had with Washington DC advisors and think-tank people, they have told me to stop referring to the upcoming events as the Great Correction.  For those who aren’t familiar with me, I have been referring to the pending Great Correction, when the unsustainable practices in our economy, ecology, military and other areas finally hit the point of no-return and create a significant collapse, from which we finally learn how to do it right and we set about correcting our society and the world-at-large.

The reason they tell me that “correction” is a poor choice of words is because a correction implies that things will be fixed / better on the other side when, in their estimation, things will be much different but definitely not better.

Many also refer to a transition “that will not be stopped” (direct quote).  Their descriptions of the transition are disturbing – I will share them in upcoming posts as I digest them.

Some of these people I have met have been presidential advisors to many US Presidents, so I assume they are pretty smart and I would like to assume they are pretty sane.

And as I said before, I am not a conspiracy theory guy.  I run the other way as soon as a conspiracy person opens their mouth.

So What Does This Mean?

As a strategy guy, I don’t like gaps in information, since I know that in business an “I don’t know” or “it’s not important to me right now” answer to an unknown is usually the thing that sinks an organization.

As I digest a lot of information from my highly-connected sources, I see four scenarios, bound together by an unusual and disturbing set of data points whose relationships point to “something” (perhaps the transition that my DC contacts refer to), the scenarios being:

1.  A “transition” is really happening, something that we are not privy to know and since we are not allowed to know, it’s probably not very good for the average citizen.

2.  No such transition is happening and a lot of the news is a smoke screen for something else, a distraction from something else that we shouldn’t know.

3.  Many of the people working in think tanks, advising the President or having a senior role in the military are mentally unstable, not a good scenario when we need these people to be the most sane, lucid people on the planet considering their level of responsibility and the impact that their decisions have on the world.

4.  None of it is as bad as it looks and the legislation merely provides for good governance in case of crisis, as noted by the President, and that the laws will never be used. Laws that will never be used do not need to be on the books and shouldn’t be beyond our own lawmakers to view and understand the ramifications. 

Aren’t our lawmakers the highest authority in the nation – apparently not any more.

As I think about these scenarios, the very existence of the scenarios is disturbing, since none of the choices are very comforting.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too busy trying to keep their head above water to pay attention to what is happening.  When one has to keep food on the table and a roof over the head of their family, nobody cares about what happens on the Hill.

But they should care … while they still can.

I read a disturbing quote the other day by Hermann Göring that I will quote here.  By doing so, I am not making any connection between the terrible, evil, Nazi regime and the current administration.  However, there is much insight that can be gathered from the quote.

At the Nuremberg trials, Göring made this observation:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Powerful insight.

Something wicked this way comes.

As a strategy guy, I just wish I knew what it was.  I’ve been told what it is by senior officials but being told what it is and knowing what it is are two different things, especially when what one has been told is too disturbing to believe.

Appropriate preparation depends on facts … which seem either too incredible to comprehend or too difficult to obtain.

Neither of which are helpful at a time when we need truth and authenticity from our leadership.

The laws mentioned previously are not inherently evil by definition.  In fact, in times of emergency, they can actually mean the difference between the US surviving or falling.

What makes the laws good or evil will be the intention behind their usage should the need to use them arise.

The extent to which the laws exercise control over the rest of us can only be understood when our politicians communicate to us in truth and authenticity.

But we only receive such truth and authenticity when we demand it.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry